Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I cannot understand why the party that has just spoken the ACT Party is so opposed to mātauranga Māori being recognised in decisions about water why it is so anti - Te Tiriti o Waitangi being implemented and why it stokes up concern about this when we want decisions that are fully informed by all of Aotearoa New Zealand all aspects of our community and we want to implement Te Tiriti. So that is a lot of nonsense that Mr Court has spoken.It is strange though to be speaking on the first reading of the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill when we haven't had the second reading of the Water Services Legislation Bill which has had so many of the issues around the establishment and the transfer of responsibilities of the water services entity and when this bill makes so many changes as the Water Services Legislation Bill does to the original Act that the Parliament passed last year the Water Services Entities Act. It is really disappointing that the Finance and Expenditure Committee was not given the opportunity to consider this bill and the changes that are proposed here in association with the Water Services Legislation Bill.It's also peculiar that this bill is going to the Governance and Administration Committee when it has been members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who have heard all of the submissions on the water services legislation and understand the complexity of the issues involved. Nor does the Green Party support—though we will be supporting the bill and I'll explain why in a moment—the truncated select committee process and the report back of 27 July because of the quite major changes that this bill makes to the three waters reforms particularly with things like the establishment of the Water Services Entities Funding Agency and we're really pleased that the Government has moved to do that and with the ability potentially that entities will have to get access to loan finance at a more competitive rate. The bill makes it very clear that there's no Crown liability and support sort of as a backstop for that entity unless the Minister of Finance has made decisions under the Public Finance Act but that does mean that Government is recognising the other ways of doing investment rather than just assuming that all of the infrastructure deficit can be funded purely by debt finance through the entities.The Green Party is supporting the bill primarily because of the move to 10 regional entities which are much closer to local communities than the big four mega-entities. That was something that the Green Party supported and promoted with the former Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta—and we acknowledge all of the mahi that that Minister has done on this reform project. We also support the recognition that there can be some mergers between the entities that it is more of a voluntary process there though we do note that the Minister still has quite substantial powers of direction in this bill to direct the entities if they are not performing adequately to require shared services to direct them to develop expertise and capability and to ensure business continuity. So there are still significant ministerial intervention powers.We remain concerned about the huge degree of corporatisation in these reforms and the limited accountability that the entities have back to their communities. There is an attempt in this bill as a previous speaker noted in relation to the community priority statements for water services. I have a major concern which I hope the select committee will address with the overlap between this bill and the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill. Under the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform communities can provide statements of community outcomes statements of regional and environmental outcomes to the regional planning committees for incorporation into regional spatial strategies and regional plans. Those statements of community outcome—surely the water services entities could have regard to those rather than having a separate process under this bill where they identify the issues in relation to particular water bodies. It is the regional councils and now the regional planning committees which have got responsibility for that water management. This seems quite a duplication—the potential for quite a lot of mix and overlapping work here—that's not really necessary.The other issue here is that with the new RMA reform legislation the Natural and Built Environment Bill already will be requiring water services entities to have regard to the regional spatial strategy so you get that integration between infrastructure and what the water services entities are doing with their asset management plans. So when you've got that connection there I'm still to be convinced that these new community priority statements are not just make work" and that they will actually have any weight and be of any value.The other issues in the legislation that we'll be commenting on when we talk about the principal bill include our continuing concern about the transfer of stormwater and the fact that that is completely untested internationally but we do wish that the Government had remitted this to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and that there was more time to integrate this bill with the water services legislation changes because this is at risk of becoming a patchwork quilt of ad hoc changes. While patchwork quilts may have character they can also have significant holes. The complexity of the legislation requires a good process and as the Finance and Expenditure Committee reported back on the Water Services Legislation Bill there was concern that for whatever reason officials had directed Parliamentary Counsel without always coming back to the select committee to ensure that the Parliamentary Counsel was making changes to the bill on the recommendation of the select committee. This truncated process with only just over a month means there is potential with the complexity of the bill for other issues to arise in terms of real parliamentary scrutiny and limited chance for public submissions. So while we support the bill we have a number of concerns about it and hope that submitters will have some time at least to comment on it and to raise those issues with the Governance and Administration Committee."