Foster Andy; Kuriger BarbaraANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thanks. We've heard from the Green Party member who spoke just a moment ago Hon Julie Anne Genter that access to water is a fundamental human right and I think we would all agree with that. And she also said that when people work together fundamentally that's a really good thing and fundamentally that water is part of the commons.Yet the piece of legislation that we're removing at the moment—or the pieces of legislation that we're removing—actually weren't seeing water as part of the commons. They took it away from the people took it away from the localities and said We're going to put it in these very large entities and we're going to take it away from any local control or influence."—any meaningful local control or influence. I mean it was a massively complicated process that they set up—"and we're also going to divide New Zealanders into some people who have more influence and some people who have less influence." That doesn't sound to me like something that is looking at water as a fundamental human right and something which is part of the commons.As I said when I spoke earlier what we actually saw—and the High Court agreed—is that the last Government was going through a process which the courts said was expropriation. Normally we would say that is theft. It was taking somebody's asset away without compensating them for it.Look what we're doing today is we are doing exactly what we—the collective coalition here—said we would do. Goodness me! That's terrible isn't it! We're actually keeping our election promises. In fact we're keeping lots of our election promises and we are repealing the legislation which these parties on this side of the House campaigned against.Now we've been told "Why do it now?" Well it's a very obvious reason: councils are going through long-term planning processes. Actually I think they deserve certainty. Because if they are doing it on the basis at the moment—and I do know that some of them are doing exactly this; they are planning their long-term plans on the basis of the legislation as it stands at the moment; that is the legislation which we are about to repeal. But if it doesn't get repealed they've got to keep on marching ahead on the basis that it hasn't been repealed. So they've got to deal with the law as it is. And it makes much more sense to say "Look we're going to get rid of that so you know where you are at the moment—you know that there's reform coming." So that gives them some certainty to be able to plan and to budget.The other point is—it was about the commons and about taking people with you. Well we've heard that the leader of the Labour Party has acknowledged that people weren't taken with them. You wouldn't get 88000 submissions—the vast majority of them against it. You wouldn't start off with something where you said "Councils it's your choice. You can opt into this if you want to." and then go "Oh we're actually not so sure that the councils are going to do that so what we'll do is we'll change our mind and we'll say that you can opt out of it. So you're in unless you opt out." And then they go "Oh no we still haven't got them on board. So what we'll do is we'll force you to come in." That's not good faith but the process of the legislation that we are getting rid of today and over this week did exactly that.We've also heard a lot from the Opposition benches here about rates rises. Now how was water going to be paid for under Labour's legislation? It was going to be paid for by the magic money tree somewhere wasn't it? Well no it wasn't going to come from the magic money tree. We've had this supposition—in fact again the Green Party spokesperson said that it's all about things like capital gains taxes and we could have more money from somewhere to put into the water system. Actually under what we're appealing it wasn't the Government that was going to pay for it either. Who was going to pay for it? That hadn't actually already been worked out. When you started off it was still in all probability going to go through the council's bill. A lot of it would have been rates funded others of it would have been user charge through meters where those meters already exist. But you can't just magically magic up a whole lot of meters. So for a period of time it would still have gone through the council's rates bill so people would still have seen it that way. But even once it was fully implemented it was going to come from who? The water consumer. And who do you think the water consumer is if they're not very very similar people to the ratepayer—many of them are exactly the same people.We heard Ingrid Leary on the other side of the House talk about how this is an imposition on renters. Well I can tell you one thing: who pays the power bill? Is it the landlord? I don't think so. I think by and large the power bill is paid for by the tenant. So who do you think was going to pay the water bill when it's separated out and it's charged on a meter? I don't think it was going to be the landlord; I think it was going to be the renter. So we're hearing some rather fragile arguments from the other side on this.So not only was the transfer not going to be immediate and water service entities would have taken some time to get their billing systems up—and certainly even longer to get water meters in place because that would have been an inevitability—it's going to take some years to get water meters in place in some places. It's a very big and expensive task. There's no magic money tree there. Then we've also heard about the poor councils—the ones who are not in a good state. Three waters as it was originally proposed basically split the country into four areas. Why did it split into four areas? Because it said "We've got big Auckland they can look after the northern bit. Actually we've got big Hamilton sitting up there in the middle bit. They can look after some of that area. Wellington can look after this area here and Christchurch can look after the bit at the bottom." It was based on cross-subsidies. So basically what we're hearing from the Opposition benches there is that some of the councils which are in better condition wouldn't do it of their own volition so we'll force them to do it. So basically what we'll say is "Your rates your water charges in an area which had done a good job are going to end up paying for those who are in not quite such a good position." That seems to be the logic which we've heard from the other side.So why would those councils want to get together? Well at least the legislation which we're looking at allows them to make that choice. But in none of this was there any Government money—Government money was never promised. There was a little bit in the transition process but nothing after that. So all the issues around tax reform etc. were absolutely irrelevant.We've also heard that you get what you pay for. I think the reality is you started to see some councils—some of maybe the less responsible ones—where the kind of rhetoric is very much along the lines of "Well if we don't have to pay for water we're going to look very much better. It's still going to hurt the ratepayer the consumer in the back pocket but we're going to look much better and maybe we can go and spend some more money on something else we otherwise couldn't have done." So it actually takes some discipline off some of those councils.So I'm delighted to support this. If you're looking ahead at where we go I think we need to keep on working to drive efficiencies. We need to set sensible standards and that's clearly what the intention of the legislation is. And one of those areas where you can be more efficient is the previous legislation—the legislation which is being repealed—went all the way down to two houses constituted a local water scheme; two houses. That makes absolutely no sense—that level of intrusion into peoples' lives. And it certainly included a lot of those local water schemes where you might have a couple of dozen houses. Those people they wanted to do their own job. They were doing their own job perfectly well thank you very much without the Government intruding on it. So I am delighted to support this legislation going through and I look forward to further conversation.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. So first I call Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke."