McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to support the Gore District Council (Otama Rural Water Supply) Bill. I'm a bit intrigued by this because these water supplies have quite a history in rural New Zealand and quite a contentious history in many parts of rural New Zealand as well.I thought it was just worth going back in history a little bit because many of them came into being in the 1960s 1970s and early 1980s—well basically by the 1980s they were all done. They were brought into being by a Government subsidy interestingly in a lot of cases or a Government contribution basically to rural water schemes which were then sponsored by the council because the council was the community-based body that was most appropriate to do it. In those days most of them were county councils and most of them were pretty small actually. So they were sponsored by them but they then put together local community committees which ran them. So they weren't effectively council-owned entities or council-sponsored entities and they were put together and they ran pretty well. Often dare I say it private entities like these little community committees are much better at maintaining assets then councils ever will be and that's what caused a lot of contention with them.Along came the 1989 local government reforms and council CEOs with their newfound power decided that these were community assets and they took them all over like they took over thousands of recreational areas parks reserves and things that little communities felt belonged to them. These water supplies were among those and in the Rangitīkei there are a large number of these water supplies very similar to this one with I guess somewhere between 50 and 300 or 400 connections—in fact the biggest one I think in the Manawatū may have upwards of 1000 connections now. Along came the local government reforms and they effectively took them off the communities and they were run as council entities with some input from the users. That of course created quite a deal of controversy because farmers and rural people have a way of thinking that they're much better at doing things then councils are—they still think that—and so there was a lot of contention around the maintenance of them the cost of maintenance of them and the way they were run. So that's how we got to where we've got to now. As well as a ratepayer subsidy or a council loan there was also quite a significant capital contribution by the people who connected up to it. Those who didn't connect up to it interestingly were left out and so you'll see in some rural communities there are people who never hooked up; they wish they had now of course. And that's a critical factor too. So that's a bit of a history of these schemes.I think it's absolutely appropriate that this scheme—and many others would like to do the same thing I'm sure in the form of a local bill—comes back through Parliament and gets to maintain itself and I don't think that's necessarily any criticism of councils or a criticism of the way they're run. But in fact the only beneficiaries of these schemes are the people who extract the water from them. So it's pretty good I think that they get to be run maintained and paid for by those people who benefit from them. They were of course started off basically as stock water schemes and in those days stock water and drinking water were much the same. There will be many of us all—well there might not be many of us in this House who've drunk out of a water trough but I certainly have. There were other things kept in water troughs too. So we don't find anything wrong with drinking out of the water trough and sharing with the sheep but nowadays things are a little different.Of course the other thing that's changed the way our water supplies are is the fact that we have so many tourists in New Zealand and so many people move through our rural communities and are not used to the same things that we were used to as young people and whatever and so it's much more important that we have security of water supply so that these schemes are going to have to pay a lot more attention to this type of thing and the renewal and maintenance of them and to ensure that they're safe.I think one or two other interesting things—and I noticed that Mark Patterson mentioned an old bloke called Hughie Chadwick. Whilst I can't claim to be in the same age group as him because I did meet his older brother interestingly in Gore the other day and he was quite significantly a bit older than me—like another generation removed—that's the generation of people who put these things in place and they're a great credit to them. So I think this is a really good bill. I'm sure it will get through the House with complete agreement because at the end of the day it benefits that small community of people who will use this facility. So I say All power to them." and well done to those people who put the bill together and I'm sure it will be successful. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."