Blue Jackie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Blue Jackie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4375] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I say to my colleagues that I stand to speak against the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. On the face of it it seems quite a commendable and laudable bill. By way of legislation it seeks to ensure that all drinking water is safe and of a high standard and I certainly agree with previous speakers that water is essential to life. But I stand to oppose this bill and I will explain why. I consider it is unnecessary it is overly bureaucratic and it is an example of over-regulation and of this Government’s attempt to try to fix things that are not broken to begin with. 
 It is an example of micro-management to the nth degree and of the Government’s fixation with trying to make one-size-fits-all policies. 
Why do we need this bill? I have asked myself some questions. Have we had a major outbreak of water-spread diseases? Certainly the Minister when he spoke to the bill before the dinner break mentioned examples of international outbreaks of gastroenteritis but as members with some medical background will know a lot of gastroenteritis is due to food-borne disease not water-borne disease. The two do need to be differentiated. Has New Zealand had an outbreak of cholera or typhoid that I had not known about? Does evidence exist that what we are doing now is not working? Does any evidence exist that the voluntary standards we have in place should be compulsory? 
I have really struggled to find that evidence and therefore to see the need for this legislation. I got information from the Parliamentary Library and I think the Hon Mark Gosche got the same information. Depending on how one looks at the information the glass is half full or half empty; it depends on how one perceives it. I had to go back over 20 years to find an outbreak of any significance in this country. In 1984 over 3000 people in Queenstown became sick because of contaminated drinking water. That is over 22 years ago. Otherwise it looks as though the outbreaks have been fairly scattered and infrequent: 61 cases of campylobacter at a school camp in Christchurch in 1997 another 67 cases of campylobacter at Wainui in 1997 some other cases at a college in 2001 viral gastroenteritis cases at a ski field—that usually is food borne not necessarily water borne—and another lot of cases at a school camp and so on. 
When we look through those cases we see quite clearly that we are not dealing with large urban areas with large populations. These are possibly rural communities and certainly school camps which are not generally located in large cities with large populations. A person hearing that list of examples of outbreaks in New Zealand would make the assessment when adding up the number of people who had been affected that maybe 500 or fewer over the last 10 years—0.01 percent of the population—had somehow been affected by these outbreaks. And these are mainly in small towns and non-urban areas. A person listening to those figures would probably quite rightly infer that the larger the water supplier—and that is usually in urban situations—the better the management and monitoring systems in place. 
Therefore the situations that seem more risky are the smaller populations and the rural areas. We have to ask what this bill does about these areas that are at greater risk of possible water-borne disease—the small towns and rural areas. I looked at the bill to see what it does for these small population areas and it seemed very contradictory and quite confusing. The bill will ensure “that all drinking-water suppliers (other than small and very small drinking-water suppliers and water carriers) introduce and implement public health risk management plans:” I will say it another way. That means that small and very small drinking water suppliers do not have to introduce and implement public health risk management plans. That seems quite bizarre when we have evidence to the contrary. It is the small towns that are at risk but they do not have to implement a public health risk management plan. That is totally bizarre. 
The other thing in the bill that seems quite confusing apart from these suppliers not having to comply with public health management plans is a huge differentiation in the timetable for compliance. The explanatory note of the bill states: “The timetable for compliance with the Bill is proposed to follow a staggered process whereby … new drinking water suppliers would have to comply from the date of commencement.” That is fair enough. But for pre-existing water suppliers there is huge variation. For instance the large water suppliers that serve populations of over 10000 have to comply within a year—these are the big groups. We also know that they are associated with very little risk but they have to comply quite quickly within a year. The medium drinking-water suppliers serving between 5000 and 10000 people would have to comply within 2 years. And the minor suppliers serving between 500 and 5000 people would have 3 years to comply. But I ask my colleagues to listen to this. The small suppliers serving 100 to 500 people would have 4 years and the very small suppliers serving 25 to 100 would have 5 years to comply. So these little groups which we know are at the most risk do not have to comply with a public health management plan and have up to 5 years to comply with the bill. It makes no sense. These are the groups that are at risk. 
It is very confusing. If there is a real concern about the safety of New Zealanders’ health from water-borne disease then rather than use a sledgehammer approach and legislate one-size-fits-all policy it would be much better to take a targeted approach. One would think from this bill that New Zealand’s water standards were in a dreadful state and that is absolutely incorrect. New Zealand has excellent standards for drinking water. New Zealand has been an active participant at the World Health Organization in developing strategies to deal with the issue of water standards and safety. Indeed the World Health Organization standards are reflected in New Zealand’s excellent technical drinking-water safety standards. I went to the Ministry of Health website and read a bit of a preamble to I think 180 pages on New Zealand’s drinking water safety standards. In that preamble a Dr Michael Taylor who is a public health senior adviser is quoted: “Most New Zealanders now have access to safe drinking-water because the larger suppliers are almost all entirely satisfactory …”. Even he agrees that the majority are entirely satisfactory. He goes on: “However some communities particularly small rural ones do not have access to drinking water of sufficient quality while others receive drinking water that is either inadequately monitored or not monitored at all.” So here we have an expert stating the obvious: the large suppliers are fine; it is the smaller ones that need to be watched. 
That is exactly my point. Surely a more targeted approach would be much better than this all-encompassing one. And why do we need a legislative answer when targeted education of those suppliers and communities would be far more likely to get the same result but without the compliance costs and the over-regulation that this bill would bring—not to mention the cost to the taxpayer through local government costs going up? 
This bill concerns me because it will create an industry and more compliance costs through that. It requires “drinking-water assessors appointed by the Director-General of Health to engage in compliance verification of drinking-water suppliers and their supplies”—what a mouthful! Also: “(in terms of the Act drinking-water assessors will be accredited to internationally accepted standards for inspection bodies to perform their functions):”. An industry is being created. We will have drinking water assessors all accredited running all over New Zealand ensuring that the 2222 registered drinking water distribution zones are complying. But there is more. Suppliers must take “all practical steps” to comply with the standards. The drinking water assessor will be the final arbiter as to whether all practical steps have been taken will have no accountability to the community for costs or consequences and will make judgments on trade-offs between risks consequences and costs. So we can see the picture. We will have some bossy power-hungry accredited water assessors running all over New Zealand checking out the 2000 water suppliers and making subjective decisions on whether a supplier has taken all the steps possible and the assessor’s decision will be final. 
Many small water suppliers provide almost a community service to local communities. One would not blame them if they pulled out and said that it was not worth it. And what would happen then? The onus would be on the local authorities with more compliance costs and more business costs and the taxpayers would suffer. Surely a targeted more educative approach would result in better responses better attitudes and better outcomes. In summary I oppose this bill for those very reasons.