SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I'm pleased to take a call on the Water Services Economic Efficiency and Consumer Protection Bill. The Green Party is supporting this bill because one of the fundamental tenets of the whole reform is that if you create larger entities they will be more efficient they'll be able to borrow more. So there will be less burden on councils and a recognition in the supporting documents that councils because of rates and the community response to rates have often been reluctant to raise the rates or spend much rates on infrastructure. With these bigger entities that obstacle and constraint is seen to go. So therefore with bigger entities you really do need a strong consumer protection and advocacy regime and mechanisms for resolving disputes between consumers and the entity.That's what this bill provides. As others have noted there was good debate in the Finance and Expenditure Committee. And like others I acknowledged the chair Ingrid Leary and the former chair Rachel Brooking for their leadership on this and encouraging that degree of debate.The previous speaker talked a lot about the Commerce Commission. The Commerce Commission regulates industries like the telcos like gas and so it's entirely appropriate that the economic regulation should come under the Commerce Commission and with a specific Water Services Commissioner. The committee in considering the bill included some additional criteria about the expertise that that commissioner should have. So the Greens are confident that that person will have the specialist knowledge that Melissa Lee talked about.There are other improvements to the bill that occurred through the select committee process in terms of—there was some concern that water services entities in the form of Watercare had not always been as responsive to developers' requests for new infrastructure. So there are specific new provisions in the bill which have a dispute resolution process around developers' requests for infrastructure. But the Green Party really believes that the commission and the Water Services Commissioner have got to look very closely at things like private plan changes ad hoc requests for subdivision development and the infrastructure to facilitate that to ensure that is not imposing big costs on the entities from putting new services in place.In some of the previous debates members have referred to a number of boil-water notices as justifying the need for the establishment of the entities. Those boil-water notices in Canterbury are often the result of inappropriate agricultural intensification and a failure to control land use so the water services entities won't in themselves have that regulatory power over land use. That's a key issue for the new regional planning committee through their new plans and of course regional councils under the Resource Management Act. We really do need to protect source waters in order to reduce the costs for entities and reduce the cost of the provision of services. If they have to substantially treat a lot of water run osmosis filters and the like that will increase the charge to consumers and it will then be difficult for the dispute resolution service for the tribunal that's being set up there to actually have those charges reduced because they go back to a fundamental inappropriate management of land use and an unnecessary contamination of water.The bill was significantly improved through the select committee through the service quality code that's now proposed in terms of consumer complaints the way in which the dispute resolution service would work and also the establishment of a separate consumer advocacy agency recognising that that was not really the normal responsibility of the Commerce Commission. So it is a bill that we really need with this economic regulation and consumer protection with the establishment of the 10 new entities and the Green Party supports it.