Brooking Rachel; Edmonds Barbara; Woods Megan; Brown SimeonCHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Good evening members. When we finished we were debating Part 1 of the bill.Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Mr Chair. Just very quickly reminding the Minister that before the dinner break he had made this comment that the bill is going to support councils and we are yet to hear how this bill is going to support councils. Of course that is important given that we are on the purpose section of the bill being clause 3 in Part 1 so I'm very keen to hear a response.Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Mr Chair. I continue the debate in Part 1 of this particular bill which we've canvassed before the dinner break which are the preliminary provisions part of this Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill which I notice had actually had a bit of a title change between what officials had put in the regulatory impact statement that was on the Table because it was changed from transitional" to now "preliminary arrangements". But having gone through the regulatory impact statement as part of this bill trying to understand the purpose and the objective of this particular bill which is set out in clause 3 of Part 1 I came across in the regulatory impact statement a footnote in relation to a Castalia report which was from January 2024 Meeting key objectives of Local Water Done Well: Draft report on policy objectives and proposed process.So in reference to the Minister's previous answer that if members wanted information they could Official Information Act request him I did actually try and have a look for the background papers to this bill to see whether that particular report which is very much on the policy objectives in the process for this bill which again pertains to clause 3—whether I could find that particular piece of advice from Castalia.For those members who are not aware of the affordable water reforms Castalia was a consultancy group that was used by one of the council groups—I can't remember the name at the moment but a group of councils who were objectively against the affordable water reforms. So they had referred a lot to how Castalia had done basically a large amount of analysis basically going through line by line what was called WICS which is the Water Industry Commission for Scotland who was actually contracted by the Government of that time to provide basically a number as to what this sort of water infrastructure deficit would look like.Interestingly enough the regulatory impact statement does refer to how WICS said $120 billion of investment is required over 30 to 40 years to maintain replace and upgrade existing assets and enable and provide for needed residential development. The regulatory impact statement quite helpfully goes through also why Castalia basically disagreed with the WICS analysis. Interestingly enough the department and the advice that they provided for the Minister for this particular part of the bill they didn't say that they sided with WICS but they agreed with the $120 billion price tag for these water reforms. Basically the $120 billion for those who are not aware is basically an analysis of how much would need to be spent to get the water infrastructure across the country across all the different councils up to scratch. So I found it really interesting then therefore that later on in the regulatory impact statement officials actually referred to this draft report on policy objectives. It goes to some of the earlier debates within this committee on this part of the bill around what the purpose of this particular bill is. It is set out in clause 3(2)(a) to 3(2)(e) but my question is for the Minister because I couldn't find that draft report online. I couldn't find it in the proactive release that officials have helpfully done on the Department of Internal Affairs web page. I couldn't find that particular report and yet it seems to be such a crucial report because it was January of this year and it was talking about the policy objectives and the proposed process.So I would like to just have a bit of an understanding from the Minister: what is that report? Did he receive that report from Castalia or is that a report that officials received from Castalia? How did that inform clause 3 of Part 1 of this bill? If so why has that not been—and the Minister might not be able to answer this—released? Or actually can he point to where I can find it online—Hon Dr Megan Woods: Or table it.Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: —or table it because for me I'm trying to understand why an independent consultant would provide a draft report to either officials or the Minister in January of 2024 around the policy objectives of these particular changes which pertain to this bill and just basically for transparency's sake where we can find this so we can have a look at the analysis and then compare what the policy proposals were that were put forward to the Minister and then how that compares to Part 3.Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you Mr Chair. Following on from my colleague the Hon Barbara Edmonds of course we're in Part 1 of this bill the preliminary arrangements defining the terms used in the bill and the bill's contents. I think that's one of the important things that Part 1 of this bill does; it really summarises what is in this bill. Connected to the contribution and the questions that my colleague Barbara Edmonds has just asked it's really about paragraph 167 in the regulatory impact statement of the bill which talks about "Due to timeframes it was not possible for the Department to complete a full analysis of the costs and benefits of the four proposals beyond qualitative [assessments]. They should be considered as indicative only."So my questions for the Minister are why are we galloping ahead when we've only got indicative costings? We know that in terms of what we're doing here the rubber is really going to meet the road when it comes to who's going to pay for what and how much it is going to cost. I think this is the right part of the bill for us to be asking these very overarching questions of the Minister given that this is the part of the bill that contains the summary of everything that is in there. What I would like to know is whether that Castalia report that the Hon Barbara Edmonds referred to is there anything in there that attempts to move beyond those qualitative assessments? Are we getting down and into any quantitative analysis of the various options in terms of what is set out in terms of what the bill is seeking to achieve? I think it's really important for this House to know what information exists before we move beyond the purpose in terms of the quantitative work that has been done and if we have the ability to move beyond the indicative costings. Because when we get into the more substantive parts of this legislation as I'm sure you'll appreciate Mr Chair there are going to be a lot of questions about particular councils about particular costings so for the Minister to give the committee an update on exactly what information is there in terms of both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the costings I would be interested to hear.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Thank you Mr Chair and I appreciate the questions from members. The key question here following the dinner break is in regards to this Castalia report which is referred to in relation to this part. The Castalia report was commissioned by the department. I haven't received a copy of it. Castalia also provided advice to councils on modelling as councils did not agree with the efficiency assumptions in the WICS modelling. The previous Government's modelling used a top-down methodology which estimated that between $120 billion and $185 billion would be required at a national level to maintain and improve water infrastructure. Current long-term plans estimate $41 billion.The point in this bill which I think is an important point to go back to is that this bill is around establishing a framework for local government to manage and deliver water services. It will require the territorial authority to prepare water service delivery plans. It's a bottom-up exercise to understand what is actually needing to be done from local government's perspective working upwards rather than what the previous Government was doing which was saying "This is what we think." and pushing it downwards and then taking all those assets away from local communities and the ownership and forcing on local councils their own mandated co-governed model. We are taking a fundamentally different approach through this legislation."