Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker for this opportunity to talk about stormwater waste water and drinking water. Those are the three waters. We're not talking about coastal water or thermal water—different types: fresh vs coastal. We're not talking about different states of water. We're not talking about water ownership. What this bill is is all the water in pipes and treatment stations and what happens to that water once we've used it.Those pipes and those treatment stations are owned and operated and organised by 67 different territorial councils around the country. We've heard from around the House today that there is a problem with the lack of investment in that infrastructure. When you do not invest in infrastructure that deals with waste water we have problems. We had some vivid images of it in the first reading and I won't go into them but we have problems. How do councils fund that infrastructure? Most of it is through rates. It turns out that most ratepayers don't find that voting for an increase in rates on that infrastructure—those pipes; those treatment stations—is something that they're particularly interested in doing. And of course there are 67 of those councils—so many of those councils are small entities. Obviously Auckland Council is a giant one but there are little places little places like Waimate that are not well resourced to make big infrastructure investments. So that is one of the reasons why we have this bill and a suite of bills. It is because Minister Nanaia Mahuta in the Helen Clark Government realised as a Minister that we have a problem in New Zealand with that investment in those very boring pipes and treatment stations.We also have a secondary problem that the ACT member spoke about and that is the regulation of that water. Nanaia Mahuta as a Minister in this Jacinda Ardern - led Government has already put through the legislation establishing that water regulator so that councils—and it will be entities—are checked. Is this water safe; is it not? That regulation was largely missing in the past so we've fixed it.What this bill does—and it's important to note here as well that this is part of a package so that there are other bills coming—is it establishes these four entities that we've heard about. What it doesn't do is change the Resource Management Act. Water allocation is an issue under the Resource Management Act. It's interesting at the moment submissions are open on the Natural and Built Environment Bill which does deal with water allocation and you know water generally because when you need to take water or to discharge something to water you need a resource management consent. That's not what this bill is about; this bill is about when you've got the water or when you're discharging your waste water or stormwater.However we do know that of course there is a relationship between the decision makers who are deciding what sort of treatment station they want with that Resource Management Act function of the safety of our environment. So that is why there's this concept of Te Mana o te Wai in this Water Services Entities Bill because there is a relationship there and it may be that a Te Mana o te Wai statement will say something like: We mana whenua have a preference for waste water being discharged to land; we don't want it to go to the ocean." That is the sort of thing that is relevant then for the owners for the entity to decide "Well how do we invest in our waste-water treatment? What are our decisions going to be?" That is how they interlink and it's really important that we think about that.What else the bill does of course is we know that it sets up the regional representative groups and that is where the mana whenua representation is at. It's equal with the territorial authorities. That's at clause 27(3) of the bill. That body that regional representative group appoints the board. The "Membership of the board" is at clause 57. The Finance and Expenditure Committee thought really carefully about the skill set that that board needs to have. There's a lot of things listed in clause 57. The board has a constitution. At clause 91 you can look at what that constitution needs to contain. Then the board at clause 141 responds to the Te Mana o te Wai statement or statements that have come from the mana whenua in the entity's rohe. What I want to say is that I'm proud to be part of a Government that is clear and tackling difficult complicated problems that are not a quick fix; that are going: "Well how do we invest sensibly into the future of this country? How do we do it in a way that we don't just privatise all of the assets?" We just heard from the member Simon Court about exactly what ACT would do in that role and that's not something that I want to be part of.So I want to say thank you to our brave and courageous Minister Nanaia Mahuta. I want to say thank you to all of the local government representatives who were on the various working groups as this legislation has progressed as the policy has progressed and as the policy and the legislation progresses on the bills that are to come. I want to thank the Attorney-General—not the Attorney-General the Auditor-General; wrong AG!—for considering the changes that the select committee made to really amplify the accountability mechanisms. I want to thank the submitters around the country especially those councils that came and gave their submissions and spoke about their important relationships—highly valued relationships—with mana whenua. Lastly I want to thank the Standing Orders Committee which has now opened submissions for the process of entrenchment. Thank you Mr Speaker."