Wade-Brown Celia; Genter Julie Anne; Brown SimeonCELIA WADE-BROWN (Green): Thank you Mr Chair and thank you Minister Brown for making sure that we can hear your answers. I've got a number of questions that I hope the Minister can clarify given that the three waters are such a critical responsibility of local government. I'd just like to refer to a very recent presentation in the Wairarapa by Professor James Renwick which unfortunately no other MP was able to attend. He was talking about the increasing climate change effects of both drought and floods. I do concur that looking further than 10 years is going to be absolutely essential given that in many parts of the country water for drinking in urban and peri-urban areas comes directly from rivers. So my first question is about the issue of the regional council. The Minister's already addressed that being an existing part of Wellington Water is why you're including the Greater Wellington Regional Council. But surely the issues of catchments of the amount of water take for water races—all of those matters are within the purview of regional councils and it would be extremely useful to have their advice and their thinking directly involved in these water services entities.For example I think South Wairarapa District Council must have one of the longest water races at 240 kilometres long: the Moroa Water Race. I'm sure my colleague at the other side of the Chamber knows it well. So the first question is: are there not some more considerations about why regional councils with their broader issues of forecasting knowing water levels in rivers and so on are not included?My second question is somewhat connected with that. Including regional councils would go some way to addressing the Hon Dr Duncan Webb's question about whether we will end up with frankly a spotty patchwork of well-resourced councils with those that—it may well not be the fault of the existing council; things may have happened whether it's earthquakes or floods that the current council has got a much more expensive row to hoe ahead.My further question there is whether it's almost a backdoor attempt to force amalgamation with councils. For example what would the Minister say to a Greytown resident who today asked me—or he made a comment that central government didn't fully understand local government. He said Wellington may be able to manage their future requirements Masterton may be able to manage their future requirements but the South Wairarapa could become bankrupt and what is the result for a council like that? So that's another reason for being concerned about orphans or if you like dry islands in the provision of water services.I'm also interested in looking at how on earth a council is expected to create a water services delivery plan when we haven't got bill three which may look at financial support and how it's achieved. Minister Brown will be well aware of how we form regional land transport plans and they are not a limitless list of projects. Whether it's a road rail—thank you for the Wairarapa train—or even walking and cycling those are worked together knowing what the financial assistance rate is for those different aspects. We know nothing about how central government will make any form of partnership. And there is—I guess I could call it a whakataukī if it wasn't English which is cut your coat according to your cloth". How can a council do that?Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Thank you very much. I just wanted to talk briefly to Subpart 1 in Part 2 and follow up really on the contribution I made earlier which was about Part 1. But still I do want to bring in the submission from the Chatham Islands Council. Many councils will be in a similar situation and some of my colleagues on this side of the House have raised this but I don't believe we've yet really had an answer from the Minister. I mean the first point was around the time frames for developing water services delivery plans. Chatham Islands Council like many other councils asked for that to be extended. If the Minister is unwilling to consider two years maybe 18 months would be a reasonable compromise. Otherwise I do believe the Minister is going to get many applications for extensions and even the process of making the application is a certain amount of time and resource that's taking away from actually getting the water service delivery plan done and the infrastructure in place.But secondly coming back to the Minister's answer to me around how the water service delivery plan would identify the financial sustainability and if we look at clause 11(1)(m) an explanation of what the territorial authority proposes to do to ensure that the delivery of water services will be financially sustainable I'm sure the Chatham Islands Council isn't the only one that is like actually reliant on central government to know what they're able to do so this legislation is only asking for the council to do it. In this case what the Government is effectively doing in their bottom-up approach is putting a whole lot of legal responsibilities on councils responsibilities to develop water services plans to go out and find partners to make arrangements with to do all of this work and they have very limited funding sources and councils like the Chatham Islands have no ability to borrow. Unless they team up with a larger water delivery organisation they will probably be unable to meet this. But how are they meant to deliver their water service delivery plan and specifically explain what they're going to do to ensure that it's financially sustainable without having the information from Government about funding that might be available to small councils like this?I mean ultimately the crisis that we are facing in water infrastructure was not created in the last three or six years; it was created over several decades and there's no magic money tree. The money has to come from somewhere to pay for the infrastructure. In the case of small rural councils they simply do not have the rating space to pay for this yet we still expect and want them to have safe drinking water waste-water services that protect public health—we still expect all of that. So the question that the Minister has of course completely avoided and is unable to answer I think fundamentally is where central government's responsibility is and what their commitment is to funding this vital infrastructure or making additional revenue-raising tools available to councils. I think that would help councils maybe like Auckland or Wellington or Christchurch but it's unlikely to help a council like the Chatham Islands. Who are they going to raise this revenue from? It's a population of 700 people extremely remote to the rest of New Zealand with a population that is facing higher costs for everything they do every single thing that the Government puts on them to do like even a water service delivery plan or investing in infrastructure—all of that costs more in the Chatham Islands and yet they have fewer people to pay for it.So ultimately the heart of this is like here we have the legal responsibilities and requirements that central government is putting on local government. Where is the partnership? Where is the commitment to funding? Because central government raises far more revenue across New Zealand than local government does through their revenue-raising tools and really it should be central government's responsibility to fund this public good infrastructure to a certain extent. I would love to hear the Minister respond to that.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Thank you Mr Chair and I'm just testing this new microphone angle. I'm not sure if that's any better and I just want to get some feedback. CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Is it better? Hon Members: It is better. Hon SIMEON BROWN: Is that great? CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): That's better. Hon SIMEON BROWN: Oh that's good—I don't have to use my question time voice.Hon Rachel Brooking: Not quite. Hon SIMEON BROWN: Not quite. That's good—that's good. Well I'll just respond to a couple of those questions. The first one from Her Worship Celia Wade-Brown was in relation to small councils and amalgamations. The issue here is around shared services so it's not around amalgamations and I think this legislation does put in place a framework which will enable far greater shared services between councils which will achieve a greater level of economies of scale but it doesn't anticipate or require amalgamations. I think that shared services is a way in which councils can achieve those cost-effective efficiencies for consumers and this is certainly one of the areas we expect councils to be working together very closely on. In terms of the Hon Julie Anne Genter's questions around the time frame I've already addressed this question. There is an ability for councils to apply for an extension. Our expectation is that councils will comply with it. As I've already outlined the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) is going to provide templates—Excel spreadsheets which will be populated with the data. There's going to be an ability for advice from them as well. A lot of that information is already available or has to be prepared by councils and so it's putting that together as part of this plan. In terms of the question around funding—and I've addressed this question already as well—the last Government put half a billion dollars into the so-called Better Off Fund or whatever they called it and very very little of it went to water infrastructure. A very small percentage went to water infrastructure. It went to all sorts of other manners of projects and cycleways and footpaths and other random things and actually what we've asked the DIA to do is to work with councils who haven't yet spent their Better Off funding to actually look at how it can be reallocated and utilised towards supporting them with these water service delivery plans the advice they may need and also then actual infrastructure because ultimately that is what that fund should have been used for."