Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak to this bill the Taumata Arowai—the Water Services Regulator Bill which has now returned from select committee. I want to acknowledge the chair and other members of the Health Committee who did a good job with this bill and all those who submitted on it. In fact there was such agreement with the recommendations the officials made that the committee unanimously agreed with pretty much all of the recommendations—again showing the collaborative nature of the select committee process. Now as has been mentioned this bill falls out of a recommendation from the Havelock North inquiry and fundamentally it does three things. It creates the regulatory body for drinking-water it does provide advice on waste water and storm water—advisory only; so while this is primarily around drinking-water there is a reflection in the bill on waste water and storm water—and it develops a Māori advisory council. Now there were parts of this bill that were quite complex—for example identifying and describing a domestic self-supplier which might seem by itself to be quite easy but I will read you some examples as to what is a domestic self-supplier and what is not. For example a domestic self-supplier: A single property with tenants on a lease that is supplied by a rainwater tank is a domestic self-supplier. A single holiday house that is supplied by a rainwater tank and is rented to tourists on a short-term basis is a domestic self-supplier."—that's quite complex. It depends on what the lease or rental arrangement of the house is and whether it's on a water tank or not. "A multi-dwelling building (for example multiple separate apartments contained in a single building) that has its own bore water supply" you might intrinsically think "Oh yes this is a domestic self-supplier." but it's not in this bill qualified as a domestic self-supplier even though it's got its own bore. Instinctively you might say "Well look it would seem to be." but we came up with good reasoning for that and we can understand and explain that. "A marae wharekai … or community hall that has its own river water supply is not a domestic self-supplier."—again we might have thought that it might qualify. "A café building supplied by a rainwater tank is not a domestic self-supplier."—so they are quite complex definitions here. Are you on a rainwater tank is it a bore or is it a river and is the property leased is it commercial is it a short-term lease—all these qualifiers come into the definition of a domestic self-supplier. So we grappled with that and understood from officials how we might explain and why that suited the purposes of the bill. Similarly in what might seem a similar definition a "drinking-water supplier" is also quite complex. Who is the drinking-water supplier? Well it's "a person who supplies drinking-water to consumers who are drinking-water supply;" but interestingly it also "includes a person who ought reasonably to know they are supplying drinking-water to consumers;". Now that's going to be a little bit difficult to challenge as to who "ought reasonably to know" but that wasn't the purpose of us at this point. We were reassured by officials that they could establish that should it be contested but it also shows some of the complexity around what might seem a relatively simple premise. The Māori Advisory Group is created by this bill as well and as my tuahine has said Te Mana o te Wai is also incorporated in the bill. Of course this isn't new. This talks about the mauri or starts to talk about the mauri of the wai and if we think back to Chris Finlayson and his Treaty settlement with Whanganui River where effectively it was given some of the same attributes of a natural person then this is sort of an extension of that piece of work to include it in legislation and say that we recognise the non-tangible things around the importance of water as well. Māori interests are taken into account through the creation of the advisory council but again this is mainly setting up the administrative body. I've mentioned how collaborative the select committee was in getting to this second reading and I also want to acknowledge then the Hon Jacqui Dean who brought her expertise and listened to a lot of submissions on behalf of some of us—we left that to the domain experts and she advised this side of the House as to what our recommendation should be—and Lawrence Yule who then also picked up some of the local government responsibilities obviously with intimate understanding of some of the reasons that this bill comes to the House. So I did want to acknowledge their work on this. Look the National Party will be supporting this bill. We're comfortable with it being advisory. We're comfortable with the framework that it is setting up. There are further discussions to be had on waste water and storm water and we don't think we're precluding those discussions in this bill here. It does certainly talk to waste water and storm water but just in an advisory way. We see no regulations here that we need to offer a substantive view to. That will be another discussion for another bill at another time. So on the basis that this is primarily talking about drinking-water and that it's creating the administrative framework for drinking-water to press forward we agree with the recommendations of the Havelock North inquiry and we agree with the substance of what is in this bill. Again our thanks go to the select committee and to officials who helped navigate us through some of these complex issues and we're supporting this bill further. Thank you Mr Speaker."