Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. Again it's my pleasure too to stand in support of the Gore District Council (Otama Rural Water Supply) Bill. In contrast to what my colleague Ian McKelvie has said about this being contentious I disagree with you sir. I think this is a very non-contentious bill and I think we're seeing that in the tone of the speeches here today where this is actually quite a common-sense way of finding a solution to a problem that has existed for a long time—that is who actually does own the assets that serve the water supply users? I guess when things happened back in the 1970s—we're talking nearly 50 years ago that this particular scheme was set up—it was built as Liz Craig has said because of a combination of things. In very typical rural style they lumped together some local labour some cash a Government subsidy and a council loan and together they pulled together the scheme. But back in those days we weren't probably as tight as we needed to be about who actually did own the assets so here we are today. I want to commend Mark Patterson as well for sponsoring the bill. I think local bills are a much-unused tool in the Parliament. For that reason I am encouraging my local councils to pull together some local bills and I certainly look forward to cross-party support when they come into the House. The Gore District Council has maintained and taken care of the day-to-day operations of this particular scheme but the governance of the scheme has actually been managed by the community group. So when the time came to sort this all out my good friend Mayor Tracy Hicks and his councillors at the Gore District Council pulled together the process that was required to enable this local bill to be here today and that did involve talking with the community and there was certainly the consultation that is required as a matter of compliance with the Local Government Act 2002. But the reason that this one has had to come through for special legislation is—as we've heard today—that under sections 131 and 135 of the Local Government Act a council can divest its assets for a local water scheme provided there are less than 200 users and of course this scheme the Otama Rural Water Supply scheme is bigger than that. So this has required special legislation. Under section 130 of the Act the council cannot divest its assets so it must have special legislation to support that transfer back to the community. I know that there are other ways that councils can sort these things out. I was involved in a similar dilemma of having nine council water supplies in the Westland District and they ranged from Haast up to Fox Glacier and Franz Josef. There was Harihari Whataroa Ross Hokitika Kūmara Ōtira and a couple of community schemes as well—Ōkārito. But the one that taxed us most was in Hannahs Clearing in South Westland where the water was particularly bad and to get to it a suitable drinking-water standard required a huge amount of treatment and chemicals. The community didn't want that and besides it was extremely expensive so the solution that we came up with for that particular community was to actually close down the water supply. It turned out to be cheaper for us to buy every one of the users a water tank and hook them up to a rainwater catchment system. The council funded that and the users repaid the loan for the water tanks back to the council through their rates. So that was a very casual and localised solution to what could have been a very expensive problem. I think one thing I would like to note about this particular local bill is that it's not about the water; it's actually about the assets. I just note that when I was reading through the bill I saw that it talks in the provisions of the bill about the assets that will be divested back to the community. It may just be terminology but it doesn't actually include the word pipes" and I just wonder whether the phrase "gravity and pressure mains" is a substitute for those words. But I do look forward to the bill being discussed and I have pleasure in commending it to the House."