Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): As the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee which oversaw this I'd like to report to the House that despite the polarisation of the affordable water reforms the select committee amendments passed unanimously. It shows a level of collegiality and consensus that's not captured in the political debate and media coverage. It is clear that the previous speaker Matt Doocey wasn't actually across the bill which is unfortunate because it would have been good to have a debate about the really detailed and technical aspects of this bill which covers 292 pages.Some of the areas that the select committee worked on together collegially as I said were about making the relationship agreements between water services entities councils and transport corridor managers binding. That was making sure that the binding nature of that underpinned any servicelevel agreements in that there was a prescribed set of mandatory requirements that there was a binding dispute resolution system and that the agreements be signed three months prior to the establishment of the water services entities. It also enabled the Minister of Local Government to step in and prescribe the terms not agreed to so that the relationships would be negotiated in good faith and with a willingness to support the reform system.There were changes to the rural water supplies and I'd like to thank the submitters from the Clutha district in my own electorate of Taieri for giving us plenty of food for thought. The really big area of change was around stormwater. That was big it was significant and I'd really like to acknowledge the Hon Phil Twyford for his hard work and perseverance in this. The Minister that just gave the legislative statement spoke about collaboration. I would like to say the characterisation from my perspective as the chair of the committee added to that collaboration is clarity around responsibility and accountability for those waterways. I'm sure my colleague will speak to that more.The Act now supports urban growth. It requires the water services entities to be responsive to developers via a development code and that's able to be enforced by the Commerce Commission to avoid the chilling effect of protracted litigation. Matt Doocey referred to the pricing but actually as well as enabling geographic averaging to achieve pricing efficiencies there are also added provisions to recognise vulnerable consumers and the fundamental right of all people to have access to clean and safe water.My final comment despite anything you might hear in this House to the contrary is that we made some comments about the process as a select committee. Given that what is technical and what is substantive can be a moot point we ourselves took the approach of creating a schedule of all changes so we could be across absolutely everything. We had the added scrutiny of two independent advisers in this regard. It is my firm view that the officials did their job; we did ours. We made our comments and the system worked as it should have. Let me be very clear for the record that that is what happened nothing more nothing less and I am very happy with where the legislation landed.I want to acknowledge the Hon Nanaia Mahuta for her initial work and the Hon Kieran McAnulty for shepherding it through. I want to thank all the officials for their incredibly hard work and the independent advisers and the committee for their scrutiny of this very technical bill. It was a privilege to chair the committee through this important piece of legislation and I really recommend it to the House.