Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Look ACT has played a constructive role in terms of the water services reforms. I remember back to June 2020 when I was first invited to a briefing from Department of Internal Affairs officials who outlined for me—as an ACT candidate not an MP but trusted with the information and insights from officials—what the problem was with three waters infrastructure. The officials told David Seymour and I that there is a problem: around New Zealand there's an infrastructure deficit of potentially $100 billion—apparently now it's $180 billion; that may have something to do with inflation under Labour—and they said Look we need to fix this infrastructure. Councils haven't fulfilled their obligations and there's not enough money to do it and the current regulatory framework doesn't make it likely that this work's going to be done any time soon and in the meantime we've got waste-water overflows and there's not enough infrastructure to allow for housing growth and housing densification in our cities." As a civil engineer I thought "That's a very reasonable and sensible problem definition." Then they introduced the Water Services Entities Bill now an Act which set up four mega entities and established an incredibly complex co-governance arrangement which allocates 50 percent of the seats—essentially creating water parliaments—on the regional representative groups to iwi Māori representatives which are complemented by 50 percent of the seats on these enormous boards potentially being people from local government but we don't really know. If the problem was how do we find more money to fix infrastructure to repair and maintain the infrastructure we've already got and to provide for growth in our cities—whether it's green fields subdivisions places where young families might want to live where there's enough room for the kids to ride their bikes around the backyard or to put a trampoline; or whether people want to live in higher density cities where you need actually water infrastructure stormwater waste water and drinking water to be delivered before you can connect new homes to the systems. So that's the problem to solve. We need to find the money and we need some regulatory mechanism to force asset owners of water infrastructure to actually deliver the infrastructure. The Water Services Entities Act passed in November 2022 failed that test. It introduced complex expensive co-governance into water infrastructure management. It introduced concepts like Te Mana o te Wai and requires these water services entities to give effect to Te Mana o te Wai statements. Now while it's true that New Zealanders of all cultures understand how important clean drinking water is for communities and how important it is that waste-water treatment plants and the networks operate in a way that doesn't result in regular discharges of waste water into our special places it's not true that only one ethnic group in New Zealand has special insights into how water should be managed—how water resources should be allocated. In fact it's engineers and scientists and ecologists. Those are the people with those specialist skills who can tell us whether freshwater wetlands or coastal environments are in fact suitable for recreation or to get drinking water from. There are no special insights that those scientists or engineers have because of their ethnicity but that is what this Government has proposed by including Te Mana o Te Wai statements as a requirement for water service entities. It became clear late last year that the high-water mark for co-governance in this Government's divisive agenda—when it came to allocating different rights to iwi Māori based on their ethnicity when it came to infrastructure like water assets. The waka had gone a long way up the beach but the tide had gone out. When Chris Hipkins said that policies were going on the policy bonfire and he was rethinking the three waters policy I thought "Wow maybe they might have listened to all of those councils all of those communities; all of those New Zealanders who signed ACT's petition saying 'Stop the steal; we'll repeal three waters.'—maybe they've listened?" But no they hadn't. What Chris Hipkins did was announce that instead of four mega water entities four new chief executives and four new bureaucracies there's going to be 10. Only Labour could solve a problem of centralisation and red tape of its own making by adding even more bureaucrats and more red tape hiring more office space and yet delaying the implementation of the legislation by two years so that waste-water overflows into places like Te Wai o Pareira / Henderson Creek—where I live—will continue for another two years or maybe another decade while all of these things are worked out; and they won't be worked out by this Government. We've heard today that the Minister responsible for the bill the Hon Kieran McAnulty intends that it be reported back from select committee by 27 July and no doubt they will intend to have it pass through all stages under this 53rd Parliament. Well we in ACT will do our best to prevent more bad legislation being rammed through the House but actually it's up to New Zealanders. They will get to vote on this legislation in October and by 15 October we'll know whether they agree with the former Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta that there is no alternative to co-governance. Well now if they agree with Kieran McAnulty that 10 massive border bureaucracies are better than four—or maybe they won't agree and they'll agree with ACT because what ACT says is that there is an alternative. If we want better water infrastructure we should simply spend more money on water infrastructure. How about that?Well I went down to the West Coast of the South Island and one of the mayors said "You know Simon the reason we're going for three waters is because we think we'll get more money out of it but what we really need to do is—if only central government would share some of their revenue with us. Remember we have hundreds of thousands of tourists come up and down the West Coast of the South Island every year. We don't get any revenue out of that. If only they'd share a small amount of central government's revenue with us we might be able to fund the delivery of better water infrastructure for some of our most deprived communities." How practical would that be? Central government sharing some of the revenue it takes from the regions with the regions that need it. Well that's what ACT says. What ACT says is that we should share 50 percent of the GST on all new builds backed with local government on the basis that 30-year infrastructure plans between central and local government identify where the infrastructure needs to be built and what the time frames are and then local government is held to account to meet those time frames. We need to provide for growth by actually building infrastructure well in advance of when the houses come and that will actually help with delivering service land: not just with water but also with transport infrastructure. That means whether they're for high-rise residential development in existing towns and cities or whether they're greenfield suburbs where mums and dads want to be able to put a trampoline in the backyard for the kids those sections and those land prices will become more affordable. That's what ACT's solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature would deliver and that is what New Zealanders will have the opportunity to vote for in October.So ACT will not be supporting this bill; we will be opposing it. We will continue to be constructive we will continue to offer alternatives and we will continue to listen to New Zealanders including councils the engineers the asset managers all of those people in the regions and in our towns and cities who have said "Simon there's a better way. Labour won't listen to us; thank you Simon thank you ACT New Zealand for listening. We look forward to seeing a change of Government in October 2023 with ACT at its centre." Thank you Madam Speaker."