Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a great pleasure to speak on the Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The irony that has just gone before in the previous two speeches had to be something to behold. Actually to the Māori Party speaker on Māori rights and relationships with water every culture has had a relationship with water; it is not unique to anyone else. Actually we're a country of New Zealanders. It's not a two-lane Parliament; it's a multi-lane Parliament. It's a 123-lane Parliament at the moment. We all have our rights and we have responsibilities when it comes to water and all things in New Zealand and I think to say otherwise is to be actually quite one-track. I won't go any further than that. Actually I think it's disrespectful to everyone else in this House.On top of that we had Lan Pham from the Green Party for a start who said we've got to get away from this what's in it for me" mentality on these water services bills. Well I'll take the member back to August 2023 when the Green Party had voted against the first two readings and in the committee of the whole House stage on the previous Government's three waters legislation. They said "What's in it for me?" When they got what they wanted they voted for it. So I just remind you be very careful what you say in this House.Then we got quite back to Genesis with Steve Abel. I like that. That was a good analogy Steve. I appreciate that but I don't agree with his conclusions I'd have to say. Ultimately this bill is about common sense. Actually just to my right the Hon Simon Watts here the genesis of local water done well sits right there with that man. He came up with this great plan to bring good sense to this argument to this actual issue and do away with co-governance. Stop Three Waters was actually a gift to everyone against the Government. It was a real lightning rod for opposition to the Government. Why? Because people care deeply about things that they contributed to they made. The local water assets were theirs and they were going to be taken away from them and that's why it was such a contentious issue. It was very simple at its base as to what drove that opposition.I had people in my office really upset about this who've never ever taken a position on anything political in their lives but that was an absolute border line for them. The reason that the Government kept it going for I do not know. But anything that starts out with a premise of centralising I'm always deeply suspicious of. It usually ends up costing a lot more. It will be run a lot more poorly than it would be otherwise and that's what we saw. How could you possibly spend $1.2 billion on a policy and that was all it was? I think it's unbelievable but they deserve a gold medal for bad work on that and by a very large margin.This brings control of local water back to locals. It allows for collaboration and I've got five councils in my electorate and I know they're already actively talking about collaboration where it suits them and that's what it should be—up to them if they want to do it. Others don't. I think last week really topped it all off: Local Government New Zealand having their great get-together in Wellington all talking about how wonderful they are and then the water pipes in Wellington burst right outside a very expensive "nice-to-have" where depreciation money that could and should have been spent on assets went to a "nice-to-have" edifice for the council rather than being spent on maintaining the pipes and the infrastructure. This policy will make sure that money that's taken from those assets by way of use charges goes back to those assets and not to anything else. So with great pleasure I commend this bill to the House."