Coleman Jonathan: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Coleman Jonathan: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4363] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 I would just like to reiterate the Hon Tony Ryall’s comments about this being a sledgehammer to crack a walnut type situation. When one looks at this bill one can see that it really addresses a totally non-existent problem. New Zealand is known for having the best standard of drinking water in the world. There is just no question about that. We do not have typhoid in this country; we do not have cholera; we do not have elective surgery. The Government should be focusing on the issues that really matter to the health of New Zealanders. I can tell members that water-borne diseases are not a major public health problem in this country. But I can tell members that this legislation will cost an awful lot to ratepayers the length and breadth of New Zealand. 
Darren Hughes 
: How many people have to die before the National Party will support this? 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: I tell the marginal member for Otaki that rather than worrying about water standards he should be getting back to his electorate to address the problems with the lack of doctors and the lack of elective surgery and try to get himself back on the front page of the  
Horowhenua-Kapiti Chronicle 
 rather than letting the real MP for Otaki service the people of that electorate. 
Darren Hughes 
: I live on that front page! 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Not for long. But as I say this is a problem that does not need fixing and it brings with it absolutely excessive compliance costs. Reading through this bill one can see that it will cost ratepayers $100 to $250 million over the next 6 years. 
Of course it is the rural areas that will be hit. But Labour does not care about the rural areas. It will not be in Labour’s strongholds out in South Auckland or out in the cities. If one looks at the map one will see that New Zealand basically looks blue. The issue with this bill is that it will hit people in towns with fewer than 5000 people—people in electorates such as Otaki. If I were that member I would be very concerned. I am sure he would have been debating this pretty hard in caucus. I am sure he would not have been too keen on this legislation but he is having to come and defend it now. It does not matter to people in electorates such as that of the Minister of Health. Because of course they already comply with the drinking-water standards. It will hit the people of rural New Zealand. 
But it is pretty clear that Labour has given up on those seats. They have lost Aoraki. They have lost big chunks of the East Coast of the North Island—in fact all of the East Coast of the North Island. They have a new MP there as well. But it will be the people in electorates such as Mrs Tolley’s who will really miss out with this bill. But of course Labour does not care. In the Western Bay of Plenty very close to an area that the next Minister of Health Tony Ryall represents there will be a 60 percent increase in water rates over the next 10 years but Labour does not care because it has given up on that seat. In Rotorua Labour knows that Mrs Chadwick will also be going out at the next election. So really if there are more compliance costs for the people of Rotorua that will not really matter because Labour has given up there anyway. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: What a typical doctor. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: A typical doctor! 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: A typical GP—doesn’t care about public health. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Well actually that is not true. This is not an issue for public health in New Zealand. We have heard a huge litany of examples given here by the Labour members. If they looked a bit more closely at the detail in the cases they have described most of them have absolutely nothing to do with water-borne disease. We listened to the Minister before talking about campylobacter. Well I know that he is a veterinarian but I would expect him to know that campylobacter is actually a disease of poor food handling and it comes from chicken in the main. It is not actually a bacteria that one finds particularly often in water. Viral gastroenteritis is cited by the Ministry of Health as a reason for bringing in this bill. Well that is not generally water borne either—49 cases at a school camp in the Waikato in 2003. Well that says nothing about disease being water-borne either. So really there is nothing in this bill—it addresses a problem that does not exist. 
When one looks at the management of drinking water it is broken into three parts: the environment; the supply of water; and the storage and distribution. Those members were not listening closely to that boring speech that we had from the Minister of Health before. They were just doing their paperwork but they have certainly woken up now because they know that they are under pressure— 
Darren Hughes 
: I predict one term for you. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: That will be interesting. I predict that I will be here longer than him. Anyway back to water-borne disease. The issue here is that we currently have a perfectly adequate voluntary regime that is not really needing any modification. All this will bring is a whole lot of compliance costs. 
I can tell members what the Ministry of Health says it will do. The Government is instituting a drinking-water assistance programme that will have two parts: the technical assistance programme and the capital assistance programme. It will be spending $140 million plus GST on that. I remind Government members that that amount of money would almost twice over pay the district health board deficit for the whole country over the past year. 
This is just another example of this Government not knowing where it should be focusing its attention and resources. There is nothing wrong with the drinking water. We are being asked once again to submit to an increased regime of compliance. We see that 71 percent of the country’s water suppliers are actually fully compliant and 29 percent are served by suppliers who are not compliant or not known to be compliant. I say to members again and as Tony Ryall made the point in his speech we should be identifying those areas where the water is a problem and working with providers rather than imposing massive compliance costs and the potential costs will be highest in the rural areas—there is no question about that. 
The bill also asks for greater coverage on the drinking-water register. So once again Labour is wanting to count the problem. What good will it really do for the public health of the people of New Zealand just to count the number of water providers? The bill also asks for proactive management of water supplies through public health risk management plans. Once more we will have more plans more compliance and more costs for the ratepayer. The answer is not to engage in this costly compliance regime whereby at the end of the day it will be ordinary overtaxed New Zealanders who will see increases in their water charges. The answer is to have a common sense approach to identify where there really is a problem. 
I tell members once again that there is not a public health problem with water in New Zealand. We have the best drinking-water in the world. Examples were cited before from the USA and goodness knows where but there was not one example from New Zealand. That shows the flaws in this legislation. It shows that Labour’s thinking on health is flawed full stop. With the problems we have in this country with providing elective surgery and getting people access to basic medical care why are we spending parliamentary time and taxpayers’ money to try to solve a problem that does not really exist? Can the member for Otaki answer that question? He does not have an answer. Why would we bother to do that? What is more it will cost $130000 for providers to register for this regime. To me that is just imposing another ridiculous cost that once again will be borne by the ratepayer. 
In summary National thinks this is an excessive answer to a problem that frankly does not exist. We think the Government should be concentrating on common-sense solutions to real problems not imposing more compliance costs on councils and ultimately on ratepayers.