Williams Andrew: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7181. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First for the South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill. What a lengthy name it is for what is a relatively small water supply set-up. 
I firstly would take exception to the Hon Dr Nick Smith putting us in the ranks of those who would be opposing this bill because he obviously had not heard my previous speech earlier this year when we said that New Zealand First had looked at all the facts of this matter and would be supporting this particular proposal because it did seem to at the end of the day stack up. So that perhaps takes that out of the sails of the Hon Dr Nick Smith who was making out that we were doing otherwise. 
 One of the reasons we supported it was that it did come to our Local Government and Environment Committee and it came quite a number of times. It was thrashed out at length and was sent back to the local council it was sent back to the officials and indeed there were other advisers who came along. We managed to sort of flesh it all out to get some pretty good improvements out of the whole thing because in the beginning there were doubts about some aspects of it and we had some grave doubts. 
I think it started off from the situation where there were concerns from the council that the local member—and this is the member who is part of the self-admiration club of the National Party—had gone along with the chairman of the water company Mr Neville Ardern who happens to be the brother of the MP Shane Ardern and who happens to be mates with the local MP Chester Borrows. Nepotism is alive and well in the National Party obviously as we heard in question time this afternoon—nepotism is alive and well. It was unfortunate the Local Government and Environment Committee was told that there was a little bit of standover tactics from these people. These MPs and the chairman of the water company stood over at this council meeting of the South Taranaki District Council and said: “Well basically if you don’t agree to this if you don’t do this we’ll have it rammed through Parliament anyway and you won’t have a choice in the matter.” 
I think that set off a few alarm bells for members of the committee when we heard that there were elected members of Parliament putting pressure on the local council to comply with their wishes—this included the brother of one of the members of Parliament—or it would basically have its local government rights locally taken away by Parliament. The Hon Nick Smith can sit there smile and say: “Well this is the National Party giving the locals what they want and the locals their opportunity to speak.” It was only as a result of the Local Government and Environment Committee spending a lot of time and making sure that the local people were not actually being walked over by a few heavy-hitting members of Parliament with family members associated with the deal that that was the case. 
In regard to this we were also very concerned that the people were not being asked about it. One of the requirements of our select committee was to get a referendum in place and that was when New Zealand First said we would be prepared to support it—if the local people affected by the scheme who were the users of the scheme and who were in that catchment area of the scheme at least had the right to be asked: “Do you want this to be taken over by your local people or do you want it to be left as is?”. The fact that we were able to get that referendum included in the bill was a major step forward as well. 
We also were concerned when we heard from local iwi who felt that they had not been consulted adequately—some members of the local iwi who submitted to the Local Government and Environment Committee felt that they had been left out of the loop entirely—and again we were somewhat surprised that there had not been adequate consultation. Again we got built into the bill that there would be improved liaison with local iwi. So that was a good outcome. 
I think at the end of the day this is a somewhat unique situation in that the source of this supply comes high up on the sides of Mount Taranaki—Mount Egmont—and comes down into this particular catchment area. It was developed 30 to 40 years ago by the locals who at the time needed water reticulation and irrigation for farms and also water for some of the small dwellings of people in the area. Now there are more than 500 or 600 people who are consumers of the scheme. Therefore it is a unique scheme in a sense in that it is self-contained. It is for the one community and it does not then go on and feed others or link into anywhere else. 
It is a self-contained scheme and it is one where a lot of local money has poured into it from the various farm owners. We were told that a lot of work had been done voluntarily over the years by farmers to keep the pipes and keep the scheme operating. A lot of labour had been put in over the years. The council had also provided at no cost some engineering assistance and expertise over the years so it was a bit of a joint effort on the part of many and some taxpayer money had gone into subsidising parts of the scheme to ensure that it operated. So in that respect it has been a win-win for the community and by returning it to community ownership of the people who are the scheme users then it does become very much a cooperative water scheme which has merit. 
The committee was also concerned in terms of health issues and you will note that in the bill there are also provisions that there must be consultation with the health department in terms of the quality of the water because again we did not want to see a situation where the scheme was not meeting health quality standards. That does raise for the Hon Nick Smith’s benefit again the fact that all around New Zealand local government and local communities for the last 10 or 15 years have increasingly had to meet higher and higher potable water standards for good healthy drinking-water. It has been a big burden on many communities in New Zealand to get their water up to standard. There has been some considerable cost go in all around New Zealand to improve the infrastructure in our water supply systems to ensure that we do have good healthy clean drinking-water. Often Dr Nick Smith will say that councils are spending some outrageous money around the country on all sorts of things. In fact one decent chunk of the money that every year goes out is actually part of the improvement of the water supply around New Zealand which back in the 1980s and 1990s had got into a somewhat dire state. During that period it was very very clear that many water systems around New Zealand needed some major major upgrades and improvements. 
So can I just also commend—rather than the self-congratulation committee of the National committee—all members of the Local Government and Environment Committee on both sides of the committee not just the National ones who like to just congratulate themselves. We all had an input into this and we did I think make some significant improvements to the bill which at the end of the day those people in that South Taranaki area and in the Cold Creek rural water supply area will benefit from. It was a good outcome for all.