Gosche Mark: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4362] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 That was an interesting speech from the National Party spokesperson on health in the sense that it once again illustrates the strangeness of the National Party’s position. If this Government was not dealing with the issue and it was costing the health system lots and lots of money that member would be the first to be up on his feet to whinge about why the Government had not acted when it had the opportunity to do so. 
Mr Ryall may like to know that in 1984 3500 people in Queenstown were affected by sickness as a result of drinking contaminated water. That is probably at the extreme end of things because we are very fortunate in New Zealand that to date the voluntary system we operate has seen only relatively small examples of such sicknesses. Mr Ryall says such illnesses do not matter because they happen only on school camps. He says it does not matter about the kids who are on school camps. There were 61 cases of campylobacteriosis at a school camp near Christchurch in 1997 and there were 67 cases at Wainui—and one would expect that because there was a National Government at the time. But we will plead guilty that in the year 2001 187 cases at a local college were reported to the medical officer of health. 
There were 69 cases of viral gastroenteritis at a major ski-field in 1996. Those people were probably only tourists so the National Party would not worry about that. It would ask why we should worry about the biggest income earner for this nation which is tourism. National would say: “Let’s poison off a few tourists here and there.”—that does not really matter to the National Party. That is why the National members are over there in Opposition and that is why the Minister Mr Hodgson is sitting here on the Government benches. He will get on and do the job whereas Mr Ryall will just whinge and moan about the wastage that goes on in our health system. 
Mr Ryall does not care about the 49 cases of illness at a school camp in the Waikato in 2003 because once again that was just a bunch of kids. Maybe he has forgotten that one of his National Party colleagues represents a town called Masterton. Of course we can recall that in July and August of 2003 there was a significant contamination of the town’s water supply by cryptosporidiosis again. Whatever that is it was there. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: It’s bad. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: The Minister of Health says it is bad. But cryptosporidiosis is not seen as bad by the National Party members. They would leave it alone. They will oppose this bill and would do nothing about that. 
Of course Mr Ryall who is terribly upset about the cost of this legislation to the public by way of local government forgot to listen to the Minister’s speech where he outlined the $154 million contribution that this Labour-led Government will be making to small communities. They are not small communities such as the one we come from in Auckland; we are talking about communities of fewer than 5000 people. The National Party used to pride itself on representing those areas of New Zealand. As far as the National members are concerned they say we should let people in those communities drink dirty water and keep on getting sick because National says that we should not meet the cost of providing good drinking water in this country. That is why the National members are the Opposition and we are the Government. We care about people and they do not. 
I support this bill for that reason.