Foster Andy; Tuiono TeanauANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you Mr Speaker. Look we have major infrastructure challenges across this whole country and it's not just water. In fact when we talk about water in local government sometimes we forget that central government is not particularly good at this at all either. Simon Court the asset management plans you talked about—I love asset management plans. One of the problems we've got in this country is we don't have enough of them particularly in central government and central government is not very good at managing its assets either. And it's got to get better at it.This is the next stage of replacing Labour's convoluted divisive massively over expensive centralised three waters legislation. To listen to what the Opposition is saying you'd kind of think that if we'd left that in place all the water would be fixed now. But that was never going to happen. It was going to take years decades to be delivered regardless of what the model is. It's as though there was a magic answer there in the three waters model. The other thing to remember—and we've had commentary there about the rates increases this year—is that three waters under Labour's model wasn't going to come in this year or next year. I think it might have started to come in the year after that. Those rates rises would still have been happening three waters or no three waters.Kieran McAnulty talked about rates rises and look yeah in a way what they were trying to do is take the waters away from councils give them to somebody else give them to those four then 10 water entities but somebody was going to have to pay for that. There was no magic money tree. There was no magic money tree Mr Speaker. The people that were going to have to pay for that were the people that consumed the water or used the wastewater. And guess what? They are the same people by and large. So it was still going to be a cost on the same people. In fact what it probably would have done is it would have released councils from some of the discipline that they would then have to have in fixing the water system first. That is really really important. This is the next stage in this Government fixing the water system. Councils at the moment are clearly struggling. We've seen those rates rise. I've talked about that. They're very high—they're unaffordably high—at the moment but this is the first stage or the next stage in helping them.I also wanted to mention that we are also helping them in reducing the cost of working on the roads. In fact sometimes we hear from the Opposition benches mocking of the work that's being done to reduce the cost of working on the roads. But that is really really significant. It's not just about work on the roads; it's also about the utilities that go underneath the roads. I've talked to council CEs and they've said that the cost of the working on the roads the traffic management is up to 40 percent—40 percent—of the cost of delivering those projects driven by health and safety and all the other things. That is a huge cost. If we can get that cost down—and we've had this confirmed at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee; we've had this confirmed—that will flow directly through into the cost of delivering new water services or replacing water services. That is a really significant part of helping them.We've heard comment about two towns in the Wairarapa which have paused development. Again three waters wasn't going to magically fix that. What fixes that over time is being able to levy development on growth so that growth pays for the new capacity that is needed. One example of this—the cost of working on the roads is definitely going to be part of this—is that in the last year right before the 2022 election we were faced with Wellington Water coming to the Wellington City Council and saying Oh by the way we're going to have to revalue all the underground assets that we've got by"—10 percent 20 percent 30 percent?—"80 percent—80 percent." Now imagine what that does to your rates bill—a catastrophic effect. We went back to them and said "Hey I think we need to rethink that. We need to talk that one through because that is far far too significant an impact to be able to be worn especially in one year." We should be expecting that councils should be rethinking their costs not only in the light of the changes that we are making to legislation now the changes that will come but also in the reduction of the cost of working on the roads.So what does this bill do? Well first of all it creates greater oversight from Government and actually that matters because actually Government has been overseeing councils for decades through the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG). But how high has the OAG raised the red flag and been saying "Hey we know that there has been underinvestment for decades."? But have you seen that red flag being raised and their saying "You must do something about this councils. You must do something about that."? They've started to do that in the last couple of years but it's too late. That infrastructure deficit is already there. Government needed to be overseeing councils and saying "We expect changes to be done." And if the asset management plan is not good enough do something about it because otherwise we're not signing off your annual plans your LTPs etc. You must do something about it.What else does the bill do? Well it requires water service delivery plans. We've heard the comment that 10 years is not long enough. Actually I'd be inclined to agree; a longer term is a good thing because these assets are going to be assets which by and large should be lasting 100 years. And that actually is really really important. The longer-term thinking is really important. But having a water services delivery plan is important.The second thing is transparent information for the community. Well it should already be there but that's really really important as well because that's how you hold councils to account. It's also how we should be held to account in terms of our asset management of the assets that the Government looks after.Making it easier to establish or change CCOs and other collaborative arrangements—that's a good thing. It allows councils to be more flexible in getting together working together and hopefully delivering some economies of scale. It allows the financial separation of Watercare from Auckland Council which has already been announced. And obviously financially that's a significant advantage to the ratepayers of Auckland. So that's a really really good thing. And the other one I just wanted to mention was that it requires Taumata Arowai to set standards. That is really really important but what those standards are is going to be really really critical and that those standards are realistic—they give us better quality water better quality discharge to water but that they are also realistic.We've had Te Mana o te Wai mentioned. One of the things about Te Mana o te Wai is that it is a hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy it says we look after the health of the water then we look after the health of human beings and then we do all the other things that we need to do for our economic social and cultural good. The problem with hierarchies is that I've seen them interpreted. No. 1 is the one that gets picked and Nos 2 and 3 are there but if there is any conflict between Nos 2 and 3 and No. 1 Nos 2 and 3 get ignored. And if you ignore the needs of the people and the needs of their social cultural and economic impacts that becomes a real problem. Getting the model right getting the incentives right getting the oversight right is really really important. This is the next step in that and I commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): My understanding is that the next call is a split call."