Laban Luamanuvao Winnie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Laban Luamanuvao Winnie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:11868] 
Hon LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister of Health 
: I move  
That the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. The bill has been reported back from the Health Committee which recommended that it be passed with amendment. I thank the committee for its careful and extended consideration of the bill. 
The bill was introduced back in June last year largely to deal with the risk posed to the over half a million New Zealanders receiving water from community drinking-water supplies that do not meet the New Zealand drinking-water standards. The bill builds on the Government’s overall drinking-water strategy but it marks something of a departure from an emphasis on encouraging rigid compliance with standards and represents a move towards a more flexible risk-management approach. At the same time the bill brings in legal duties as opposed to the current situation with purely voluntary standards. With these duties also comes substantial assistance from central government. The Drinking-water Assistance Programme allocates over $150 million of technical and capital assistance to drinking-water suppliers in order to help them to manage the risks associated with their water supply. 
The drinking-water standards were developed for a reason. Most other developed countries have minimum standards in law providing specifications as to what constitutes water that is safe to drink. The New Zealand standards are based on the World Health Organization guidelines. When the water now going to half a million Kiwis does not meet standards it is for a reason—such as faecal contamination. 
The risk from water is manifested in two main ways. First we have the highly visible outbreaks. New Zealand has on average 16.8 water-borne disease outbreaks a year which affect a total of 100 or 200 people. However the much larger problem is the individual cases. Rather than an identified and quick obvious cluster of cases the problem I am talking about here is that of individuals getting sick from their water and often not even realising that water was the cause of their illness. These cases are the iceberg lurking below the surface; they do not attract much publicity but the Institute of Environmental Science and Research estimates that there are 18000 to 34000 such cases in New Zealand every year. The Institute of Environmental Science and Research expects that further work will reveal this to be an underestimate. 
Since I introduced the bill we have had new figures on drinking-water quality. The annual review of drinking-water quality in New Zealand released in January showed that there are still over half a million Kiwis receiving water from supplies that do not comply with standards. Also agreeing with us is the OECD which in April called on New Zealand to bring in minimum standards. Although recognising the recent improvements in the proportion of the public water supply that fully complies with drinking-water guidelines the OECD stressed that further progress would require nationally consistent and legally binding drinking-water quality standards. The Consumers Institute of New Zealand added its voice to the chorus this year by urging that the bill be passed as soon as possible. 
At the same time since the introduction of this bill several events in the real world have underlined the need for action. For example in February there were two separate incidents where sewage leaked into Lake Wakatipu the drinking-water source for one of New Zealand’s premier tourist destinations. This spill came on the back of two other spills in Queenstown in 2004. One of the 2004 spills was of particular concern as it entered the lake about 30 metres from Queenstown’s water-supply intake. Luckily on those occasions the water supply did not appear to have been contaminated but we should bear in mind that it was a sewage spill like this that was suspected to be connected with an outbreak in Queenstown back in 1984 which resulted in an estimated 3500 people becoming sick with some hospitalisations and half of the town’s children being too ill to attend school. It is worth noting that the Queenstown water supply still provides no protection against pathogens such as cryptosporidium. The source of the supply is still a high-risk one. There have been a number of other contamination events around the country since the bill was introduced many of which have resulted in consumers needing to boil their water to ensure its safety. 
Since the bill’s introduction the Health Committee has had a highly fruitful submission process which has resulted in a number of improvements made to the bill. Many local councils that run drinking-water supplies were concerned about the potential for the bill to interfere with their planning processes and priorities under the Local Government Act. I acknowledge in particular the huge amount of work that Local Government New Zealand has put in to examining the bill and working with the select committee to come up with constructive suggestions for improvement. This has occurred not only at a national level but also at a local level where mayors and their councils have made the effort to appear before the select committee and to attend special meetings around the country to work through the issues. 
One of the key amendments recommended by the select committee as a result of this process is an adjustment to the duty on suppliers to take all practicable steps to comply with the New Zealand drinking-water standards. I should note at the outset that this duty in keeping with the bill’s focus on risk management rather than rigid compliance was not an absolute duty in the introduced bill. It did not state that the supplier must comply with the standards; it said that the supplier must take all practicable steps to comply. This echoed the approach used in the Health and Safety in Employment Act which does not state that employers must ensure the safety of their employees; rather they must take all practicable steps to ensure their safety. Accidents happen but an employer or a drinking-water supplier must be prudent. 
The select committee’s amendment gives suppliers more certainty as to what they need to do by saying that if they have a public health risk-management plan and if they are implementing this plan they are deemed to be taking all practicable steps to comply with the standards. This means that a supplier knows in advance what it has to do. 
Another key amendment recommended by the committee is an adjustment to the dates at which suppliers become subject to the bill’s legal duties. The bill as introduced has a staggered timetable. Larger suppliers are generally already meeting the bill’s requirements so an earlier compliance date for them is appropriate. Smaller suppliers need more time so the bill as introduced gave them until 2012 before the legal duties started to apply. Local Government New Zealand was concerned about the compatibility of these dates with its planning process under the Local Government Act. The select committee has thus recommended an adjustment to those dates that will give suppliers between 1 and 2 additional years. 
A further amendment from the committee to which I want to draw the House’s attention would lead to the creation of a special category of drinking-water supply to allow for the special circumstances of rural agricultural drinking-water supplies. The bill as introduced provided flexibility for such supplies to employ efficient solutions. For example if treatment were necessary then the supply could use point-of-entry treatment for each house on the supply. 
I need to touch on another of the committee’s recommendations which is to introduce the concept of affordability as a consideration when determining whether a supplier is complying with the bill’s duties in relation to the drinking-water standards. As I have already said the duty to comply with the standards is not an absolute one; instead suppliers are required to take all practicable steps to comply. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.