Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Thank you. I'm pleased to speak in support of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. Unlike Minister Mark I'm much more careful now when I'm out walking and taking water from streams because with the major intensification in the agricultural sector you don't always know what is happening up catchment and what has actually got into waterways. That is a really sad situation because I think maybe 20 years ago it was the ability of everyone who was out in the back country just to be able to stoop at a stream and drink the water there. What this bill is is only a small part of the Government's overall programme in improving fresh water.I live in Christchurch and it is interesting there. We've got the best-tasting water in New Zealand I'd argue because it comes from an aquifer.SPEAKER: The member is misleading the House!Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Ha ha! I'd be glad of that. It is delicious water but just down the road from me on the Ōpāwaho Heathcote River there is a spring on the other side of the river. Always there is a car stopped there taking water from just a tap that the private landowner provides from a well on their property. That intrigues me—because the Christchurch City Council has a very sophisticated water-supply system—that people still prefer to take water directly from a spring rather than from the reticulated supply. But what Havelock North has taught all of us and everyone in the House is resolute is that we must ensure that we never have an outbreak like that again which caused so much sickness and contributed to the deaths of several peopleThe inquiry found that over 100000 people every year are getting sick from drinking water and that's probably an underestimate because people don't always report their symptoms. So this small bill goes some way to making some changes to improve the security of drinking-water supplies. But it is part of a much larger programme which involves establishing a regulator for drinking-water security—a central regulator—which ensures that the providers of drinking-water supplies do meet much stricter standards and ensures the safety of people turning on the tap and taking water from those supplies. I don't think it does all of the things that the Hon Maggie Barry outlined. I think some of those are still to come in the Government's changes.Ensuring that there is compliance with the standards is a key part of the changes that are to come but that's only one part of ensuring safe drinking-water. A critical part is ensuring that the sources of drinking-water supplies are protected. That's protecting not only the volume of water that can be allocated for drinking water—for potable water—but also the quality of the water and ensuring that regional councils really step up to better protect sources of supply by stronger controls on land use in the catchments for those water supplies. That's work that Minister Parker is leading as part of the Essential Freshwater programme: the stronger national policy statement on fresh water and the requirement that councils actually implement in their plans the bottom lines in that national policy statement in a much more expeditious way than they have done to date. Because it's protecting not only the source but also ensuring that the actual supply is really well managed that are the keys to ensuring that drinking water is safe for everyone.So this is a small bill. It's been widely supported in submissions but it is making those changes more quickly so that there isn't such a long time required for consultation before standards are improved. So it is a step along the way. There is much more work to come that Minister Mahuta Minister Clark and Minister Parker are leading as part of the joined-up thinking by this Government to protect and enhance our freshwater and to progressively move to a situation where like Minister Mark you can take water from local streams because you can be assured of its quality. We can't be at the moment. That is a tragedy but we are working to change that. Kia ora Mr Speaker.