Pham LanLAN PHAM (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Chair and it's great to have the Minister—sorry oh here's my mike. Tēnā koe Madam Chair. Thank you for letting me take this call on the Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. It's been a real pleasure to be sitting on the Finance and Expenditure Committee for the proceeding of this bill through the House but I wanted to start my questioning for the Minister of Local Government on the purpose section of Part 1 because I am really concerned and I'd love to hear the Minister's thoughts about how truncated the process was.Where this comes into question with the purpose is that it says The purpose of this Act is to establish a framework for local government to manage and deliver water services." Now my concern about the purpose of this is that because it was such a truncated process for submissions not all councils were actually able to submit and have their voices heard in the development of this bill. It meant that many councils because the time frame was only 10 days to submit were unable to submit because they couldn't go through the normal processes to actually get sign-off of their submissions. So we really had to rely quite heavily on more the joint submissions from the likes of Local Government New Zealand or Taituarā. But I'd love to hear from the Minister about any risks he sees about that council voice and especially our smaller councils not being able to be adequately considered in the progression of this bill.I also want to ask the Minister if there's any concern about the urgency and the truncated process around this time frame because as the Law Society and many other submitters pointed out during our public hearings process they considered the use of urgency was not demonstrably necessary or appropriate. So I'm interested for that in terms of the purpose of the bill because is it really for local government? Who is this really for?I did want to mention as well that of the councils that did end up getting their act together and being able to submit within that 10-day time frame it was summarised in the official advice that all councils submitted that "The cost and resource implications are [both] unclear [and significant] for councils making it challenging to plan or fund the reform[s]." Now obviously there's so many clauses throughout the bill which will highlight this but I'd really invite overarching comment from the Minister about this overarching concern where local government voices haven't been able to feed in and whether he feels like the purpose is still upheld.I also wanted to point to one of the regulatory impact statements that informs the development of the bill where it says "A detailed comparison or analysis of all councils [has] not been included" and that "The Department [actually] relied heavily on evidence that has been collected from media reports due to time constraints." and whether the Minister's concerned that because there isn't that strong foundation of this bill actually being developed and thrown around by councils is it really a strong purpose and foundation for progressing?So why did the Minister consider it unnecessary to adequately consult councils and have this truncated process and why did so few of the suggestions submitted by local government actually get incorporated into the bill? Now we're going to be able to step through those but I'd love to hear any overarching comments from the Minister. Thank you Madam Chair."