Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you. I'm pleased to speak in support of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill which the Green Party is supporting. Of course as others have noted it does arise out of the Havelock North inquiry. That inquiry had about 51 recommendations and this bill is implementing some of the most urgent of those. It is a significant step towards improving the safety of our drinking water.Because those 5000 people got ill in Havelock North with gastroenteritis and the outbreak there was associated with at least four deaths this has really highlighted as Mr Doocey noted that we can no longer be complacent about drinking water in New Zealand. I think anyone who's done a bit of reading around this topic would understand that New Zealand has got one of the highest rates of gastroenteritis in the developed world from food and water-borne illnesses. Back in 2007 the Ministry for the Environment estimated that that really high rate of water-borne diseases was costing New Zealand $25 million annually and I'm sure it's increased quite significantly since then.So the bill in removing the requirements for those long periods of consultation—three to five years—and prior to making any changes to the drinking-water standards is highlighting that if those changes are needed they should be able to happen much more quickly. It also implements another of the inquiry's recommendations about clarifying that suppliers who are required to prepare water safety plans must include timetables to implement the measures in those plans to mitigate the risks to drinking water associated with that supply. It also streamlines the process for appointing drinking-water assessors.While the Havelock North inquiry noted that the water supply had been contaminated by sheep faeces that had been washed into a bore after heavy rain it didn't deal to any comprehensive extent with the whole issue of how we can better protect the sources of our drinking water. That's another piece of work that this Government under Minister Parker's leadership is embarking on.Under the last Labour Government back in 2007 there was the development of our National Environmental Standard for Sources of Human Drinking Water. There was a users' guide produced that went along with those national environmental standards but that has been in draft. It was in draft for much of the last decade and for me the fact that it was never finalised by the Ministry for the Environment highlighted that the Government was not giving enough attention to protecting drinking-water sources by ensuring that regional councils controlled land uses like agricultural intensification which had the potential to contaminate water sources and the sources of the supply.We saw in Carterton—DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's very interesting but can you actually focus on the bill and what's in the bill.Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. So that piece of work is also happening. That work has been accelerated and that relates to the wider work that we need as well as this small bill. I'm sure that the select committee when it gets to consider submissions on the bill will hear submissions that don't relate just to these specific points but to the wider context of how we protect the sources of our drinking-water supply because water is a bigger issue. We have cities overseas which protect their supply by protecting the activities that happen in the catchment.So this is a small bill but by making sure that we are progressing some of the most urgent of the Havelock North inquiry recommendations it is a step towards reducing our really severe rates of gastroenteritis and ensuring that our populations are healthier and that they can have more confidence in the provision of water supply by local authorities. The Havelock North outbreak really undermined public confidence with people buying bottled water because they didn't believe that what was being delivered through the pipes at the time was safe and it wasn't. But as others have noted there is a lot of other work being done around the Three Waters and I suspect that the select committee will end up getting views on that. But I congratulate the Minister of Health for progressing this bill. Thank you.