Clark DavidHEALTH (DRINKING WATER) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I move That the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I am very pleased to see this bill take one step closer to completing its journey through the House. The journey began of course with an outbreak of gastroenteritis in Havelock North in August 2016. It's continued through various Cabinet processes. There are two significant tracks: significant longer-term reforms which of course are still being considered and a package of more immediate changes to improve the existing Health Act regime for drinking-water safety and those are the changes that we are considering in this bill. The third reading of this bill of course marks an important step on that journey as we as a Parliament take seriously our responsibilities to the communities we serve to ensure that they have safe drinking-water.This bill builds on strengthens or otherwise improves several features of the existing framework and I do want to touch on four of the more important of these. Firstly the bill removes specific periods that were specified in terms of the gazetting process and now instead of many years for a gazetting process that can be done within a much shorter period of time. Those protections were in place to protect the interests of water suppliers but effectively they were being used as an excuse or a barrier and that meant that water standards haven't been kept up to date as they should be. Those amendments will allow these standards to be updated and revised more frequently. It is important because we need to maintain robust evidence-based water standards. Overseas jurisdictions have progressed the way in which they do this and evidence-based standards are a vital yardstick for measuring the quality—and therefore determining the safety—of drinking water. I expect that a variety of mechanisms including the requirement for the Minister to be satisfied that there's been adequate consultation and the fact that the standards remain disallowable instruments will continue to protect water suppliers adequately so that concern need not arise and the standards will then though be able to be changed in a more timely fashion to ensure we have world's best practice continuing. The second point I want to touch on is the way in which water safety plans are—and will continue to be—a critical part of the framework for the safety of drinking water. The bill's amendments will directly strengthen the provisions relating to water safety plans by ensuring that suppliers comply with the timetable for managing the public health risks associated with their supply. Also sitting with that is the expectation that water suppliers will be expected to manage and control critical points within their ken—and that goes from being what was effectively already an implicit expectation to an explicit one. These changes remain at the centre of a supplier-led approach to water safety that's risk-based. They're developed by suppliers and are customised to the unique standards that affect each supply because water supplies do vary around the country in their nature and make-up. The most recent guidelines developed by the ministry were published just a few months ago and they do take water safety back to best practice and that includes for example the importance of a multi-barrier approach to water safety and supply management. Again this was a characteristic of water-supply management prioritised by the Havelock North inquiry and members will recall that that inquiry made 51 very specific recommendations for the Government to take into consideration and respond to.Thirdly the Health Act 1956 provides the defence where a water supplier has taken quote all practicable steps" to prevent the commission of certain offences. Section 69H of the Act provides a definition of "all practicable steps" and in that there are six components and two of those are raised above the others prioritised. They are given precedence—availability and affordability—over the other four and amongst the other four is the nature and severity of harm. So I think members of this House can see that having the nature and severity of harm ranked below availability and affordability may have led to perverse outcomes at times.I want to particularly thank the Health Committee actually for its work on this. It was the Health Committee that suggested that this definition be rebalanced so that all six components of the definition of "all practicable steps" be given equal weight. That is in the spirit of what we are trying to do with this bill so I want to thank the Health Committee for that contribution. The fourth thing that I want to acknowledge is the work of the Health Committee in progressing two other—what could be taken to be apparently minor but I think are still significant—changes to the bill and that is with clauses 6A and 7A which remove the qualifier "all practicable steps" from two substantive duties in the Act. The effect is that it clarifies that suppliers must ensure they provide an adequate supply of drinking water to each connection and they must comply with the drinking-water standards. Those changes basically set a clear expectation of the threshold regarding two of the most fundamental obligations of water suppliers. As previously noted that defence is available to suppliers under section 69ZZS and that will remain unchanged but what's different is that "all practicable steps" can't be taken as a defence prior to a prosecution. So effectively it can still be used as a defence but only once a supplier is being prosecuted. So while their legal rights haven't been diminished the headline duty is much clearer and people can't hide behind that particular way of doing things. So in total these and the other amendments in the bill and a range of other actions taken by the Ministry of Health district health board public health officers and water suppliers will significantly enhance the effectiveness of the current framework for drinking-water safety. I alluded at the outset of course to the other work that is being progressed by the Government over a longer time frame and in a considered fashion as we look to ensure that we have a modern up-to-date drinking-water regime in place. The regime we have now was world's best practice when it was introduced by the previous Labour Government and of course time has passed other jurisdictions have upgraded the way they do these things and New Zealand has lagged behind. I think that's what the Havelock North inquiry exposed because even in Havelock North the water supply that did poison people was deemed to have met the standard when it was measured in the period before the outbreak. So I think one of the things we can see is that more are achieving those standards over time and while there is a long way to go I think for some populations receiving drinking water it's so encouraging to see places like Lower Hutt places like Mosgiel instituting safer drinking-water for their citizenry and also Christchurch and Napier taking temporary chlorination until they have approved water safety plans in place to ensure that they are making sure that the water is safe for their citizenry until they have more comprehensive plans in place. So finally can I say that this Government is determined to learn and apply some of the hard lessons from that Havelock North outbreak an important part of which are the reforms to the Act contained in this bill. With its passing members of the House will be helping to deliver the safe and healthy drinking-water that all New Zealanders expect and deserve. I do want to thank members across the House for their support and for the constructive way in which they've engaged on this matter. I think we all recognise that the system has fallen short. We all know or those of us that have read the Havelock North inquiry report that it contains an appendix detailing 50 newspaper stories that came out on various poor water across the country in the time between the Havelock North events and the publication of the report. I think many of us as a nation hadn't yet joined the dots to the fact that there's actually something systemically been going wrong in our water supplies. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders every year should not be getting ill from preventable water-borne illness and as a Government we are determined to ensure that into the future we have safe drinking-water. I want to thank members who've supported these measures going through the House across the House because as a Parliament we can work constructively to ensure the health and safety of our citizenry. Thank you Madam Speaker. I commend this bill to the House."