Robertson Grant: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1187. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 It is reassuring to hear that from Chris Auchinvole the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Previous chair. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: The previous chair sorry. As the Hon Annette King suggested although Labour is supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee we do have a number of concerns that we think the committee needs to work its way through. I can see Mr Ardern nodding there. 
It has not been an easy process reaching this point. I think that makes it all the more important that the select committee deal with this thoroughly. It is a convention in this House that local bills will be referred to a select committee. The member who brings the bill here is bringing it on behalf of the local community. As previous speakers have said a member in charge of a local bill does not necessarily agree with every element of the bill. His or her job is to bring that bill here; I believe our job in Parliament is to take that bill to a select committee. But in doing so we have to recognise that sometimes local authorities do not always agree unanimously on things. 
I know that on one of the four occasions on which this matter was before the South Taranaki District Council in 2010 the vote was 6 to 4 for the bill to be a local bill. But it also recognises a division within the council. It recognises that there were concerns in the local community about these matters. Therefore we do need to concentrate very very closely on what those concerns were. This is not an open-and-shut case of something that everybody in the community wants to have happen and wants to have happen right away so we should just put it through. This is actually a matter of some considerable debate within the community and it does need to have significant scrutiny. 
It has been mentioned by Chester Borrows at the start that the Inland Revenue Department and the Ministry of Health have issues. The issues around the Opunake water supply are very important both as a question of public health and as a question around the ownership of these assets. This does look a little bit like an asset sale bill in some ways and that raises great big red flags on this side of the House. If there are going to be— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Red flag! Red flag! 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: We could have a blue flag if you want Mr Henare. Whatever flag you have it will be raised in response to what looks like the divestment of an asset—that is a fancy word for the sale of an asset—or getting rid of— 
Shane Ardern 
: There is no sale. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: There is no sale; that is true. It relates to getting rid of the asset from the council to a private company that was set up to do only this to actually take control of this particular asset. So we do have concerns about that. 
The Hon Annette King has outlined in some detail the importance of looking closely at the overriding of the Local Government Act 2002. We think that is a serious issue. Public ownership of water is vital. Water is a commodity that everybody needs in our communities and any sense of it moving into private hands is something we regard as needing to be looked at very very closely and in fact goes against the principles that we have. 
But I do want to raise some questions about just exactly how the last decision of the South Taranaki District Council was made to take this matter to be a local bill. It came about at a meeting of the South Taranaki District Council on 15 August 2011. At that meeting in the open forum section Mr Borrows and Shane Ardern attended that meeting and spoke strongly in support of this process. I am somewhat alarmed—and I have great respect for Mr Ardern—by the minutes of that meeting which say under a comment that Mr Shane Ardern made that: “If Cold Creek community failed in their divestment request then there would be some legislative programme through Parliament that would bring about the kind of ownership it desired.” 
That is not the kind of statement I think we would like to see in this situation. Mr Ardern has not taken a call and I suspect he possibly will not because of the relationship he has with his brother. But I think that that kind of statement could be interpreted by people who have an interest in this as saying: “Well we’re just going to do this. It’s just going to happen so you better agree to a local bill.” 
That is the reason why we think this bill needs thorough scrutiny by the select committee—to be absolutely sure that this is something that is in the best interest of the local community and that it has not just come here because of pressure being applied by people in this process. We want a thorough examination of this bill. We have significant concerns about it around health issues around the ownership of water and around the decision as to how this bill came to be here. Our continued support for the bill is not guaranteed beyond the select committee until we go through that process.