Sage Eugenie: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8502. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 I will take a short call on the South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill because the reasons for the Green Party’s opposition we have talked about more extensively in both the second reading and the Committee stage. We will continue to oppose the bill and the process that it establishes by which the South Taranaki District Council can privatise a community water supply scheme that draws water from a stream running off Mount Taranaki. 
We voted against this bill and will continue to oppose it because the scheme was built with a significant Crown grant of $1.28 million so it is a significant community asset that should stay in public ownership and continue to deliver benefits to the wider community. It has never been clear as to what the benefits would be of privatisation—just why it is needed now. It seems to have come from a discussion about a decade ago and an agreement made then. But ratepayers as other members have noted have contributed to its operating cost and it was created and built with public money. 
One of the other reasons for opposing it was the significant concerns that iwi have raised about the lack of consultation and the implications to incorporations like the Parininihi ki Waitotara Incorporation and the limitations potentially on their ability to access water within the scheme area. Taranaki iwi have suffered some of the most serious breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi at the hands of the Crown. The very poor consultation that the district council did in relation to this bill and the potential effects on Maori reserve lands that are held and administered by the Parininihi ki Waitotara Incorporation are a major reason why we are opposing the bill. That is because the privatisation would affect the value of the incorporation’s rental return from leases in perpetuity over Maori reserve land in the scheme area. That is because the scheme is currently part of the unimproved value of the land but with privatisation the value of the scheme potentially passes to leaseholders which will mean that the incorporation will not be able to increase the rents as they may well have done without privatisation. 
The incorporation is also concerned that there is a very real risk that their landholdings within the scheme area may be denied access to water in future because the streams are already at their allocation limit particularly in droughts like we are having at the moment and there is not the capacity to take more water from them. So if you have a private company controlling access to water it is able to shut people out. Certainly there may be only 360 users of the scheme at the present time but in 50 years with changes in land use changes in subdivision there may well be more people wanting access to water in the scheme. Where you do not have it controlled by a local authority where councillors are accountable to the community through the elections every 3 years you will not have the ability to influence the way in which water is managed by the company that you would have if it was managed by the council. 
The other major concern we have is the fact that the referendum applies only in the scheme area. As submitters pointed out it is effectively allowing those who benefit from the privatisation to have the vote. I am very disappointed that Government members and the bill’s sponsor did not support the Supplementary Order Paper in Andrew Williams’ name which said that the referendum should be carried out over the whole of the South Taranaki District Council area. What is the problem that this Government has with democracy that it has denied democracy in Canterbury and here it is denying democracy again by having the referendum limited to a very narrow area? Those are three of the reasons why we will continue to oppose the bill.