Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd just like to echo some of the comments that my colleague Angie Warren-Clark has been making just sheeting home the importance of some of these clauses in Part 1 of this bill because of what happened under the previous Government in terms of just highlighting the lack of monitoring and the lack of oversight and I suspect the undue influence that affordability had when we're looking at weighing up what's affordable versus the basic safety concerns for our community. What this inquiry into what happened in Havelock North did was raise some serious concerns about the way that our drinking-water systems had been managed over that last decade. It had a huge impact on the local community there because with that outbreak of campylobacter around 5500 of the town's 14000 residents were affected and about 45 were subsequently hospitalised and it may have contributed to four deaths. So getting this right is crucially crucially important and this is a Government that's really keen to make sure that this happens.So when we look at clause 4A what we're looking at here is making sure that what we're doing is—when we're taking all practicable steps" how it should be interpreted. Under the previous Act what it was saying was that there was a big emphasis on availability and affordability of any steps that could be taken. So that was given a much higher emphasis than all the other factors that needed to be taken into account and as my colleague Angie Warren-Clark was saying what this bill does is actually put a lot of those factors back on a more equal footing because what it means is that the public health aspects are emphasised as equally. So what the changes that we're adding in mean is that in addition to looking at things like affordability and availability we need to look at the nature and severity of the harm that may be suffered as a result of not doing some steps. It also needs to take into account the current state of knowledge about the likelihood of that harm and the nature and severity that will be suffered as a result of it not being achieved. I think what is absolutely important here is that we basically take steps to protect public health. That is crucial in weighing up what we need to be doing in terms of practicable steps. I think the other thing that is really important in this particular part of the bill is looking at what people can say in terms of—a "get out of jail free" clause almost—affordability. Previously they could just say that it wasn't affordable and there was not really much further detail around that. But what now is required with this bill is that if you're saying that you can't take steps because of affordability then you need to take a full and complete record of that person's financial position so that you can actually get an assessment of what that position is in terms of affordability and then as soon as practicable not more than 28 days after being required to do so by a drinking-water assessor produce evidence that the steps are not affordable—including a copy of those records—and justify to the assessor or the officer why it's not practicable to take those steps. What that means is you need to have much stronger evidence that that is not affordable because what we're talking here is protecting the public health. I think that that's something that—as we've seen as a result of this Havelock North inquiry—was not happening under the previous Government and it's something that our Government is very very keen to address. That's just also emphasising why the subsequent clauses then talk about making sure that that can happen in a much more timely manner in terms of some of the other changes if we want to change those standards. So I think those aspects are very very important in terms of making sure that we protect the public health balance in this equation. Thank you Madam Chair."