Bayly Andrew; Cameron Mark; Webb DuncanANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you. I love that expression ripping off customers" that the Minister's just used. Well that was my point. Why would they rip off their customers? Because they're owned by the customers that control them. There is no commercial incentive to rip your customers off. So that was my point earlier but we didn't get a definition on that.In terms of timing the regulatory period—obviously we have this information-gathering period which basically takes three years and then we move into the next period which can't be any longer than six years. Why is the information-gathering process expected to take so long? Because obviously that's delaying some of the other types of regulation that you might expect to come into play but it seems to be a very long period of time to capture the information. I take the point—and the Minister is going to stand up I have no doubt and say "Oh they're brand new entities blah blah blah." But all councils have been required to have asset management plans. They'll have all that sort of stuff that they can pass across. I'm just intrigued why the Government thought that the information disclosure component—the first part of the regulations—is going to take so long. So it'd be helpful for some insight on that.MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. Minister Webb could I please bring your attention to Part 1 clause 8 and reading verbatim if I may: "In [the] Act unless context otherwise requires drinking water infrastructure services—(a) means … [abstract] storage treatment transmission or transportation". I'm trying to square away in my mind in the sphere of the Commerce Commission after the early preliminary information gathering period of time and the state of the assets quite how transportation plays out in terms of the role of the Commerce Commission in its capacity as a regulator to determine the health—and I'm trying to figure out the right wording here: the health of the infrastructure in transportation of drinking water. Now what does that look like? How wide will that be in terms of what the role of the Commerce Commission is—means obviously and we can canvass it: "treatment transmission or transportation". Well how wide is the scope going to be in terms of the transportation of mechanised infrastructure in terms of water infrastructure that's to do with transportation? I mean how wide do you want to go?Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Just to note Mr Bayly talked about ripping off customers and it's not impossible for example that an entity might sort of gold-plate infrastructure or even gold-plate—and may well over-invest or in fact invest in their own office premises or otherwise use their assets in an ineffective manner.In terms of why does information gathering take so long I think Mr Bayly is over-optimistic about the quality of the information that's out there already. If anything this process has shown that one of the critical failures across some local bodies is that they don't actually know the quality of their own infrastructure and essentially the extent and nature of it.In terms of transportation now that's an example of the drafter being rightly flexible in their approach trying to make sure that they're not constraining the entity in the way they move water from one place to another. Transportation could conceivably be through pipes; it could also be perhaps captured by transmission. There are other situations where water might be transported in fact by a motor vehicle. But the fact of the matter is it's a definition which is seeking to capture the movement of water however that entity might choose to achieve it."