Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm just going to pick up from the comments of the previous speaker Nancy Lu around nothing being delivered because there are examples in my own electorate of Nelson of exactly that—things being delivered. The repeal of this bill will make it so much harder for our council to deliver improvements in water infrastructure. An example in Nelson is the Saxton Creek upgrade which is about to be completed—a $30 million project that was needed because the stormwater was so deplorable. It was such a small culvert in a significant industrial area that when it flooded a few years ago it caused millions of dollars' worth of damage and the Labour Government invested $7.5 million dollars to bring that project forward and it's about to be completed. It will mean the road where that culvert exists does not have to close when we have heavy rain in Nelson and it will mean that the businesses in that area like our meatworks won't suffer economic loss if we have a heavy rain event.Now the reason I raise that example is because one of the challenges that this legislation that's being repealed was addressing was the fact that it wasn't about councils not wanting to pay it was about councils not being able to pay. I think that was a particular issue that got lost in some of the debate. I think there were some councils who felt that they were being targeted for not having invested. The point I want to put on record is it wasn't about council members not wanting to do that; it was that the system was not designed to enable them to do that because we all know that councils that put up rates to pay for infrastructure they do get turfed out. And so unfortunately as politicians—politicians do act and we all have to acknowledge it at times in self-interest. At election time in those years you would see—Hon Simeon Brown: Is that what you did for the last six years?RACHEL BOYACK: At least I acknowledge it Mr Brown—you would see councils choosing not to invest because they knew that the public wouldn't support it. And so one of the massive challenges we now face is that the repeal of this legislation means we're going back to the status quo. We're going to have supposedly another year's worth of policy development. And one of the mayors I'm talking to doesn't know how this is going to work for the area of Tasman which is an area in my electorate which has got massive challenges coming its way particularly the need for a sewerage upgrade out in the Tasman part of the region. That's going to be expensive. How's it going to be paid for?What I see that is so frustrating is this new Government rather than saying Right we had some concerns around this legislation we need to actually sit down and look at it."—just like with Resource Management Act reform it's: "We're just going to toss the whole thing out." All those years of policy work from independent neutral public servants actually giving us the best tool possible to be able to invest—it's just thrown away. I predict that in three years' time when we come back to an election again we won't have updated legislation that's working. We won't have any new council-controlled organisations. We won't have the investment that we needed but we would have seen ratepayers having a significant increase in the cost of their rates. Because as my colleague Phil Twyford so accurately pointed out the balance sheet separation that would have allowed councils to group together to borrow at a lower rate to invest earlier therefore saving money—there's tools out there that you study if you do accounting at university you can learn about net present value. If you invest now you save money rather than investing later. These were all the things that the reform was designed to do. But there was a smokescreen put up by the new Government—when they were in Opposition—because they just wanted to go after votes. They just wanted to go after votes rather than have an adult conversation about what was best for New Zealand.Now I sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee that looked at the third piece of legislation where we made some changes where we elected to turn four entities into 10. Now it wasn't going to deliver the best outcomes but it was certainly going to deliver better outcomes than the status quo. In my area we would have had Nelson Tasman and Marlborough banded together in order to still deliver a benefit. Now my electorate has suffered significantly from flooding and a huge amount of that was due to poor stormwater infrastructure. In the Tāhunanui Hills there is none—like zero no stormwater infrastructure. So my question to the Minister of Local Government when we get into the committee of the whole House stage is: is he going to front up and actually support the money that's needed for the Tāhunanui Hills? Because it was an election promise from National to help fund this infrastructure yet now they're saying they're not going to do it. So I do not commend this bill to the House."