Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. Oh this has been a disastrous process. We've had the two water services bills and now we're into this one the third one—the treble. I think there's been a lot talked about the water services bill today. If people are beaming into this wonderful debate this afternoon we've been debating under urgency because the Government's got its timing all wrong and it's shoving through all this legislation. We've been doing it this morning on the water services bill for oh probably at least four hours I think—I'm just looking at my colleagues here.So this is the last bill in the triumvirate of water services rationalisation proposed by the Government and you know it's incredibly contentious. The Minister talked about savings of $120 to $180 billion dreamt up by someone in Scotland. There's a lot of dispute a lot of economic dissension on those estimates. We asked other people to be involved in it. I know there are other economic agencies who have looked at it on behalf of councils. They considerably dispute those figures put forward by the Scottish regulator.This wonderful thought that you can go ahead and spend millions on creating new offices in Auckland which one of the entities already has—committed significant amounts of money setting up a new office even though Watercare is just parked up in Newmarket in big new offices. No that's not good enough for one of these ones—they're going to have new ones brand flash new CEOs and because they'll have more employees and all that sort of stuff they're going to be paid more; you can guarantee it if this ever came to light. All this cost this wonderful cost and you know there's multimillions of costs being incurred in setting this up let alone just the regulatory process—multimillions if not tens of millions that have been involved in this—and somehow miraculously the Minister's trying to claim in his speech that you know what everyone's going to be better off. Well we don't agree with that.Some of the submitters were very thoughtful very professional and actually very experienced in these matters. I think the first issue with the water changes is the impact on councils. Not only is there the transfer of ownership of those water assets out of councils back into a new entity with all this diffused ownership structure—regional committees and all that sort of stuff—it does give rise to who owns these assets. No one through all this process—and I've been involved in it right from the start—not one official not one Government Minister has ever been able to explain to me who will own these assets. If you look at the definition of ownership in a share—the legislation talks about a share—you must be able to exert some control over that share. That may be through governance through management or by financial support—all that sort of stuff.Of course the structure—that diffused and confused structure—that the Government has come up with someone has dreamt it up on some whiteboard in the bowels of somewhere is so convoluted that no one can point to me and say who will own those shares. If you cannot exert control or some form of influence if you can't do all of those three things if you look at the definition of a shareholding—that means that you do not have control. Where these assets will park up on someone's balance sheet I am totally unclear on even today even though I come from the financial services sector and know a little bit about these things. That's the first thing.Standard & Poor's—we started to push back on some of this stuff. Standard & Poor's directors (S&P)—after we got through a whole lot of mired conversations that we didn't have any clarity on suddenly the S&P directors came out and said this will have an impact on the credit ratings of some of our councils. Again this is a significant thing for New Zealanders and significant for residents within those boundary areas because their council's going to be paying more for debt and it's going to be more cost and of course we're going to see the assets transferred off their balance sheet. It is a significant asset transfer from one entity into some other entity with this relationship that's really bad.The other thing we've heard about was the entrenchment provisions where the Government tried to very sneakily make sure that these things could never be privatised. Even though we as a party National said we weren't going to privatise it the Government tried to sneak through a provision around entrenchment around stopping privatisation that wasn't needed. It was totally uncalled for and actually it was against the parliamentary rules where you need to have a supermajority to make those sort of long lasting changes an intention of the House.But this bill itself is all about economic regulation. Of course this is one where—guess what!—the Labour Government have gone overboard yet again. This is one heck of a piece of legislation. Normally when you set up regulatory authorities to look after the water industry the starting proposition is that you have a whole lot of commercial operators. I know those people over there—I'm looking at the Labour Party members—all hate the commercial sector. But normally you'd have a whole lot of private sector organisations out there competing and trying to rip people off—well that's what their view is. That's when you put in place very strong economic regulation.Hey—guess what!—if we listen to the Labour members hey these things are going to be wonderful; they're going to have all this influence on Aboriginal groups we're going to have everyone having a go at it and telling them what they should be doing.Simon Court: Kumbaya.ANDREW BAYLY: Kumbaya"—that's the right word. And of course if that proposition is to be accepted why do you need such heavy-hitting economic regulation? Because these guys never know when to say "No". It is not appropriate Mr Bennett because no one across the other side sits back and goes "Do we actually need this? Is there another way of doing economic regulation? Is there a way—do we actually think about the intent of these organisations? Are they being set up to rip people off?" Well if you take the Labour view and the Minister's view just before—no they're not. They're wonderful. They're going to solve all our issues. But we've ended up with regulations that no doubt we're going to get into. [Holds up bill] That's the book—that's the book. And there's regulations up the wazoo. What we shouldn't be doing is—actually all entities need to be regulated to some extent but the extent of regulations in here is an absolute overkill.Then—just realising that time is ticking on—I think the other thing is the need to determine who the regulator is. The regulator is someone who is going to be set up under the Commerce Commission—they're going to be an appointment of the commissioner. The thing I find interesting is the requirements of the commissioner and I'm just going from memory here. First of all they must have expertise in the water services industry. Well I think if you're going to be a commissioner that would be a pretty good start point. In the next point it then goes on to say well you could also be someone with experience in any other industry—not just one but any other industry. Not just the water industry but any other industry. That means you can be a politician like Mr Nash who's just joined us. When he leaves here he can be a commissioner because he's got experience in other stuff. You'd be a great water commissioner because at the moment you'd meet the requirements Mr Nash. Or you could have experience in commerce—you've got that too.DEPUTY SPEAKER: No no no no Mr Bayly. I hate to interrupt your flow—"you" is me.ANDREW BAYLY: Oh yeah sorry. But Mr Nash we were talking about here. Mr Nash—he's got experience in commerce he's got experience in economics. Have you got experience in law? Hon Stuart Nash: I have!ANDREW BAYLY: Mr Nash—and accountancy. Mr Nash. I reckon Mr Nash should be the next water commissioner because he doesn't have to have experience in the water services industry. Mr Nash has come out of the forestry industry but that does not matter because you can have experience in any other industry. That's how ridiculous this is. This is ridiculous. Put a common-sense lens over this. This is why the Labour Government has got into such problems because these people don't sit down and apply a bit of common sense. Anyway I'm looking forward to the committee of the whole House."