Hodgson Pete: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hodgson Pete: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4358] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I move  
That the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Health Committee for consideration and that the committee present its final report on or before 20 December 2006. I also request that the Health Committee give particular consideration to the issue of whether schools and other community purpose buildings such as hospitals and public halls that have their own self-supply of water should be required by the bill to be on the drinking-water register or whether they should have discretion to be on it. 
This bill introduces a flexible risk management - based and outcome-focused legislative framework for reticulated and tankered drinking water in New Zealand. In doing so it will update inadequate and limited legislative provisions that are more than 50 years old. This measure will see New Zealand move into line with almost every other developed nation in having a regulatory regime to promote the quality and safety of drinking water rather than relying almost entirely on voluntary mechanisms to regulate the drinking-water sector which is a sector estimated to have assets in excess of $5.5 billion. Colleagues who follow me in this debate will elaborate on the current organisation of New Zealand’s drinking-water sector. 
The need for this legislation arises from the existing provisions that govern New Zealand’s drinking-water supplies to safeguard communities. Firstly and contrary to public perception this bill affects public health because New Zealand has relatively high rates of largely preventable enteric or gastrointestinal disease compared with other developed nations. For example the rate of those diseases in New Zealand is twice that of Britain and three times those of Australia and Canada. Secondly the current state of New Zealand’s drinking-water legislation gives little effective protection or deterrence against a major outbreak of disease due to the accidental or deliberate contamination of urban drinking-water supplies. Such events have occurred in overseas jurisdictions. For example in Walkerton a town with a population of 4000 people in Canada there were seven deaths and 2321 reported cases including 65 hospitalisations resulting from E. coli in the water supply in May 2000. Thirty of those 65 hospitalisations will be on kidney dialysis for the rest of their lives. Another example is in Milwaukee Wisconsin where between 70 and 100 deaths occurred and over 400000 people became sick in 1993. 
The bill is based on a number of premises and assumptions about drinking water that I think should be relatively uncontroversial. The main premise of the bill is that safe drinking water is a basic requirement for a healthy population. Although water can never be made completely safe it is clear that the standard of water in many parts of New Zealand puts too many people at risk of illness. We do not know how many outbreaks of illness go unrecognised. We have high rates of preventable gastrointestinal illness by world standards. Without adequate drinking water the daily health and well-being of a community is compromised. 
The bill assumes that access to safe drinking water is the right of all New Zealanders no matter where in New Zealand they reside. Although almost all people in urban areas have access to adequately safe drinking water many people in smaller towns of up to 5000 inhabitants sometimes do not. They often do not have sufficient protection against the risk of a major disease outbreak of the sort seen overseas and which could occur here unless we institute more proactive management of water. Rural people meanwhile are worse off still in that they often do not have the day-to-day access to adequate safe water that urban people largely take for granted and they have poor protection against a major outbreak of disease. We see the results of that in the higher burden of disease evident within many rural communities. 
Further the bill assumes that safe drinking water is an essential component of New Zealand’s economic health. That was recognised in the Ministry of Economic Development’s infrastructure stocktake which noted poor drinking-water quality in some areas as an infrastructure concern. Furthermore inadequate drinking water poses a very obvious threat to tourism. Many of our important tourism areas are served by the very rural supplies that pose the highest risk of disease. In addition the risk of harm to tourists—as opposed to locals—is greater because tourists are not acclimatised to the water. The damage that cases of individual tourist illness causes to tourism is mild in comparison with the damage and adverse publicity that would result in the event of a major disease outbreak. 
Why is regulation needed at all? Why can a voluntary system not produce the gains that we need? To date the Government’s drinking-water strategy has encouraged voluntary compliance with the New Zealand drinking-water standards and a range of other measures. We have seen a steady improvement in water safety since 1992 when elements of the current voluntary system were first put in place. However the improvement had plateaued by the year 2000 and there has been no overall improvement since then. That means that although 71 percent of the New Zealand population is currently served by water supplies that comply with the standards the remaining 29 percent is served by supplies that are either not compliant or not known to be compliant and with no prospect of improvement. In terms of the voluntary registration of water supplies by June last year the voluntary register recorded 1953 suppliers out of an estimated 2900. Again that is a good result for a voluntary system but it is not adequate if New Zealand’s drinking-water supplies are to be raised to acceptable levels. One can neither investigate a failure in drinking-water quality nor monitor the standard of New Zealand’s drinking water if the suppliers are not known. 
Lessons learned in overseas jurisdictions tell us that effective water management needs to involve multiple interventions at many levels so that if one part of the system fails the others are ready to compensate for the failure and provide back-up. However a universal proactive management system is unlikely to occur from within a voluntary system. 
If enacted in its present form the bill will bring in a regulatory regime that would continue the elements of the current Ministry of Health drinking-water strategy that are currently voluntary but will make them compulsory. For example it would become compulsory for suppliers to take all practicable steps to comply with the currently voluntary drinking-water standards. Suppliers will also be required to introduce and implement public health risk management plans for water supplies that serve more than 500 people. Suppliers will also be required to apply to be included on the register of community drinking-water suppliers. 
In a final note we acknowledge that the cost of implementing this legislation will not be insignificant. However it is worth it and the Government has measures to mitigate the cost. The Government’s drinking-water assistance programme allocates $136.9 million excluding GST for capital and technical assistance to water suppliers and the bill itself contains a number of mechanisms to address and minimise compliance costs to suppliers. 
The Ministry of Health has consulted widely in developing the policy for this bill. In order to remain responsive to the needs of the drinking-water sector the Government has established a technical advisory group that will report back to Cabinet on any issues with regard to the implementation of the new legislation. 
In summary the Government has done much within the current voluntary system to assist suppliers—particularly small suppliers—to improve the quality of their water. However that is now not enough on its own. We now know that the level of improvement we require can be achieved only through a combination of measures including a major overhaul of the legislative framework. I commend the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill to the House.