SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Thank you Mr Speaker. When we come into this Chamber and when we pick up glasses like this we take it for granted that the water in it is pure it is healthy and it doesn't make us sick and I thank the previous speaker Anna Lorck for outlining in Havelock North where the Water Services Entities Bill all started with that inquiry into the contamination and with the fact that 5000 people got sick. That inquiry happened under the National Government. The Green Party did a submission. We had an expert give evidence in submission that people got sick party because of the land use around that bore and the failure to cap the bore properly so that you got animal effluent getting into it. People take it for granted that human waste is flushed away to this magic place called away when they go to the toilet. People take it for granted and yet if you've been through the Canterbury earthquake series where people had long drops in their gardens or if you've been on a marae that councils have neglected for too long you don't take clean drinking water for granted nor do you take it for granted in Canterbury where we've had huge agricultural intensification and contamination of drinking-water sources in areas like South Canterbury. We all need to care more for our water because it is essential for life and we need to look after it when it is delivered to us. People who use wet wipes should put them in the bin and not flush them down the toilet. They can save their community and they can save councils thousands of dollars each year by doing the right thing. This bill is all about improving three-waters infrastructure: stormwater waste water and drinking water. But there seems to be a view that if you separate out balance sheets and that if you establish the entities rates won't rise and there'll be an ability for the entities to borrow more and meet that huge infrastructure deficit of over $100 million. But I think care is needed here. We have seen small councils refuse to invest. We've seen a lot of deferred investment. We've seen rates money going into civic buildings instead of into pipes under the ground. We've seen councils like Kaipara get itself into financial strife because it has relied on expert consultants and they haven't provided affordable solutions. These bigger entities will certainly have the technical capacity to manage water services but there's no magic money tree to provide for that infrastructure deficit. The credit rating agencies will be looking very carefully at how much the Government will impliedly support the entities when they go out to borrow and we've seen overseas big private equity firms investing in companies in the UK which have been privatised creating debt mountains because of the large degree of profit that goes back to their shareholders. There are protections in the bill against the entities privatising themselves—and I'll come to that later—but the Green Party won't be voting for this bill because it doesn't contain the protections for ongoing public ownership and operation of the water services entities. It doesn't contain those protections because the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 285 that we put forward was removed from the bill. Because we know that the current Government is committed to public ownership of three-waters entities there are protections in the bill to prevent the water entities themselves divesting infrastructure assets without a very robust process and the support of territorial authorities—75 percent support on the regional representative group—but we don't trust further Governments. We think there can quite easily be a law change because National is saying that it will repeal this bill. We think it would be quite easy for a future National-ACT Government not to repeal the bill but to simply change the law potentially to get rid of regional representative groups or to get rid of the protections in Schedule 4 which require that poll of electors and which require the 75 percent support on the regional representative group. We know that National wants long-term contracts. We know that members of the National Party like the Papakura situation where Veolia has got a long-term contract to provide water services in Papakura. So it would be quite easy for a future National-ACT Government because they've made absolutely no commitment to retain water services entities in public ownership to simply tweak this bill to keep with the corporate water services entities model and remove any of those protections that the water services entities currently have. So that is the major difference between the Green Party and the other parties in this House. We strongly believe in public ownership and operation of three waters assets because they are critical to the health of our communities they're critical to human wellbeing and they're critical to environmental outcomes. What National has done has spread misinformation about co-governance misinformation about—SPEAKER: Order! Order! You can't accuse another party of that. You need to withdraw and apologise. Hon EUGENIE SAGE: I withdraw Mr Speaker—SPEAKER: And apologise. Hon EUGENIE SAGE: —and apologise. What National has done has highlighted that co-governance and has not properly characterised that. What co-governance will do is it will ensure that iwi and hapū have a seat at the table and are contributing to decisions. What Te Mana o te Wai means is much more integrated water management. Those are aspects of the bill that we support but it is our fear that a future Government having had the entities established and with them having no protection in the legislation for ongoing public ownership and operation of these assets against a future Government changing the law—that is the reason that the Green Party will be voting against the bill. But there are many elements where we recognise the major work that Minister Mahuta has done such as her courage in tackling this issue and not just having an inquiry at Havelock North but actually seeking a solution. We don't see anything that the National Party has proposed as being part of the answer. It has been critique critique critique criticise criticise criticise attack attack attack but there is no real plan. Instead they have wound up concern around the country and that is where we think that the Department of Internal Affairs has got quite a lot of work to do in developing much more participatory arrangements around how people can get involved in water services. We've had the author John Alexander suggesting that we have got quite significant polarisation on water issues with that being a symptom of a deeper democracy and legitimacy problem and suggesting much greater use of systems like Watercare is using in Auckland where you pick people at random in a type of citizens' assembly and have them debate these challenges because this infrastructure deficit isn't going to be met from a magical money tree. It needs communities to engage in how we ensure that everyone has clean drinking water and how we ensure that we're not discharging sewage of a poor standard into our rivers estuaries and oceans. People all need to participate in finding the solution to this. Simply attacking the current entity issue is not the answer. We've all got a responsibility because we all drink water and we all produce waste. It's the entities themselves that need to invest and communities need to be engaged in determining how the funding will be spread over generations without burdening the entities with unbearable debt. We want good services. The Green Party believes that public ownership and operation of three waters is absolutely critical and that is why without the protection that our SOP would have provided we cannot support the bill.