SpeechHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well well well we now know the parties of the left have abandoned the ship of State and at the 11th hour on the Water Services Entities Bill not a single party other than Labour is going to be supporting this: not National; not ACT—we knew that; not the Māori Party after the second reading; and now not the Greens. The only party that thinks this is a good idea in this House is Labour. But don't they look glum about it? I know those backbenchers don't think this is a good idea because they're having a look at the polls and thinking This is going to be curtains for me."Let's talk about one of them for whom it may be curtains. Anna Lorck said in her contribution that Havelock North is the reason for this bill. Well I don't agree. Let me tell you what the reason for this bill is: blind political ideology—no more no less. The reason for Te Mana o Te Wai was Havelock—that's true—and nobody wants to see a repeat of that but this Government has spent two years catastrophising the situation with our water demonising councils and candy-coating the benefits of the water services entities. But I said it at the start of this process and I'll continue to say it: this is nothing more than State-sponsored theft of community assets. And I found Glen Bennett's contribution quite ironic—that he was talking about theft and iwi knowing about that. Well this is the water equivalent of a really bad Treaty settlement: taking hundreds of billions of dollars of assets away from councils and throwing crumbs at them—you know a little bit of compensation here a bit of debt forgiveness there.Glen Bennett: It's still there to be used.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Sorry?Glen Bennett: It's still there and it'll still be used.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh it's still there! So was the land that was confiscated from iwi. It's a very good analogy and it's fundamentally wrong. The member knows it's wrong and he's trying to put a polish on it. Well he can't.The catastrophising of the situation has been I think underpinning every single speech from a Labour member since this started. The Minister continued it Anna Lorck continued it all members have continued it and nobody's arguing that—we need to have clean water. We need to have good foul water and stormwater management but Barbara Edmonds talking about Auckland fails to recognise that the problem is already being fixed with the central interceptor that's being run by Watercare. Anna Lorck did admit that Havelock North have just spent millions of dollars fixing their water. They didn't need the Government to come along and tell them what to do. They knew what the problem was they knew what the solution was and this is State-sponsored theft—nothing less.Now I want to go into the issue of co-governance. I think it's really important. In my city of Dunedin we will be part of Entity D. There are 1.1 million people who live in the South Island and most of them—but not all of them—are going to be in Entity D. If they came along and said "Well OK we're going to have this board of representatives for the territorial authorities" Invercargill is going to have six members on that board and the rest of the South Island is going to have six. Those other 23 territorial authorities would be up in arms. Now one thing that Entity D does have is one really good iwi not several iwi. Ngāi Tahu with the same population as Invercargill is going to have six members on the board and the rest of the 24 territorial authorities are going to have another six. How is that representation for the 1.1 million people nearly that will be part of Entity D?Stuart Smith: It's not.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It isn't—that's right Mr Smith. And not only that but those representatives—it would be great if they had consensus—need a 75 percent majority in order to get anything done. Where have we heard about 75 percent? Sounds a lot like entrenchment doesn't it? Well it's going to be there in another way and so we haven't heard the last of questions about entrenchment.Now I want to go to the financial case for change. Simon Watts is a very good chartered accountant as is my humble self. What we know is that when financial forecasts are done 30 years out they're not worth the paper they're written on. The benefits-realisation estimates that actually came out of Scotland—a flawed methodology in my view because while Scotland has 5 million people half of them live along the Forth and Clyde rivers in a very concentrated situation. They are not distributed across—and Scotland itself is no bigger than Otago and Southland. We have five million people distributed right across the length and breadth of a long skinny country and the synergies that Scotland was able to achieve simply can't be done here. Pipes are pipes. A pipe in Westport is going to be needed just as much as a pipe in Balclutha and the idea that according to the modelling there would be capital reductions of 50 percent in cost is just pie in the sky. The operational reductions of 65 percent—Joseph Mooney: Impossible.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: You're quite right Joseph Mooney. Absolutely impossible—particularly when there is going to be no reduction in headcount apparently. And of course staffing is a very big part of managing water and certainly engineers.I think back to the Auckland super-city. Now that was my Government that did that but the benefits realisation for the taxpayer was going to be significant by merging the seven councils up there—or six councils; whatever it was. I wonder whether the Auckland ratepayer 10 years later thinks since they're listening to this debate "Thank goodness my rates are lower because of the Auckland super-city merger."—said no one ever. So I say that about this. I will be in my rocking chair—in fact I'm determined to live long enough to be there in 30 years' time and be proven right. The benefits realisation is pie in the sky and it's not going to happen.I talked about co-governance and the potential for division but that's actually not my greatest concern. My greatest concern is the division that will occur between our communities. I think about Entity D. Dunedin for the first time in about 30 years is actually growing in population and it needs the infrastructure base to support it. It has the prerogative now and the autonomy to go and rate the community and consult on its long-term plan and build the water services infrastructure it needs as they've done for the last 20 years in upgrading it and a pretty good job it's done so far. Now they're going to have to go to Christchurch or wherever the head office of Entity D is going to be and say "We need infrastructure." Christchurch could easily turn around and say "Oh I don't know about that. Selwyn is growing a bit faster than you. And Invercargill's pipes are a bit rustier than yours. So you're going to have to wait." All of that autonomy has gone. And I'm sorry six members of a representative board fighting for 24 territorial authorities is not going to give the representation and the lobbying that cities like Dunedin and towns like Balclutha will need in order to get what they have done. So it's going to pit communities against each other. I absolutely believe that. That is wrong.Of course we've already talked about the taxation without representation. There is more legislation to come to work out how on earth the revenue is going to be collected from the water services users. So that will be the first litmus test. I go back to the question of the financial modelling. I think it's ironic that Grant Robertson can't even stick to a Budget Policy Statement four months before he issues the Budget. How on earth are we going to have confidence in financial modelling that goes out 30 years? I think it's going to be completely completely undermined.I want to finish with the biggest false flag of this week: that is the question of privatisation. It's a false flag because it's been raised as a risk that National would privatise and there were attempts—Rachel Brooking: Did you listen to ACT's speech?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Listen up. It's a false flag because National wouldn't have stolen the assets in the first place. The biggest thing that the ratepayer and the taxpayer have to fear is this Government's theft of these assets. There will never be the privatisation by a central government under a National-led Government because the assets wouldn't be in central government control. They are going back to the local authorities from whence they were stolen so that there is taxation and representation aligned and they can manage their own needs the way they have for 150 years. One thing a National Government will not do is catastrophise the situation the way those ads and every single speech from Labour Party members have done. I did refer to taxation without representation—that is if they don't like the quality of their local assets they can vote out the council. Well they won't be able to do that when this bill is passed but they do have another vote. They can vote against the people who stole these assets and centralised in a Wellington-knows-best way and I think that vote is less than a year away. No wonder Labour are worried."