Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): As a civil engineer I'm really interested in how to solve the problem of three waters—ageing water infrastructure and how we connect pipes to land so that people can build houses and communities. Now the Government has emphasised disease outbreak—E. coli in Havelock North. That was primarily a regulatory failing. It was public health agencies and a regional council that failed to protect the water source that resulted in people getting sick and tragically some dying. But that problem's largely solved. The Government has established Taumata Arowai a water regulator. In fact the chief executive Bill Bayfield told Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB that he had all the tools he needed in his tool box to make sure that councils delivered safe drinking water.Then we come to the environmental problem. We've all seen images of sewage pipes breaking in the Wellington CBD; Auckland beaches with no swim" signs. Communities deserve to know when they go down to the beach for a swim to have a picnic or let the dog play and that they shouldn't have to worry about the quality of the water.That brings us to the real problem to solve: water infrastructure funding and financing. How do we secure the funding and financing to close the infrastructure gap and to make sure that we can service land for housing growth to deliver those affordable homes that communities need? Instead of addressing this problem at a local level what the Government has proposed is absolutely ludicrous. It's a race-based co-governance model that forces all councils to join even though the Government promised once it was voluntary having already taken a decision at Cabinet that it would be compulsory. That is how you lose the trust of the electorate lose the trust of the community. It's a risky and doomed to fail experiment. These new water corporations give effect to a Treaty principle expressed as Te Mana o Te Wai which says that believe it or not the health of the water is more important than the health of the people or the communities and the economy that that water serves. Legal action is currently under way to determine whether the so-called ownership model—that deceptive concept proposed by this Government which says that councils continue to own the assets even though they lose all control over them—a court is being asked to decide whether this is a fallacy or whether we should be expected to take on this new concept of ownership where you don't get to control it. It's like a car thief telling you "Look I've got your car but you still own it." Yeah right! Communities and private suppliers value their assets and they do not appreciate Government coming along and telling them that they're being taken off them. The three waters upgrades over the next 30 years could be the largest and riskiest costliest programme of investment ever undertaken by central and local government so you'd think they would have put a tried and tested governance model in place. Instead it's that race-based co-governance model that we've heard again and again that this Government wants to apply to every policy. At the same time that the Government imposes this untried and risky governance model they've loaded up these new water entities with debt while calling it a better-off funding package for councils. Better off for whom? Not taxpayers not ratepayers and certainly not water users. ACT says New Zealanders deserve to be heard and ACT has listened. That's why ACT would repeal the three waters legislation and we would return these assets to local community ownership. We would also ask councils to enter into voluntary shared services agreements to get the benefit of scale when it comes to procurement design and delivery. ACT would allow councils the regions and local and central government to establish long-term 30-year partnerships to prioritise the infrastructure based on where the regions say it's needed—not centralised bureaucracies. We would allow for public-private partnerships to draw in that extra funding needed. KiwiSaver iwi organisations and ACC all want to participate. We'd expand the exemption from domestic supplies so that up to 30 water users could be free of these regulations. ACT's plan would deliver the funding the infrastructure but without the division and the distrust.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."