White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): First of all I'd like to congratulate my friend Anna Lorck for that speech and I think it was an extremely good speech because it was coming from a place of learning. Hawke's Bay went through a terrible trauma as a result of terrible water quality and people suffered and people died. When we went to the Hawke's Bay—and we went to a lot of places in New Zealand to listen to these submissions—I was particularly struck by one woman called Shelley. She had had a small child and they have been in hospital. She had gone home and when she turned on the tap the water was brown. I would not like to have been in that position. She also worked in the council and she used to bring a little jar of water in and it was never dealt with.We also heard from a mayor who had left the job—he was an ex-mayor—and he said that during that time as a mayor he asked about water quality and he was reassured that everything was fine that the infrastructure was fine. When he left then the same person the very same person who had been working for him explained that in fact the water quality wasn't fine. That for me is an interesting story because I have a lot of respect for local bodies doing things. I think it is where a lot of things need to happen and you'll see in the Resource Management Act reforms that a lot of that is reinforced.This Government has great respect for the role of local government but this—this—part of it was impossible. They were in an impossible position because what they had to deal with was trying to get their rates down but they were dealing with a problem that was actually really expensive. So what we had was an artificial keeping the rates down while the maintenance didn't happen while the pipes didn't get upgraded. And obviously in a place like Hawke's Bay we were able to see new infrastructure being put in because they'd had a hell of a shock. But I'd rather that the families in New Zealand never had to deal with that situation.What we need is we absolutely need to be able to rely on our drinking water throughout this country and to be able to rely on our waste water throughout this country because it's right—we can't swim at some of the beaches in Auckland. I think that the members that have places in the North Shore will know this: we can't swim at those beaches. We look online and we check out in the summer whether we're allowed to swim at Devonport or Takapuna and that's ridiculous in a country this beautiful. So these things have to happen.Now I can tell you the next person I want to thank is the Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta because during this process we were quite a tough committee. We were very much a committee that listened and learnt and we have engaged as a committee and that Minister has been brave and has listened. As a result we have a lot of changes. One of the changes that I am proudest of is the one that is a movement from being able to contract out services for 35 years to only 15 and for things like local procurement to be part of the formula. Those are important changes. I come from this background of doing this work with workers and one of my unions was the Amalgamated Workers Union. That union came along and made a submission in support of this because it knew this was the way to go. It's worked with Watercare. It knows these kinds of scales are a good idea and that it's a better future for a worker. If you are a worker in this industry and you are worried don't be. There are good provisions around workers here.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.HELEN WHITE: Sorry Madam. If a worker is worried about this I would like to reassure those workers in those areas. This is actually a really good system where we've thought through that we need a good workforce that's skilled up. And they will skill up and they will be able to apply that skill in their local area because those services will need to apply there. So this is really a real upgrade in the role and that's what the union told us.So did the technical workers and I'd like to just talk about the mayors and the workers in this situation because yes we had mayors who had misgivings but interestingly what I noticed in the submissions was we had a lot of workers in the area saying this was a good idea. We had a lot of the people who actually do this work who were coming to us and making submissions saying that this was a good idea. For me that's a little bit of a litmus test—when you get the workers on the ground and you treat them well and they know they're going to have a future and they know that this is a good thing because actually what's happened out there is not good enough.So I am absolutely pleased with where we've landed here. There has been a lot of engagement. There has been engagement over accountability over making sure that contracting out was just a useful tool and not actually something that might get in the way. And there has been so much good listening go on—to local voices. There has been so much shoring up of that and I am proud of the way that our Finance and Expenditure Committee was able to go through this and hear people and change so that we have got a better piece of legislation in an area that New Zealand really needs change in. Mostly I'd like to thank our Minister for being extremely brave. She has actually made a change in our society that will benefit my children and my grandchildren and no one will have to turn on the tap and have brown water come out when they've got a sick child.