Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker for this opportunity to speak on the Water Services Entities Bill and to speak about pipes. Pipes are something that I'm quite interested in having been a resource management and local government lawyer for a couple of decades and having worked for many councils in that time. So I've worked a lot within this three waters space.When I started off with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in 2000 this was not a term that I was very familiar with: three waters. So I think it's useful just to go over again what that is. It's the drinking water it's the waste water and it's the stormwater. So it's all those pipes and infrastructure that go with those three waters.This is a term that's cropped up within that two-decade career—this three waters term—to be able to think about them as whole because of course they are all interlinked. I haven't found the definition of three waters" in the bill but if you go to the definition of "water services" that is defined to mean "services relating to water supply wastewater and stormwater". This definition of "water services" the three waters links to the function of the four entities that are created by this bill. We've heard from the Minister that these four entities will include for most of the South Island—Te Wai Pounamu—the Ngāi Tahu tikiwā and then the other three are set out as is that one in Schedule 2 of the bill. So the function of these four entities that are established by this bill—noting as well that the transfer of assets is not part of this bill. That's going to come in a separate piece of legislation that will have a lot more detail around it.So we've got then the links. The function of the four entities in clause 12 is to provide "safe reliable and efficient water services in its area;" so that is—Angie Warren-Clark: Say is again.RACHEL BROOKING: —the outcome that we are wanting Angie Warren-Clark. It is the provision of safe reliable and efficient water services in these four areas across our nation. So these entities are about delivering on those three waters.This legislation and this reform is not about water ownership. There have been long discussions in New Zealand about whether or not anybody owns water. Some people have said it can't be owned—everybody owns it. There's different views on that. Given the fact that you can do things with your resource consent there's a debate over a property right. That debate has nothing to do with pipes and this legislation so I think that's a really important piece to note in this bigger conversation about these three waters.Now we've also heard these concerns raised over the loss of ownership by local communities of these pipes and of this infrastructure. There are 67 territorial authorities around the country and those are what are commonly referred to as district councils unitary authorities or city councils. So we're not talking about regional councils here; these are territorial authorities. These are the councils that own the pipes that deal with these three waters at the moment and not all of those 67 territorial authorities have been able to finance that infrastructure to the degree that we would all like to meet that purpose of the Act which again is the provision of safe reliable and efficient water services. That's for many reasons. Some of these councils are very large and some are very small but they have limited financial tools and there are always trade-offs with ratepayers. If you are saying to your voters in your electorate "Do you want to upgrade some pipes or would you like a new playground?" often people will go with the playground. I've seen different people define this issue as saying that the pipes—they're not sexy. But they are very important and we see that when something goes wrong with them and we've heard many examples today from Barbara Edmonds about the "poo-nami" and different storm events around this Wellington region.There's been this big problem and we know that there's $185 billion of investment needed over the next 30 years and frankly many of those councils cannot afford to do those upgrades. One of the other reasons for that is because they are regulated in terms of how much they can borrow and what they can borrow against. So if you put all of these assets together this is going to be very helpful in terms of what debt you can get and at what interest rates and this—Angie Warren-Clark: Economies of scale.RACHEL BROOKING: "Economies of scale" Angie Warren-Clark is saying. So this is the reason why this bill is going to the Finance and Expenditure Committee because it's about infrastructure and it's about balance sheets.These assets still remain in public ownership by the territorial authorities and I'd like to pay some appreciation here to Tim Cadogan who is the mayor of the Central Otago District Council. He was part of the representation governance and accountability working group. So out of that group came this idea of the shareholding model for these entities that are going to be controlling the assets. That's based on your per 50000 people of the population with at least—if you don't have 50000 people in your council then you get at least one share. These councils will this year be holders of the entities. So that is still in public ownership by the councils who have them at the moment and they cannot sell those shares.Then we've heard as well in Schedule 4 that that provides the divestment requirements. So again it's a 75 percent vote in a public referendum and agreement from all of those councils—those territorial authorities districts and cities and the communities represented within them.So then over the top these entities there is the regional representative group and we've heard about that. This is the group that has 12 to 14 members and it does have an equal number of territorial authority representatives and mana whenua. What is the role of this regional representative group? It is not the group doing the delivery. This is the group that is to instead appoint and remove entity board members—you can see that in clause 28—participate in the entity's strategic direction and review the performance of that entity. Who are these people on the regional representative board? Well they can be either elected members of those councils the CEOs or specialist senior managers within those councils if they're the territorial authoritative representative and it's for mana whenua to decide their representatives.The bill also includes a lot of requirements planning requirements asset management for the infrastructure and provisions around the community engagement and you can see a lot of that in Schedule 3. There are also transitional provisions which include transferring employees from existing employment to these new entities. We've heard a bit about the Treaty clause. This legislation is to give effect to the principles of the Treaty but also to give effect to Te Mana o te Wai.In conclusion I want to really acknowledge Minister Nanaia Mahuta and she's been involved in Government and in this place for a long time. She's—Simon Watts: She's not the only one.RACHEL BROOKING: "She's not the only one." I'm hearing and when she first arrived here she noticed this problem of the pipes and the way that it was difficult for councils to always fund the upgrades of the infrastructure that we expect for our safe water and for good environmental reasons as well. We don't want our stormwater going into the harbours and we don't want waste water not being treated and going into the harbour for instance. So she's been thinking about this issue for a long time. She refuses to ignore it and she does that hard work so I commend her for that.I'd also just like to note finally as the Hon Eugenie Sage did that congratulations go to the Parliamentary Counsel Office. This is very clear drafting. It will be very easy for people to submit on. I commend it and I suggest that people who are interested in this should have a good look at it and have a read of the legislation. Thank you Mr Speaker."