Pham Lan; Russell Deborah; Brown SimeonLAN PHAM (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair thank you for that. Now I am really noting that we're wanting to move on with the bill. I have one amendment. I've been calling diligently to speak to my final amendment on Part 2 Subpart 1. I'm gonna be really short. It's very short but it's very important so I really want to be able to speak to it to the committee. Because it's really a listen up moment. It's a listen up moment because this could not be more important.CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Do you have the number of the amendment?LAN PHAM: Yes. The amendment is number 66 and it's to do with clause 8A. Now this is about the intention of what the bill should do in terms of allowing all regional councils not just Greater Wellington Regional Council to be part of the planning and decision making on these joint water service entities. Now I acknowledge that the Minister of Local Government has already explained the obvious with Greater Wellington Regional Council being included because they have specific water service delivery responsibilities already. But this is about the intention of the bill being about communities across the board outside of existing territorial authority boundaries.Now why it's so important that regional councils are actually involved in the planning the alternative consultation and potential joint water service arrangements is that we know that councils particularly district city and unitaries swear this oath when they're elected—councillors do—and they are subjected to their oath and then making the best decisions for the citizens in their rohe or their territorial authority boundary. Now why it's so important when we're talking about collective water services that regional councils actually have a voice in this is because it automatically gives the elected member representation to be a voice for the good of the entire region. That is so important.I'm noting a lot of my local government councillors across the Chamber tonight—and knowing that you know councils can be quite narrow in their view and it's tricky to enable them to have a broader view. Now I note that in the bill it says that councillors may take that broader view but to allow regional councils to actually have that voice would be a way to unlock this and unpick this in a really pragmatic way. Wellington Region and Horowhenua District's joint council submission picked this up really clearly when they talked about the impacts and views relating to an entire joint service area—i.e. considerations beyond the council's own district and communities. They talked about how having a broader regional view—which would be the case if we had regional councils able to be part of these processes—would be critical to ensure that councils can fully consider the needs and challenges of the broader regional grouping rather than being bound by making decisions only in the best interests of their councils.I think this is a very pragmatic very clear amendment that we could put forward as a Parliament to really make sure that this bill is in the best position to actually not result in these orphan councils in these decisions that actually leave out certain areas of the country—rather than the collective good. Thank you.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Thank you very much Mr Chair. This is a really interesting subpart of Part 2 of the bill and we do want to sort of go through this particular subpart in a bit of detail. The interesting thing is that going back under Subpart 1 to clause 8 where it says (1) Each territorial authority must prepare a water services delivery plan" and of course the question is well what if they don't—what if they don't—and there has to be in legislation something that compels the performance. But I think one of the interesting things about this is that it seems to contemplate a range of reasons as to why a council might not complete its water services delivery plan and one is that the council kind of just refuses to do it. That would be an extreme case—councils in this sort of country pretty much do comply with the law as much as they are able to—but it also contemplates that councils might not be able to do it and that they are actually going to be in a position where they say "Well actually this is beyond us." I think one of the ways we can see this most clearly is in clause 22 in Part 2 under Subpart 2 in Part 2 of the bill which is the subpart we're discussing now. Looking at that clause 22 it uses a variety of verbs to describe what the Crown facilitator may do. So the Minister may appoint a Crown facilitator and there is a process for doing that. But then there is a description of what the Crown facilitator may do. The Crown facilitator may "assist" the relevant territorial may "advise" the relevant territorial authority or may "assist" again—this is clause 22(1)(a) (b) and (c)—but in paragraph (d) it has the interesting word which is "direct" the relevant territorial authority to prepare a water services plan. So that's a very commanding sort of word. I would like to hear from the Minister in what circumstances really he would expect that a Crown facilitator wouldn't just assist or advise but would actually direct a territorial authority to prepare a water services plan. Now there's a bit of a time frame involved here. We know that the initial legislation says that this water services delivery plan has to be prepared within 12 months of the date of the Royal assent of this bill or such other date as the Minister may specify or whatever and that territorial authorities may apply for an extension on that. I'm just curious as to when a council is sufficiently non-compliant. Is it the point at which they perhaps don't complete a water services plan and they don't apply for an extension or would the Minister perhaps be working with the central government officials to work with the territorial authority to actually assist them to prepare that plan and try to get them over the line? Is the Minister going to wait until the time period in which they could have got an extension is up and at what point do we move from "assist" and "advise" to "direct" and in what circumstances? What is the case? Is it just that they have refused to do a water services delivery plan altogether or is it because some part of the water services delivery plan hasn't been completed? Previously we discussed all the information that has to sit in a water services delivery plan and there's a lot of information there. Would the Crown facilitator get involved in directing when some parts of the water service delivery plan are not involved? So there's a lot of flexibility on this. I'd just like a little bit of a discussion from the Minister as to when a Crown facilitator is appointed possibly against the will of territorial authorities. I can imagine that this might lead to disputes—CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The member's time has expired. Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Local Government): Thank you Mr Chair. Just responding to the question from Lan Pham relating to her Amendment Paper and question on regional councils. I think it's a good question. The issue there—and obviously I dealt with one part of the Amendment Paper before but not the other part.The other part relates to regional councils. We don't support the proposal there as regional councils are regulators and should not be involved in decisions about service delivery. So that's the reason for not supporting that.In relation to the Hon Deborah Russell's questions and comments I've addressed that in prior answers in relation to the fact that there's a broad range of potential examples and circumstances I don't think it's helpful to speculate but these powers are broad and flexible and provide for a range of potential circumstances."