Brooking RachelHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Madam Speaker. Now we all know that there's been a problem in New Zealand with investing in infrastructure and we've had this for some time. It's been particularly difficult for small councils who have had maybe a lot of growth haven't had the financial mechanisms to charge for that growth and have ended up with pipes and treatment stations that need upgrading. We've heard that there was up to $185 billion of infrastructure needed for three waters around the country; that is a lot of infrastructure. This bill does nothing to fix that problem. It is head in the sand" stuff. This age-old problem is not dealt with. Instead we heard from the Minister during the committee stage "Oh what this bill does is that it's bottom-up. Labour's approach was top-down; this is bottom-up." All this bill does is make councils do specified reports with a whole lot of requirements around consultation around levies and around penalties. That's not solving any problems.Then we hear that well Auckland is being dealt with specifically. How does that help Northland? We know of course that the Northland councils have a lot of deficit in terms of their water infrastructure and might need the help of a larger organisation. Can they get it? Who knows.Then we hear about te mana o te wai. This was an interesting issue because of course the clause that is being amended in the Water Services Act 2021 does not refer to the Resource Management Act or any policy direction under it that includes the national policy statement for freshwater around te mana o te wai. There is however another section—section 14—about giving effect to te mana o te wai but that is not the section of the Act that is amended. There was no discussion over the placement of this provision around te mana o te wai in the committee stage. But what was interesting was comments made by the Minister for the Environment that why the Government hates te mana o te wai so much and doesn't want it to apply to this water legislation is because councils' waste water might not ever be able to be discharged to water; it might always have to be discharged to land. That is not what is in the bill. That was not under discussion anywhere. If that is the issue it could say that without having to do a "King Henry VIII" clause in relation to this reference to te mana o te wai.Why are there drinking-water standards in the first place? Well I suppose for the human health. We've heard about what happened in Hawke's Bay and that's why we had the water regulator set up in response to that. But also there is an issue when you have waste water or stormwater being discharged to our water bodies to our rivers to our oceans that there are environmental impacts there as well that affect our kai moana and it affects whether or not we can go swimming somewhere. So it is important that these matters are addressed. This bill does nothing to help that either.We've heard as well about the cost of borrowing. We heard that from the Hon Kieran McAnulty. This bill does nothing to make borrowing cheaper. So councils are left in the lurch by themselves having to update—and it's needed to update—many pipes and water treatment stations. They're going to have to borrow for this at expensive rates and that is going to put up everybody's rates.This Government chooses as a central government to borrow for tax cuts and at the same time will make councils borrow more for doing up our pipes and it's a disgrace."