Foster AndyANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Mr Speaker the last two bills we discussed we heard a lot of what I think were crocodile tears from the other side of the House about the relationship between central government and local government. That pales into insignificance with the way in which the last Government approached water reform. Not only did it almost split Local Government New Zealand you've actually got organisations which are now no longer part of Local Government New Zealand. We got 88000 submissions on it and what happened to those? By and large they got ignored. So they were crocodile tears over the last couple of pieces of legislation.This bill the Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill allows councils to decide their own model—allows councils to decide their own model. It allows them to work together if they want to do that. It allows council-controlled organisations—Hon Kieran McAnulty: How did the rates rises go in Wellington Andy?Hon Dr Megan Woods: Tell us about Wellington Water Andy!ANDY FOSTER: —it could allow a number of different contracting entities but what it does do—they're a noisy ramble over there aren't they? What it does do is it sets out the expectations very very clearly from what we expect. It talks about the quality of asset management. It talks about financial sustainability. It talks about all those very useful things.The one thing I particularly wanted to talk about was asset management because in this country we are lousy at asset management and central government is particularly bad. Local government isn't great—local government isn't great—but central government is abysmal. That is why I've said already in debate that we've got $1.5 billion in this Budget to help fix the poor asset management around our education infrastructure. But it's not only there; it's right across the board. We've had the debate just now about the amount of the deficit in waste management infrastructure. It is right across the board and it is something that we need to do something about.Kieran McAnulty said that there is a $185 billion bill sitting there. Now what he didn't say is that a fair bit of that is covered already by local government—a fair bit of that is covered already by local government. What he also didn't say is that there are a lot of assumptions behind that. And one of the things when we look in our Transport and Infrastructure Committee—and it's great to follow after my good colleague Cameron Luxton—is that we know that there are huge opportunities for us to do infrastructure faster cheaper and better. If you go and talk to as I have done some of the local government operators and chief executives what they will say is that up to 40 percent—40 percent—of the cost of working on the roads and that includes utilities is all the health and safety costs around that. If we can make a difference there that $185 billion comes down a long long way. And that is what we have got to do.Labour has also talked a lot about the impact on rates. What they don't do is tell you that if it wasn't the ratepayers who were going to pay—it wasn't a magic money tree; it wasn't the Government. There was a front-end bribe—there was a front-end bribe—but it wasn't the Government. Who it was going to be is the water consumer. I don't know about you but I am a water consumer I'm a ratepayer. It's the same people. There is no magic money tree. Three waters also wouldn't have kicked in for a couple of years and as I said no magic money tree and the cost would have been paid by the same people.This is a bill about us working together—local government and central government—rather than the imposed model that we saw from the last Government. I commend this bill to the House.