King Annette: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7173. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 Labour will support this bill the South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill right through to its final reading. When it was introduced into this House at that time we said we would support it going to the Local Government and Environment Committee but we wanted to hear the evidence and we wanted to hear what the community had to say what the local authority had to say and what iwi had to say on this bill. That is because there were some concerns. There were concerns particularly around overriding the Local Government Act. There were concerns around the way that the whole thing had been managed and fears that a lot of these decisions had been made behind closed doors. I know that my colleague Andrew Little will go into this a little more and will raise some of those concerns that he has heard up there in the Taranaki area. But at the end of the day when we looked at the bill in its entirety how it emerged what it is to do and the safeguards that have been put in it then we believed that we ought to support it. 
There were lots of concerns however over iwi consultation. I think that this was not handled very well at all. I think that we need to say to both those who will own this scheme and the council itself that they need to improve their consultation. They need to start earlier. They need to be talking to and involving people in the area. Perhaps through lack of practice they did not achieve a good level of consultation. 
The other concern was whether this was privatisation of an asset an asset that had been built up with a dollar-for-dollar subsidy from the Government—not from ratepayers but from the Government. You could argue that this is a type of privatisation because it goes into the hands of those who manage it and use this scheme but you could also apply that argument to those who are given a subsidy to build community houses but still provide that service. You would not say that we had privatised their housing. In terms of this particular scheme they have put up money they have managed it they have been the ones who have used it and they are the ones who occupy the land on which the water is used. So we believe that we ought to support this bill at this stage. 
It has had a long history this particular scheme going back over a decade. The South Taranaki District Council has been wanting to divest the scheme to the users as far back as the late 1990s. In fact it did a lot of work when we were in Government towards the divestment of this scheme. Unfortunately it stalled in about 2006 but the company that has got it now has been managing the scheme since 2001. 
One of the issues that we raised was around the use of the water out of the scheme for the people of Ohakune because there are particular times of the year when the people— 
Andrew Little 
: Opunake. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Opunake sorry. There are times of the year when the people of Opunake actually need access to this water scheme. One of the things that we were assured by the council and by the company was that they have agreed to continue the current arrangement for this scheme to supplement the Opunake water supply in an emergency. That was when it was used. So that was something that we were very clear that we needed to have tied down: that the people there would have access to the water. 
As I said we will support it. It has been a long time in the making. It has not been a particularly good process but I do commend Chester Borrows for bringing it to the House as a good local member would.