Blue Jackie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Blue Jackie: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12152] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I stand to oppose the third reading of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill along with my other colleagues in the National Party. We believe that the aim of the bill is commendable and laudable. National does support the right for safe drinking water. We believe that water is essential to life but we do not consider that this bill is the mechanism to achieve this. 
One of the concerns the National Party has is the cost this bill will impose on the ratepayer and local rural communities. Local communities were very concerned that they wanted to be consulted and they felt they had not been consulted or heard. They were concerned that they should have been consulted over the level of risk they would be prepared to take. It is all about a balance between risk cost and benefit. Local government was up in arms over the costs and the burden to local communities. The costs were exorbitant. The Health Committee heard of wide-ranging costs from $50 million to up to $275 million—and yes we did hear from Local Government New Zealand that the cost could be as high as $800 million. There were wide variations and when there are wide variations in cost we know something is fundamentally wrong. Affordability has not been factored into this bill nor has the effect on the very small suppliers who are almost doing a community service to their local communities. In the face of such bureaucracy and burden of cost what will they do? Basically they will turn off the tap and a community service will be lost. 
The committee had councils coming to us one after the other with examples of the costs they would be expected to uphold over their plans. There was the Mackenzie District Council: $3 million over the course of its plan; Ashburton District Council: $10 million—these are not small sums—Clutha District Council: $20 million; Central Otago District Council: $5 million. These are not small sums for small communities to sustain over a period of time. We were told that the vast majority of water suppliers gave excellent quality of water and that it was just a small minority of suppliers that needed to clean up their act. Where there is a clear link between drinking water and infection we support firm action being taken and the situation being remedied immediately. 
Local government was interesting. Local authorities still—after all the discussion and the amendments—remained principally opposed to this bill. They are the defenders of the community and surely one would think that if after all the discussion and the consultation they felt the bill was in the right frame—that it would support their communities and would not be burdensome—they would support it. They remain principally opposed and that speaks volumes. The local communities wanted to be consulted. They felt they had not been consulted. They wanted a local solution for their local water-supply issues. 
The select committee had an example from the Kaipara District Council which started off its statement by saying it supported safe drinking-water but not the safest gold-plated drinking-water. In other words it wanted the committee to see that there was a balance between risk benefit and cost. I did not write that; it was the Kaipara District Council that wrote it. The council wanted safe drinking-water but it did not necessarily want the gold-plated version. It was all about assessing risk with benefit and cost. It felt the cost was over the top. It felt that the community’s wishes had not been heard and had been overridden that the increased cost would not deliver recognisable outcomes to the community that the nation’s costs should not have to be met by the ratepayers and that the one-size-fits-all-policy was not suitable and did not fit with the community. It felt very strongly that the current proposal would add significant cost. It summarised by saying that it was concerned that no adequate cost-benefit analysis had been undertaken and that the cost of this legislation could easily exceed any benefits. 
Then we had another example from the former Mayor of Rangitikei who gave a personal oral submission. He was very surprised when he read in August 2004 that his own community had the highest rates of water-borne and drinking-water disease. He was very alarmed by this as he had been a former mayor of the community. He set about investigating. He phoned the New Zealand Water and Wastes Association to get information from the Ministry of Health and from the district health board he got information that showed that Rangitikei’s water-borne diseases were five times the rate of the rest of the nation in 2003. This surprised him because he was the mayor at the time and no one had told him there had been an outbreak or an epidemic. Apparently when he delved more closely he found that the outbreak had occurred at a Marton kindergarten and that 12 children were involved. He thought that was a little odd because in fact there were five kindergartens that had the same water supply. He said in his submission that he smelt a rat and investigated further. He went to the kindergartens and found that not one of the kindergartens could remember an outbreak. He went to the local medical centre which also could not remember an outbreak. He went all the way to the Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd which reluctantly admitted that it investigates information on only half of the notified outbreaks. In other words the reliability of information stored at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research is dubious. 
In fact the evidence of water-borne disease outbreaks was very interesting. We had a lot of comments that campylobacter is the main culprit. Well it is not. Campylobacter is often related to food-borne illnesses. It is often related to chicken and often is not a water-borne disease at all. The Institute of Environmental Science and Research presented information to us. It gave us a whole document that looked at 23 case studies over the last 20 years. In fact when we look at the last decade we see that only six of those 23 cases occurred in the last 10 years. When we look at the particular case studies we see that three could not be proven as there was no clear link between water-borne outbreaks of disease two were malfunctions of equipment—and we cannot say that this bill is going to fix those malfunctions of equipment—one was an ultraviolet system that was not working and another was a septic tank that had broken and effluent was getting into the water supply. 
The most recent example was in 2006 at the Cardrona ski field where there was an effluent overflow. The drinking-water supply was not registered and there was an issue with the cartridge filtration and ultraviolet treatment. The case study states that although the water treatment comprised cartridge filtration ultraviolet treatment the cartridge did not comply with the requirements of the New Zealand drinking-water standards and the efficiency of ultraviolet treatment was unknown. I think that is a fair enough example. But really of the rest of those six examples in the last decade—and we are talking about the last decade—three could not be proven as there was no clear link and two had a malfunction of equipment. The only one I could use as an example was the Cardrona ski field example and that was in 2006. 
So in summary National opposes this bill. We think the costs to the ratepayer and the local communities are burdensome. We do support the right for communities to have safe drinking-water but there has to be a balance between risk and cost and benefit. Many of the communities we heard from were very concerned that that had not been factored into the equation and their communities would be faced with large burdensome costs without the outcomes and benefits being seen.