Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Can I join with others in congratulating you on your election to that role.The Greens welcome the comprehensive response by this Government following on from the Havelock North inquiry to the whole issue of upgrading drinking-water supplies and to that big gap in our infrastructure because as the former president of Local Government New Zealand Dave Cull pointed out the situation in New Zealand was not consistent with best practice internationally because we didn't have a regulator that was strongly committed to compliance monitoring and enforcement. Certainly we had drinking-water standards through the Ministry for the Environment but the community and district health boards were quite variable in the way in which they sought to implement those standards and I think the inquiry found that there had been actually no enforcement action between 2008 and 2016 of any of the standards. So we have had a major gap in our law and as Minister Nanaia Mahuta noted this is the second pillar of filling that gap. We've had Taumata Arowai established and now this bill sets out its functions and responsibilities and the whole regulatory framework. Taumata Arowai is an independent Crown agency. It's independent of Ministers it's had a chief executive appointed and its role is quite massive. It's the thickness of this bill highlighted in terms of its responsibilities for the overall regulatory framework for setting the standards and ensuring that those standards are then monitored and enforced and being able to take action against drinking-water suppliers that do not meet those standards. The bill contains a raft of tools for compliance and enforcement from infringement notices to being able to actually appoint someone else to take over the responsibilities of supplying drinking water if there has been repeated instances of non-compliance.It also imposes quite significant duties on drinking-water suppliers requiring them to meet the standards requiring them to have a safety plan which has a multi-barrier approach to ensuring that drinking water is safe and it also puts in place a due diligence responsibility and it has some strict liability offences and for those offences there doesn't need to be an intention to commit an offence but it is one of strict liability. So I really congratulate the Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta for her really thoughtful work in developing this legislation and consulting with stakeholders. In the last term the Green Party pushed hard for much greater attention to protection of source water to prevent nutrient contamination to prevent faecal contamination and to significantly reduce the costs to councils and to ratepayers. If the supply is protected then the treatment costs are less. So it was pleasing to see that in the bill there is quite a lot of attention now to the protection of source waters requiring suppliers to have this water risk management plan and also requiring local authorities to cooperate in sharing information about risks to water supplies and requiring councils when they're considering granting resource consents to have regard to the potential risks to source water. One of the things the Green Party will be interested in submissions is whether Taumata Arowai has sufficient responsibility to be an advocate for protection of source water in relation to resource consents. It's something in Canterbury that I was enormously grateful to Community and Public Health and Dr Alistair Humphrey for their representation in a range of resource consent hearings about the potential need to safeguard our drinking water. In Darfield the largest town in Aotearoa without a reticulated sewerage system Community and Public Health pointed out that subdivision expansion more septic tanks was a potential contamination risk to aquifers which provide us with drinking water in Canterbury. So that advocacy role I think is critical for Taumata Arowai and we'll be interested in submissions on that.On the whole issue of enforcement which we haven't seen in the past the bill provides for Taumata Arowai to develop a compliance monitoring and enforcement strategy and to review that every three years and of course to publish it. I notice in this bill too the first steps to also improving the delivery of infrastructure in waste water and stormwater with the requirement for national level monitoring reporting and advisory functions in relation to waste water and stormwater resting with Taumata Arowai and the development of a national public database and some environmental performance measures there and the requirement to actually promote good practice which I think will help ensure that across Aotearoa there is much more consistency in the provision of waste-water and stormwater services and that we don't get things like the Kaipara District Council and the severe financial consequences for that council through not really having access to good advice on waste water when they had commissioners having to be appointed. I think there will be quite a lot of interest in terms of the community water supply schemes in a number of areas particularly rural areas; the standards that those suppliers will have to meet; and then whether they want councils to take over the provision of those schemes because of their new responsibilities under this legislation. So the Minister noted the transitional period which again recognises the potential issues there. I also note just the huge infrastructure deficit we have in both drinking-water supplies and waste water and stormwater; and the funding that is being provided—over $700 million—to local authorities if they are supportive of the reform to consolidate the provision of drinking-water services into regional entities potentially between five and seven. The Health Committee would benefit from some comment in submissions on the nature of this consolidation and how appropriate people think it is for their regions and what sort of scale that consolidation should be at. The Green Party supports the bill and looks forward to submissions. Thank you.