Borrows Chester: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Borrows Chester: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8498. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I move  
That the South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill be now read a third time 
. It is my privilege to have been the bill’s sponsoring MP as the local member of Parliament for Whanganui including the South Taranaki District Council area and to bring this local bill before the House. I recognise that it is a bill that has had its controversy—during the select committee deliberations particularly—and I recognise the various positions taken by parties in the House. I recognise too that they are divergent. In some ways some parties were never going to vote for this particular bill and others always were. 
I acknowledge the spirit of cooperation and understanding that pervaded the Local Government and Environment Committee during the course of listening to the evidence but most of all today I congratulate those members of the community around Te Kiri in the Opunake area who years ago saw the opportunity to lift production on their farms and to secure a viable and potable water supply for their homes and for their stock and who took advantage of a scheme that existed at the time under the Government to be able to get a dollar for dollar subsidy from taxpayers provided that they met certain production increases. 
 It was at a time in New Zealand which some members will remember when interest rates were incredibly high and penalty rates for late payments were even higher. It was not unusual for young farmers getting started in that particular area to be paying up to 22 percent in penalty rates and a normal mortgage rate of about 18 percent in order to buy their farms or their stock or to get working capital for those farms. So they invested in this Cold Creek water supply scheme and in doing so raised production on those farms manyfold. 
Today it services about 300-plus consumers and by a previous piece of legislation passed in the early 2000s there was a restriction on the ability of the South Taranaki District Council to vest the scheme back with those who had built it maintained it and paid for it because of the fact that it was potable. Other schemes locally that were not potable were able to be vested back so it was recognised very early on that there was going to need to be a local bill for this to be able to happen. 
Looking back over that period of time it is interesting to note the changes that have been made in respect of for instance one of the issues that arose which is consultation with iwi. The local district council the South Taranaki District Council has an iwi liaison committee and on it are a number of representatives of local iwi. They truly felt that they were doing the right thing in consulting with iwi via this iwi liaison committee and expected that the representatives on that committee from the local iwi would take the issues back to iwi that they would be discussed and that the views would then be brought forward through this particular forum. 
As was raised by iwi during the course of the select committee process they did not consider that to be consultation and this far down the track more than 10 years after the instigation of this vesting process I do not believe that any district council would leave such vestment of an asset over to be done in that particular way. However I think everybody accepts that they did so in good faith at the time. 
The iwi’s position is that local iwi are still going through the settlement of their assets so no assets should be sold until that process has been finished with the Crown. They also have an issue around their place as Treaty partners with the Crown and whether they should be dealing with a district council or whether they should be sitting with the Crown and deciding the distribution of water rights which at the moment is delegated to the Taranaki Regional Council. These are principled positions and they are well understood by both the consumers and the owners of the water supply and the South Taranaki District Council. However there has not been a meeting of the minds there albeit the select committee process was put on hold in order to be able to get round the table with iwi representatives and to understand where each of them are. 
It is important to note too that the local people constructing the water scheme hooked on to the water scheme without any charge a number of local amenities including local marae the schools the community halls and other facilities that were community owned and operated—without any charge whatsoever albeit as I said earlier it was a time of great financial stress. The buy-in for those schools halls and marae included the ability of the local Opunake township to be able to hook on in emergency circumstances to the Cold Creek scheme. 
There had been an issue for some years that problems on the slopes of Taranaki meant that in heavy rainfall the water supply to Opunake township was not potable and was not safe. That meant that water had to be delivered to local homes and the quick institution of a branch from the Cold Creek scheme meant that local Opunake residents were able to access clean and potable water straight off the Cold Creek scheme. By agreement that facility exists today and will continue on into the future albeit it is no longer required because the South Taranaki District Council has spent a lot of money on ensuring the constant water quality for Opunake residents. 
I guess the question then asked is: “Well who paid for it?”. This is a question that has been debated around the select committee and around this debating chamber for some time. The point is made that mainly farmers put up the money for the construction of the scheme and actually built the scheme themselves. There was a dollar for dollar taxpayer subsidy—not ratepayer but taxpayer subsidy—that went with that on a condition as I said earlier that production was lifted as a result of the scheme. That has happened many times over so the taxpayer has been repaid many times over by the increase in tax that was taken from these more successful businesses mainly dairy farms. 
There was a period of time when the South Taranaki District Council serviced the Cold Creek scheme by way of some monitoring and when it was challenged to find a single cent that had not been covered by repayments from the Cold Creek operators back to the council it was suggested that there was some time when inspections were done when they were not charged for diesel or travel costs. That was the only money although it could not be quantified that could possibly not have been covered by the Cold Creek scheme. 
It is important to note that even during the discourse over the last decade or so between the council and the Cold Creek consumers every expense the council has gone to including legal fees in contention with the points being made by the consumers was paid for by the consumers. So we are able to say today that we cannot quantify any money whatsoever that would be outstanding to the South Taranaki District Council ratepayers. 
I want to just cover off before I finish a point that was raised by New Zealand First which put forward Supplementary Order Paper 179 suggesting there should be a referendum across a South Taranaki District Council - wide constituency and in the event that that did not pass New Zealand First would not be voting for the bill in spite of an earlier assurance that it would be. The point remains that the initial legal ownership of this scheme was vested in the Egmont County Council which later was amalgamated into the South Taranaki District Council. If that Supplementary Order Paper had passed the referendum would have been held of all constituents from Okato which is about 20 minutes south of New Plymouth all the way down to Maxwell which is about 20 minutes south of Wanganui albeit that those people have absolutely no interest in this. 
It is important finally to mention that this is about the vestment of pipes and concrete on 1 acre or so of ground in rural Taranaki. 
I am very pleased that we have reached this point today. I commend this bill to the House and look forward to its passing given the intimations from other parties of support that it will have across the House. Thank you.