Belich Camilla; Brown SimeonCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. I would just like to follow up on a few points that the Minister of Local Government has raised in his responses to some of the questions asked by others in the committee. Kind of covering two areas the first thing was just to follow up on some of the comments he's made around employment. The Minister responded that we need to look in the mirror around redundancies because in fact the Labour Government was responsible for some redundancies. Of course I would proffer to the Minister that was the case. The point is really the advice he received around employment which he hasn't answered and treating those that are employed with dignity not the fact of the redundancies. In a previous reply he mentioned the effect of clause 15 in relation to the chief executive position and he said that was in fact clear that that would be the position due to that clause.I then follow that up with a question in relation to clause 17 which hasn't been addressed: if what the Minister has said in relation to the disestablishment of the chief executive is correct then doesn't that mean that clause 17 is redundant? Because it simply states that existing contractual obligations continue to exist despite the passage of this Act which would seem to me a truism and an unnecessary clause to contain within this piece of legislation. So I'd like to ask the Minister whether he's actually received any advice on that particular clause and why it is in fact in there if his response to the previous issue is in fact correct.The other major issue that I wanted to discuss is in relation to Auckland which is where I live and which is the subject of Subpart 2 which we are discussing today. In Auckland there are a number of issues with water quality that won't come as news to anyone in this House. One of the issues that I've dealt with most in my work as an MP has been issues around Hobson Bay and there's an incredibly active group of people working on water quality in Hobson Bay. The group is called Hapua Thrive and they've done a lot of amazing advocacy with MPs around the House on the terrible state of their waterways—when you walk around the coast there all you can smell at certain times of the year is human excrement and it means it's unsafe and unusable a lot of the time.One of the things that Auckland Council through Watercare which is the existing structure that we have—and there's been a lot of praise of Watercare during the debate on these water reforms the fact that Watercare exists and is you know well organised and has done things under previous councils under the leadership of Phil Goff and instituted things like the Central Interceptor to deal with these water quality issues.Now the Central Interceptor is a huge investment in infrastructure in order to deal with some issues surrounding waste water but the question I have is: how will the Minister with his reforms which I believe we're allowed to discuss because he has talked about Local Water Done Well in his previous response to a question—how will Local Water Done Well when implemented actually address some of the issues for waste water and the problem that we have with waste in Auckland? How will it in fact ensure that additional spending above what has already been spent—huge amount of investment into the Central Interceptor which is still not sufficient to deal with the problem of waste water. This is one of the wealthiest communities in New Zealand and they are well organised and they have strong advocates and they are unable to organise to the extent to get this addressed. They have an active local MP who you know well—David Seymour—he comes to their meetings but there is no result on the horizon to allow people in Auckland to be able to enjoy Hobson Bay and no answer that the Minister has been able to give on how his proposal Local Water Done Well would actually address this important safety infrastructure and arguably human rights issue in Auckland.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Thank you Madam Chair. There's been a number of questions. Ingrid Leary was asking around mixed-ownership rural schemes. Many of these ownership schemes opposed integration into the last Government's prior reforms precisely because the schemes have had private owners over many decades for a range of purposes including stock water and so many of them will be quite pleased they're not having to be part of the last Government's mega-entities co-governed bureaucracies. But of course Taumata Arowai will still continue to play a very important role in regards to drinking-water standards.Deborah Russell has been asking a number of questions in relation to Northland and of course our plans and our policies which have been announced will deal with those issues in terms of what local councils will be putting forward and there's more information that we released yesterday on those questions but it's obviously not in the bill.In terms of Camilla Belich's questions in regards to the redundancy provisions the department did have independent legal advice including employment law advice in the development of provisions relating to the disestablishment of the Northland and Auckland entity. Again I remind the committee there was only one individual actually employed who was the CEO of the entity. Clause 17 is a general clause; it is a due diligence clause to ensure all matters are covered when disestablishing a statutory entity.