Uffindell Sam; Rurawhe AdrianSAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a real privilege to be able to stand here on the last sitting day of the House and talk on this matter. We're talking a lot about throwing stones and other people fixing it. I think this Government has been throwing a few stones but they've mostly been going straight up in the air and landing on top of New Zealand and by the way it's looking as though it will be the National Party that will have to come in and fix everything up. But we are ready—we are ready to do that. This bill is something that we will have to fix as well and we will do that by repealing and replacing three waters. Hon Kieran McAnulty: What with? SAM UFFINDELL: It's good to have the future local government Minister in the House so let me talk through what we are looking at in this. We definitely see this bill as something that we will get rid of because what this does is it builds on the three waters legislation that went through the House unceremoniously a couple of weeks ago. This will look to create an Auckland-style Watercare bill. There is huge transitional uncertainty in the way it will work. We expect this to create more costs and ultimately the mega-entities are going to charge those to ratepayers. We know that this is going to result in some of those costs being passed on through higher rents and that is going exacerbate—Anna Lorck: It's going to keep costs down—keep costs down. SAM UFFINDELL: —what we already have in New Zealand which is a higher cost of living crisis here Anna Lorck. This bill is only going to increase it—and you'll be happy that I've got your name into Hansard again today. Now we see here that this is just a—and we've seen it right through this bill. There's been a complete lack of transparency from this Labour Government. We've seen the bill come in a couple of weeks ago—Kiri Allan is looking at me quite unamused at the moment but that's all right. We have seen a lack of transparency and the two bills that have come in in the last week have been really rushed through. Numerous more clauses have been brought in and we've seen it—I'm not sure what's going on to my right here. I'm glad my colleague has found her notes. But this bill is another slap in the face to democracy from an increasingly frankly out-of-touch and arrogant Labour Government. We had 88000 submissions on this bill and most of them were disregarded and I expect that my five minutes of talking away here will be as well. But we are very strong that we are against this. Everyone on that side of the House is talking about a lot of fear—you know: We have water that is completely unusable." Well frankly in my electorate of Tauranga we have excellent water because we have invested heavily in it over the years. We don't have a council at the moment unfortunately. That hasn't helped and we'd like to get them back.Hon Kieran McAnulty: That's right!SAM UFFINDELL: So Mr McAnulty perhaps when you're the new Minister next year you can help expedite local body elections in Tauranga. But we have done a really good job with our water and to have that taken away from us and put into four mega-entities in Wellington is not going to help us. It's not what we want. I was just on a call before I rushed down to speak on this bill and it's certainly not what the people I was talking to in the South Island wanted either. I'm really concerned about where we're heading with this because you've got mega-entities trying to get in touch with what is happening on the ground. We talked earlier a little bit around what the investment would have to be to ensure that our water infrastructure stays up to date and I do acknowledge that that is ultimately what you guys are trying to achieve on that side of the House. I don't think that what you're doing through this is really going to get that feedback mechanism from local and regional New Zealand into the mega-entities and I think there will be opportunities in investment missed there. But I think that a lot of this has been run on fear and I think that the Government has run a strong fear campaign as they did—and they've really seen it work for them over the last three years but I think New Zealanders are slowly waking up. But that's pretty much the only trick that they've got because it's certainly not on delivery it's certainly not on working for New Zealand and it's certainly not on working for lower and middle class New Zealanders who are getting increasingly hit by a cost of living crisis. They are going to get further hit when more costs are passed on to them by people who now are being billed by the mega-entities. Are they still going to get billed by their local councils for water services? We don't know around that one. Are they going to be double-dipping on that? There are going to be significant costs there. There is a lack of transparency around that and there is significant uncertainty and I am very happy to be able to stand up here and say that I condemn three waters and that we will repeal it. Mr Speaker thank you. SPEAKER: Shanan Halbert—five minutes."