Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Madam Speaker thank you. Our system of water infrastructure in New Zealand is utterly broken. Too many New Zealanders simply don't have access to clean safe drinking water and colleagues in the House have given examples of that this morning.In our biggest city the failure over multiple decades to invest in waste water and stormwater infrastructure means that our streams our creeks our bays both of Auckland's wonderful harbours are chronically polluted with the sediment and the heavy metals that run off our streets. Whenever it rains—whenever it rains—beaches are declared off limits. You can go to the council website and see it. The red flags go up. It's not safe to swim in the harbours around which our biggest city is built. There's something really shocking about that.The other big problem that we inflict on ourselves as a country because we don't invest in adequate water infrastructure is that the lack of pipes for drinking water for waste water for stormwater is a handbrake on the building of new homes. It's one of the main reasons that our towns and cities do not grow in response to demand. Houses don't get built and every time that happens the price of housing goes up and our families get poorer and homeownership rates go down and more people are homeless. There's a direct connection between these things.Labour's affordable water reforms offered a solution to these: publicly owned organisations with the scale to be able to make the investments and run systems and network infrastructure to deliver water; balance sheet separation that would have increased by a factor of two or three the amount of money the water entities could borrow to make the $185 billion investment and spread that cost over generations; a legal framework that for the first time ever would have provided accountability and a mandate to water entities to do the job that so many councils simply haven't been doing because they've been unwilling to invest; and two regulators: a regulator to set standards—environmental standards and standards to keep the water safe and clean—and an economic regulator to make sure that these entities actually behave in an efficient way handle public resources with responsibility and were responsive to the people in our communities to the consumers of the water.But this National-led coalition with ACT and New Zealand First is sweeping all that away with no credible alternative put before the people of New Zealand. It is the most cynical example of short-term petty partisan politics at the expense of what's good for our country. That side of the House should be embarrassed by that. They should be ashamed.They are keeping the regulator Taumata Arowai to set those standards but they are giving councils no tools no ability to meet those standards. So what's going to happen? There's only one thing that's going to happen—or two things perhaps. The first is that councils will be forced to put the rates up. Double-digit rates increases year after year—that is what's coming folks and in many cases we will not see the progress that is needed towards cleaning up our waterways delivering safe drinking water for our communities and futureproofing our cities against the floods that we will increasingly see as a result of climate change.This Government will simply shrug and say It's the councils' problem—nothing to do with us. Oh yeah water and rates to generate the revenue that's needed to build pipes—that's the councils' problem. Don't come to us it's not central Government's problem." That's what they'll say and the poor old ratepayer and the communities all over this country who don't have access to safe drinking water and live alongside polluted waterways and suffer extreme flood risk—they are the ones who will carry the can. It's so cynical.Let's talk about balance sheet separation. It was the key to unlocking financing so that that $185 billion could be invested in bringing our water infrastructure up to scratch: separating out the water entities' balance sheets from councils so that the rating agencies would not punish them with lower debt limits and higher borrowing costs.How many times did we ask the Minister—in the committee stage last night how many times did we ask him what his advice was what his plans were about balance sheet separation? At least six or seven speakers got up and directly asked the Minister. He was evasive to say the least. He was not forthcoming with the House in spite of being asked more than half a dozen times what his advice was about balance sheet separation.We've got a number of senior National Party figures on the record saying that they would deliver balance sheet separation as part of their plan. We've got Chris Bishop the infrastructure Minister now saying that. But yesterday both the Prime Minister and the local government Minister ruled out any kind of Government guarantee for councils. That Government guarantee to say that if a council or a council water utility was in financial strife the Government would back it up and help it out—that guarantee is a prerequisite to balance sheet separation. If they're ruling it out there is no balance sheet separation but the Minister would not say that in the House last night although we gave him multiple opportunities to answer that question.The result of this bill being passed will be huge ongoing increases in the rates for the next generation or two. That is the reality: massive increases in rates. I predict that there will not be the progress that our country needs on fixing the broken infrastructure that we currently suffer from. In my community I fear we will not get the investment and the improvement in stormwater infrastructure that is needed to prevent a recurrence of what happened a year ago where a thousand people in my electorate a year ago suffered catastrophic flooding—water inside their homes—and many of them have spent the last year living in sheds and sleepouts suffering financial hardship because of that. We all know—the data is very clear—the climate is changing and that kind of occurrence is going to happen more and more.Auckland Council has not and is not making the necessary investments to futureproof our city against that kind of flooding. It is only the kind of financing and institutional framework that our Labour Government put in place last term that would allow us to meet that. The current Government is offering nothing—nothing—in the way of funding and financing that will futureproof our cities for climate change.I fear that under the repeal of this legislation and under this Government's policies we will not see the investment in waste water pipes in our biggest city to avoid what constantly happens where we see raw sewerage pumped into our streams and our creeks and our harbours. The community that I represent is sick to death of raw sewerage floating around into Wai o Pareira the waterway that runs through the middle of West Auckland. Jenny Marcroft: Why didn't you do something then?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It's an absolute shocker—and we did do something about it. We put in place the financing the funding and the institutions to fix this; that side of the House is repealing. They have no plan to replace it. It is purely an example of cynical partisan politics at the expense of this country's future."