Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Oh wow what a great bill—51 seconds that contribution was. I'm not surprised because the reality is that if I was a backbencher in the Labour Government at the moment I'd be reluctant to get up and put my name to this bill as well because they know that they're going to be punished in a few weeks on 14 October for legislation exactly like this. It shows that they think they know best—Labour knows best. Remember the old days when three waters was about water quality and standards? That didn't go too well did it because they got caught out with their false advertising with green sludge coming out of the tap. So much for a Government that stood up for misinformation and disinformation! They are the Government of Misinformation". But of course then they pivoted because "Three waters is about a cost of living crisis." they called and only their solution would address the cost of living crisis. Interestingly enough they had been dragged kicking and screaming into the cost of living crisis debate after refusing to acknowledge the pain on many New Zealanders when they got their wallets out. Now when you listen to the Minister when he talks about three waters it's about responding to weather events—that's the latest. It's gone from water quality to cost of living and now to responding to weather events. In fact the reality is that three waters was always a solution looking for a problem because there's only one play in this Government's playbook and that's centralisation. Anything they do they'll centralise it. Look at the health reforms look at the polytech reforms and now look at three waters because of course in their minds under this failed socialist experiment that will get them kicked out in a few weeks—under socialism—you've centralised because Wellington knows best the beltway knows best. But of course on this side of the House we know that local knows best. That's why we will repeal and replace the three waters legislation in the first 100 days of a National-ACT Government because we know that this will not work. Today's bill is the fourth three waters bill that this Government have brought in under urgency and that says it all. Every three waters bill they've brought into this House has been under urgency. They've rushed it through because they know it's gone down like a cup of cold sick out there in New Zealand. In my electorate of Waimakariri 95 percent of ratepayers opposed three waters and of course that was in the day when they said to the councils "You can opt out." So Waimakariri District Council went to their ratepayers because the Labour Government told them that if they went and got the consensus from their ratepayers they could opt out and 95 percent of ratepayers said no. But Official Information Act request documents revealed it was a legislated all-in even with the consultation. So this bill does not come to the House in good faith; it comes in bad blood. Again they've misled the public of New Zealand. Here we have a bill that will enable and empower these big mega-entities because of course they actually only wanted four of them. But they had to do the flip-flop and the back-down bill to bring it up to 10 because Kieran McAnulty the Minister who went round all the councils—and they all said "Mr McAnulty: nice guy wrong party."—but he knew the backlash. See Mr McAnulty is a smart guy. He listens to the people on the ground because he knows he needs to listen because his seat will go if he doesn't. He came back to Wellington and his senior Cabinet Ministers said "Don't worry about listening to the public. They don't know what's best. We know what's best." But of course he got them to get to the 10 mega-entities and now this legislation is passing—the detailed legislation to enable those 10 mega-entities—and basically these 10 mega-entities will seize and will steal ratepayer-owned water assets. State theft by stealth this bill is. It is taking away the hard-earned money from all those ratepayers who've paid into their water assets. They are intergenerational water assets and now under this bill those water assets will be taken into these big water entities. All their personal ratepayer information will be forced out of the councils now and into these water entities and then in return the charges will come down. What we do know is that unlike councils who know their local communities and who would be able to be nimble and adapt with water charging based on the level of investment and based on the capacity of the council to respond these water entities will be a blunt instrument across New Zealand. What will happen for those councils that have diligently invested in good water assets and in good water-quality standards? Their money will be cross-subsidising other areas and in return they will lose ownership of those assets. They will not be accountable to them. There is no return here for the average ratepayer and that is why National has said very clearly that we will repeal and replace the three waters legislation. I want to give a shout-out to my colleague Simon Watts who in a few weeks hopefully will be the Minister of Local Government. He will restore faith back into councils that once again they will be listened to and they will be supported. They won't be dictated to like they have been under this arrogant Labour Government which is going to be voted out after only two terms because they're tired. They're tired they've run out of ideas and quite frankly when you look at the polls people have just had enough of being told by this Labour Government what to do. See on this side of the House we want to listen to people locally. We want to support them. We want to empower them. We won't want to have top-down directives that tell them what to do. So I'm not surprised that every Labour MP that has got up time after time has spoken very briefly because they won't take many calls—you watch for the next hour or two. They'll low-ball it. They'll hope the voters won't clip it out on their social media as to why they think that this is a good idea. The reality is that we've gone through quite a legislative process with this bill and the other three three waters bills. Clearly the public hasn't been listened to. As my colleague Nicola Grigg has said in her contribution—which I thought was a fantastic contribution that led off for the Opposition this morning—there were tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of submitters that weren't listened to because all we are doing here is setting up mega-bureaucratic entities and you only need to look at the abject failure of the health reforms to see that in setting up these entities it will not work. Look at the failure of the polytech reforms—it will not work. But this Government is tone deaf ploughing on in the view that centralisation is the solution to every issue in New Zealand. In conclusion I just want to say that National opposes this bill."