Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): The ACT Party engaged constructively with the Government and with officials in the Department of Internal Affairs back in 2020 before the last election when the proposal for the reform of the way water infrastructure is funded financed and delivered was first raised. At the time when I received a briefing from Department of Internal Affairs officials—that was before I was even elected to Parliament as a representative for New Zealanders—the proposal made some sense. But at that time back in 2020 officials never mentioned co-governance. They never mentioned compelling councils to hand over their assets; they never mentioned the extraordinary cost now estimated at $3 billion for delivering this reform; and they never mentioned that they were about to start some kind of culture war between the councils in the regions of New Zealand and a whole bunch of other people that this Labour Government promised would be given rights and interests in water infrastructure assets—that is iwi Māori. These reforms as proposed sounded OK; as delivered by Labour they have been an absolute disaster. That is why New Zealand needs the ACT Party: practical policy solutions for people. I'm going to outline what they are but first let's have a look at the problem. The problem that this bill tries to solve is the lack of funding and financing for infrastructure whether that's renewals asset management and maintenance on existing networks. When you look at some parts of New Zealand the age of the assets is well over 40 years old. And the thing is concrete or clay pipes in the ground particularly in a country like New Zealand with sensitive soils and high rainfall—they don't last as long as maybe they do in very very stable geology so we do need to do regular maintenance. A lot of councils didn't do it. Why didn't they do it? Well I mean maybe one reason is because Labour in a previous iteration gave councils the power of general competence—some people might say the power of general incompetence. Because if they are going to be allowed to focus on painting rainbow-coloured pedestrian crossings on the road or investing ratepayers' scarce and precious funds on convention centres instead of fixing the underlying pipes sewage treatment plants and all of these things—in Wellington they don't even have water meters in residential properties so residents don't even know how much water they're using and neither does the council. Maybe that explains why there's drinking water running down the road and losses amount to 30 percent of the water delivered from the dams to the network. Maybe Labour is to blame for the problem with three waters and it goes back well prior to this Labour Government.Funding and financing—well where would the money come from? Well under this model it's going to be apparently borrowed and lumped onto water users. Because the thing is it doesn't matter what the solution is somebody has to pay to catch up with all the deferred maintenance and to provide for growth because if we want to grow up in our cities if we want to live in fun cities where more people live closer to transport infrastructure closer to town centres and in higher-density communities then that infrastructure is very very expensive. Building enormous stormwater and waste-water collection systems in our cities is much more expensive than building them in greenfield areas but there is a way to do it.Then we come to quality assurance. Who's going to make sure that the drinking-water quality is delivered and that the outputs from stormwater and waste-water discharges are acceptable? And who's going to assure that actually the investment in infrastructure whether it's maintenance or for growth meets the needs of communities and actually meets the targets or the growth plans set out in local government's regional plans district plans and spatial plans? Well we don't know. I mean the water quality thing has been partially sorted by Taumata Arowai but let's see where they get to. What did Labour propose? Divisive co-governance: allocating seats on regional representative groups to create the most complex governance strategy ever devised. Te Mana o te Wai is a concept which puts the spiritual health of water—channels gods from one particular culture in New Zealand channels their energy and gives the task to decision makers to make decisions about water quality and infrastructure based on spiritual and animist concepts. Nowhere else in the developed world would any Government try to do that. But unfortunately this is not just a problem caused by Labour. Back in 2014-15 Te Mana o te Wai was proposed by a previous Government. And look if someone comes along to my office and says Hey there's some concepts here we'd like to write into law; we'd like to get some policy up; we'd like to recognise that iwi Māori for example or Māori in general might feel that they're connected to their gods spiritually and that water is part of that. We'd get that into legislation make them feel better." How's that going? How's that going? Because you cannot make decisions about infrastructure and water allocation referring to a concept that is essentially spiritual and animist. There's no country in the world that does that; that's what Te Mana o te Wai does. It's flowing through to resource management policy freshwater consenting all around the country right now—Mark Cameron: Freshwater farm plans—make sense of that one.SIMON COURT: Freshwater farm plans even include Te Mana o te Wai. This country is at a crossroads. We either go down a route where decision makers people using resources are forced to consider metaphysical concepts like Te Mana o te Wai—a spiritual life force mauri—or we can just focus on delivering good infrastructure and drinking water to people in communities that need it. [Knocks glass of water] Whoops! Just like that.So what would ACT do? What would ACT do? We need better three waters infrastructure including in the House! What would ACT do? Well it's quite simple. We would solve the funding and financing problem by incentivising councils to not just sign off consents and not just sign off consents for new builds but also incentivise them with cash. That is by returning $1.2 billion per annum we forecast from the GST collected on new builds back to councils.Now the Minister this afternoon—this morning sorry; I mean it's actually still yesterday according to House time. The Minister stated this morning in the House that $1.2 billion a year wouldn't go anywhere near to closing the infrastructure deficit. Well let's apply the same logic this Government has which is if you can borrow against revenue potentially councils or whatever entity comes next can borrow $4 billion to $6 billion a year based on the leveraging allowed for under the water services reforms. So over 30 years that equates to about the same amount that Labour proposes: $120 billion to $180 billion. But ACT would make sure those councils or entities have $1 billion to $1.2 billion a year in revenue coming back from the GST on building and that would help cash flow and allow that debt to be raised.Then of course there's the opportunity for large-scale land developments to enter into public-private partnerships through other revenue-generating opportunities which could include putting targeted rates on properties or simple things like putting a water meter outside somebody's house or business and charging them for the water they use to raise revenue. That's really constructive practical policy. Of course rather than following the prescriptions in the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill or any of the other legislation Labour has proposed which enshrines divisive co-governance over infrastructure assets ACT would get rid of that. As per the amendments we tabled last night we'd say that in fact if councils are going to have so-called ownership in these assets they should be given at least one share per 50000 of residents. They should be able to vote on or off any representatives to water services entities or council-controlled organisations. They should be able to form their own voluntary associations with whichever councils or other entities they wish to. All of this is ACT's plan. We look forward to implementing it."