Grigg NicolaNICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Speaker. I've just got this dreadful feeling of foreboding. This is Groundhog Day and it's just continual repetitive rhetoric from this Government because here we are for the fourth time using the time of Parliament for this Government to rush through a bill that nobody in New Zealand wants.Yes we're here to discuss the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill and embarrassingly for the Government this is amending a bill that was passed just six months ago. But there was such blow-back from the public and these guys saw what their polls were doing as a reflection of that and Minister McAnulty was assigned the unenviable task of travelling around the country trying to drum up some support. He took on some bit of feedback. He's made a couple of tweaks around the edges which is what we have in this bill here in front of us today but actually it is still a dog. As the saying goes: you can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig.I submit to the House that the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill is a pig. If enacted this will become the final piece of legislation aimed at the so-called reforming of the delivery of water services in New Zealand. But it is the death knell for democracy in New Zealand.When we go to the polls in October New Zealanders are going to remember that every single piece of reform in this four-part piece of water reform has been passed under urgency or via a truncated select committee process. New Zealanders are going to remember that. So here we have in front of us a bill that's been through a select committee but as Simon Watts—who's leading the charge from our side of the House—said the committee was given just 34 days to consider it. Ordinarily the committee would get six months. They got over 1900 submissions; they heard just 1.4 percent of those submissions. That is in no way shape or form a democratic way to pass law in this country.No matter what Labour calls it—three waters 10 waters affordable water reform—this is still the outright theft of ratepayer-owned water services and water services infrastructure. This is just another example of a command control and centralise operation that this Government likes to enforce and foist upon New Zealanders. We've got a number of issues remaining with this bill. That is why we continue to oppose it but primarily it's the functional system. We do not believe in merging locally owned water assets into these mega-entities and I take for example what was once called Entity D now Entity I the South Island. I want to talk about my home patch in Selwyn. Under the Canterbury - West Coast merger that includes—according to this map I'm holding which has come via the select committee—14 different councils. Now if you calculate out roughly on average about 12 elected members per council we're looking at about 176 elected members that we the ratepayers of Canterbury have elected to represent us to manage our locally owned ratepayer assets yet those reps are going to get boiled down to about 14. As Eugene Sage pointed out this does not account for weighting either and that is fundamentally unfair. Christchurch City Council has a ratepayer base of close to 600000 residents. Selwyn's is about 85000 residents. But nowhere on this do we get weighted representation.It also begs the question that strong stable councils like Selwyn with good strong asset bases and good strong finances are inevitably going to end up cross-subsidising councils with lesser ratepayer bases and older infrastructure. Selwyn's infrastructure is at a maximum 20 years old. It's brand new. We the ratepayers have spent $600 million over the last 20 years in building those assets. We the ratepayers own those assets. Wellington the Labour Government does not own those assets. It has no right to take these assets. The people of Selwyn are furious about this. As my colleague Scott Simpson has eloquently stated it is State-sanctioned theft. We also have an issue with the weighting of the elected representatives on these regional representative bodies with mana whenua. Now we have always been very clear—we absolutely acknowledge and appreciate mana whenua has a very important role to play in the management of water in New Zealand. But again you have to ask yourself—looking to this example in CanterburyWestland where we have about 14 elected members we're also going to have about 14 representatives from mana whenua. They have not been elected to this body. The ratepayers across Canterbury and Westland are not going to be electing these people to manage their assets.The major issue we have speaking of fundamentally unfair aspects of this bill is also the weighting between the community priority statement and the Te Mana o Te Wai statement. Again within this bill the legislation will actually say that the regional representative body must take into account Te Mana o Te Wai statement yet it may consider community statements. Now how is that possibly fair? No right-minded New Zealander will accept this. You have to look at the discrepancies in every single aspect of this bill. There are inequities all through it. Co-governance is baked into it. New Zealanders have not been consulted on it. The Labour Government has not in any way put up any defence or at least any description of what co-governance should and will look like. It has just baked it into the legislation.On this side of the House we do understand that in parts of New Zealand there is a fundamental need to fix our infrastructure problems. We all saw the Havelock North disaster. National was in Government; National brought in the royal commission of inquiry; National started to implement the findings of that commission of inquiry. But this bill goes too far. Yes there are councils around the country that need support in rebuilding their infrastructure. We do support the likes of the water regulator and we also want to impose an infrastructure regulator. We want councils to bring their proposal to us to our Minister who will be able to sign off as to the financial sustainability of what that council's asset plan looks like.But returning very briefly to the bill in the last moments I have left when Kiwis go to the polls in October as I've outlined they're going to look at bills like this. They're going to take into account the first part of this bill that attracted 86000 submissions that were roundly ignored and another 1900 submissions that were roundly ignored. They're not going to forget that. They know when they go to the polls that this piece of legislation does nothing to provide safe quality water to their homes and to their families. We continue to oppose this bill and we will repeal and replace it if we form a Government in October.