Burns Brendon: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Burns Brendon: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
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BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I am very please to speak in the Committee stage of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill. What is very clearly behind this bill is a very specific agenda— 
Hon Members 
: Ah! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Yes it is a very specific agenda for the privatisation of New Zealand’s water assets and I will give the Committee two examples one of which is relevant to those noisy members from Canterbury. I will quote from a Canterbury District Health Board document that warns about the consequences of this bill. I will also quote from another document that is not so public from the Minister of Health in respect of this privatisation agenda because this bill raises very serious concerns about not only the loss of local New Zealand control of ownership of our water supplies but also very major risks to public health. 
I specifically refer to clauses 28 29 and 30 in Part 1. The Local Government and Environment Committee received commentary from the Canterbury District Health Board on those clauses. I have to say that in 25-plus years of being in and around public life I have never seen a submission so strongly made in such language explicit with warning to a Government as this submission which was written by the Canterbury District Health Board’s manager of healthy physical environments. In it he warns that “Deletion of sections 125-129 of the LGA effectively removes the specific regulations pertaining to water and sanitary services overseen by an (independent) Medical Officer of Health.” The actions of the Government in taking away the Ministry of Health’s oversight of water schemes as this bill does are as the Canterbury District Health Board states explicitly in its submission precisely the type of action that played a significant part in the Walkerton tragedy. 
Walkerton is a small dairy-farming area in the Ontario province of Canada. A new Government came in promising to sweep away the red tape and the horrendous regulations that were squeezing the lifeblood out of business. It did that. It took away the red tape. The consequence of its actions which included the removal of health department oversight of water schemes was a serious outbreak of E. coli in 2000 which saw seven people die and two and a half thousand people get sick and which cost an estimated $200 million in direct and indirect costs to that province of Canada. Seven people died— 
Hon Member 
: What? 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Seven people died and two and a half thousand people got sick because a Government came in and said it would sweep away the red tape the regulatory restraint which was strangling the lifeblood of business. The consequence of that was to take away health department oversight of the management of water supplies in that part of Canada. That is precisely what will happen here. 
I invite the Canterbury member opposite Nicky Wagner to stand up challenge her district health board—which she likes to snuggle up to sometimes—and tell it that it is wrong and to put it on the record today so that when this happens in Canterbury under this bill she can stand by her record and can tell the board that she was right. Here it is in black and white: the Canterbury District Health Board is telling this Parliament and telling this Government that this bill in removing Ministry of Health oversight of water schemes in a blatant attempt to privatise our water supplies—to put in the profit motive—will lead to a tragedy. It is saying that taking away regulatory oversight of water schemes will put this nation at extraordinary risk. They are not my words; they are the words of the medical officer of health of the Canterbury District Health Board and his team who currently have a role in the oversight of drinking water. My goodness that district health board already has a struggle going on in trying to make sure that our drinking water is safe. It has a Minister of Health—[ 
Interruption 
] Mr Chair! Mr Chair! Mr Chair! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I will give you the call but we are not going to have a barrage of calls. I am quite aware when people are seeking the call and I am not going to have any member yelling at me. If someone continues to do that that member is not likely to get a repeat call. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Thank you Mr Chairperson; my apologies for the volume. This is an issue that deserves to excite the interests of members of the Committee because there are very very pronounced risks for New Zealanders under this bill in terms of the safety of their water. A submission from the Canterbury District Health Board to the committee explicitly states that there are very real risks in taking away the medical and health oversight of water schemes and handing it across in 35-year terms to the private sector. In doing so we will risk doing exactly what happened in Walkerton Ontario. We are risking the lives of New Zealanders by taking away that health oversight. 
Allied to that just a few weeks ago I was able to discover that the Minister of Health has taken an action that I think is involved in and linked to this issue. Until very recently the Ministry of Health had a team that was responsible for oversight of our drinking-water schemes. That has now virtually ended. From a team of five 2 years ago there is now one staffer left in the Ministry of Health providing oversight of drinking water. Instead the Government has awarded a $2.25 million contract—$2.25 million of our taxpayers’ money—to a consortium led by a company called Allen and Clarke which National members opposite were describing 5 years ago as cronies. They were saying that rampant cronyism was at work involving this company. But that has not stopped them from awarding a $2.25 million contract to a consortium led by Allen and Clarke to provide oversight of our core public health function the safety of our water. I see a very strong linkage between that and what we have seen in this bill in respect of taking away at a local level Ministry of Health oversight of drinking water. 
If we put those two things together where are we going? We are going into a system where contracts will be handed over to the private sector for 35 years without at a local level health input and oversight of drinking-water schemes. At a national level as a result of the Minister of Health’s intervention and the awarding of a $2.25 million contract to a consortium led by Allen and Clarke we now have a contracted-out responsibility for what is a very clear public health function. If there is one thing that we as a First World nation should be able to do it is to have some belief that water is safe to drink and currently fewer than one in five New Zealanders are able to be given that assurance. Fewer than one in five New Zealanders are able to be told explicitly that water is safe to drink. That is the statistic in the latest Ministry of Health report— 
Nicky Wagner 
: That is not— 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Yes it is. The 2008-09 Ministry of Health annual survey shows that 80 percent of New Zealanders are drinking water that is assured to be safe—down from 83 percent in the previous year—but one in five or 20 percent of New Zealanders are not given that assurance and do not know that their water is safe because their water either is not tested or when it is tested is found not to be safe. That is the result. 
Nicky Wagner 
: That’s scaremongering. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: No it is not scaremongering. We saw what happened in Walkerton Ontario under precisely the sort of regime that this bill is leading to—precisely. They are not my words. There is the member from Rangitata. You stand up and take a call— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Order! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: —and deny what your local district health board is saying. It was an explicit warning. You go on the record and say this is a nonsense— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Order! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: My apologies Mr Chairperson. The member for Rangitata not the Chairperson should take a call to make sure that the constituents she is currently the member for—somebody else might be their member shortly—hear her put on the record that what the Canterbury District Health Board is saying is a nonsense. She should then put on the record—and I would like to hear the Minister of Health say this as well—that it is her view that it is appropriate to take away the Ministry of Health’s role and hand it to a consortium at a cost of $2.25 million of taxpayers’ funds. 
This consortium includes an outfit called Parsons Brinckerhoff which is an American engineering conglomerate. My supposition is that it is here not just to play a role in the oversight of water through that contract but to line itself up for some nice juicy contracts that will emanate from this bill as we see the creation of 35-year contracts. A generation of ownership is provided for under this bill for our water schemes for our basic right to enjoy safe drinking-water which should be a core public health function.