Blue Jackie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Blue Jackie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:11886] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 National opposes the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. I acknowledge the excellent contributions from Tony Ryall and Dr Jonathan Coleman. We think the intentions of this bill are commendable and laudable. We also agree that water is essential for life and that New Zealanders should have access to good safe water. But this bill is not the mechanism to achieve that. This bill is costly to ratepayers it is impractical and the issue of affordability has not been factored into it. The small and rural ratepayers will be the ones who suffer. They will bear the brunt of this bill. Basically the bill is what Dr Jonathan Coleman said it is—a legislative sledgehammer to crack a walnut. It is micromanagement to the nth degree. 
The vast majority of water suppliers we heard from in the select committee give high-quality water to their communities. They undertake self-improvement and they monitor. This is voluntary—they are not forced to do anything—and they are doing it very very well. Only a small number of water suppliers about 16 percent have a problem and need to clean up their act. We also agree that these groups should absolutely be providing safe water and all practical steps should be taken to improve drinking water. We also absolutely agree that if there is a clear link between drinking water and infection urgent and firm action should be taken. But we think this bill is overkill. 
The Health Committee received a submission from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. It detailed 23 outbreaks of water-borne infection that had occurred in the last 30 years and it gave us quite a lot of detail. I will go over the four examples that have occurred in the last decade—the rest had occurred prior to that. 
The first case in the last 10 years occurred in a rural school in Hawke’s Bay in 2001. The problem was that faeces from cattle had got into the source water. The reason there was an infection was that the ultraviolet treatment machine was malfunctioning. I do not think this bill would have somehow fixed up the ultraviolet treatment machine. The second example occurred in Banks Peninsula in 2004. The problem there was that an effluent pipe in a septic tank had broken and it discharged into a spring-fed drinking-water supply. Again I do not think this bill would have fixed the septic tank or the effluent pipe. The third example occurred in a Nelson camp in 2004. In actual fact when one reads through the information one finds that there was no proven link. So that one goes. 
The last case that happened in the last decade was at the Cardrona ski field in 2006 and I agree that this case was a valid legitimate issue. There was a problem with effluent overflow that went into a stream. The drinking-water supply was not registered the treatment comprised filtration and ultraviolet treatment the cartridge did not comply with the requirements of the drinking-water standards for New Zealand and the efficacy of the ultraviolet treatment was not known. 
That 2006 case is a fair enough example and only the other three examples occurred the last decade; everything else happened 20 years before that. I say to members that the world has moved on in the last decade. We now live in a world where there are standards of accountability responsibility duty of care and informed consent. We can see that the incidents of water-borne outbreaks have been very rare in the last 10 years and certainly what happened prior to that is all very historical knowledge. 
The cost of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill is massive. We have heard the Government figures. It gave wide-ranging figures—from $50 million to $275 million. Local Government New Zealand which opposed the bill—and still opposes it—estimated that the cost would go right up to $800 million. That is a massive amount of money. Who will take the brunt of that sort of cost? It will be the ratepayers and it will be the rural communities in particular. We have little rural communities that are paying massive amounts of money. Mackenzie District Council paid $3 million over its plan the Ashburton District Council paid $10 million and the Clutha District Council paid $20 million. This is big money. Really this bill is a sledgehammer. It will not fix up pipes that get broken. It will not fix up a problem that is not a problem to begin with. 
National supports voluntary compliance and the education of communities not this legislative approach that will not solve the problem. The Opposition thinks this bill is costly to ratepayers impractical and unaffordable. It is legislative overkill to the nth degree and we oppose it.