Edmonds BarbaraBARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise as the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to report back to the House on the Water Services Entities Bill.Before I go into the main part of the summary of changes I just want to reflect on the debate that we've just had. Two things are very clear: (1) National has no plan and (2) when they are up against the ropes what do they do? Get louder bark and go personal.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): If I could just—BARBARA EDMONDS: I withdraw and apologise.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Yes thank you because that was a term that I asked the other member previous speaker to withdraw and apologise for.BARBARA EDMONDS: Again going back to volume—going back to volume and no plan.So first of all some acknowledgments because we obviously need some parliamentary 101 process for the House—or at least for the other side of the House. The committee received and considered 88383 written submissions. We thank all the submitters for their time in putting together their submissions. Although we received over 88000 written submissions on this bill approximately 82000 used four different templates or were considered form submissions by the Taxpayers' Union or the National Party themselves. Now these 82000 submissions are identical or substantially identical—Hon Member: There's still 6000 others.BARBARA EDMONDS: —with some minor personalisation so the committee aggregated them together and only published one example of each. Now this was a mammoth task by the Office of the Clerk to facilitate these form submissions and I thank them for their support throughout this whole select committee stage.Again as members on this side of the House will know written evidence is not discounted or treated with any less esteem than oral evidence. Written submissions are analysed in depth and form an integral part of the committee's considerations.Hon Member: How many of them did she read?BARBARA EDMONDS: So the question across the other side is How many did we hear from?" Again we opened it up. We agreed on some criteria for the submitters if they wish to be invited to the public hearings that were held in Auckland Hamilton Havelock North Wellington Nelson Christchurch and Dunedin. The criteria of who were heard from were broad and contained a catch-all. Submitters within these criteria presented a range of opinions and viewpoints on the bill. They were territorial authorities they were mana whenua they were rural water entities water sector stakeholders employment representative groups environmental representative groups financial representative groups a representative sample of those form submissions and finally submitters who have made specific recommendations for improving the bill.Now as much as the other side of the House wants to say "Well what about the other 6000?" you must understand that the Office of the Clerk made every attempt at contacting those that wanted to be heard. It is up to the individual or the organisation as to whether they want to come to the hearing or not. We had over a third of an attrition for whoever the Office of the Clerk had approached. Those are really really key procedural issues that committee considered; we wanted to hear from a broad range and we did. We particularly acknowledge the expertise of local authorities and their commitment to delivering water services in New Zealand.The main themes of the submissions were about strengthening local voice transparency governance and accountability in water services arrangements. We also invited the world leaders in water reform the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS) who said that New Zealanders pay too much for the services we receive. We also heard from Farrierswier who peer reviewed the modelling that WICS used and they agreed with the modelling which was because of requests of information from councils. Then we also heard from Beca Group—so this is the second peer review of that first modelling—who peer reviewed it again and said the numbers were too conservative as it did not take into account climate change. So therefore many of our proposed amendments relate to all these matters—through submissions through the experts—that we called. In fact there are over 130 changes that our select committee made to this bill which I wholeheartedly believe have strengthened this bill. In brief those changes are—and for those members on the other side of the House who like to be able to provide an interjection on what it is I suggest you look through the tens of thousands of documents the regulatory impact statement the disclosure statement or the Cabinet papers that are there for everybody to see on the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) website plus this bill. So the key changes: the cap on the number of regional representatives on the regional representative group has been removed. This was to mitigate the risks of having a larger governing body. The committee included a requirement for the constitution to include procedures to enable and support effective governance. It has also limited the number of representatives in the first constitution to 14. Another key change: the committee increased audit scrutiny over key strategic documents in direct response to the Office of the Auditor-General and that's around the statement of intent infrastructure strategy and consumer stocktake. We then invited the Auditor-General to provide us on a view around the changes that were being proposed. They could not provide a policy view. However they confirmed that they were comfortable with the changes that the select committee has proposed.The regional report groups are now required to have rural provincial and metropolitan council representatives which was a request from the councils. The constitutions must also provide for territorial authorities to hold an annual shareholders' meeting. Both these steps will give more certainty to councils that their interests will be represented. The committee also amended the operating principles to include a requirement for the entities to have regard to the areas where services are delivered in their procurement processes. So that means if the process is going to be in a particular area then whoever the water services entities procures to must have good local knowledge of that area. The definition of water supply has been expanded to include water supply for agricultural or horticultural purposes to address concerns from the rural community that drinking water would be given priority over water supply for other purposes such as stock water.The committee has added to the collected competencies of the board to include public health the environment perspectives of consumers and communities and the perspectives of local government. Contracts and joint arrangements relating to water services have been limited to 15 years rather than the current 35 years. It used to be 15 years but the National Party changed it to 35. So we are tightening that back up.One comment I want to make is around co-governance. The misinformation that has been whipped up around co-governance has caused a barrage of insults to members of the committee and to our Minister. And I want to put it on record: every local authority that I heard throughout this process said it is a distraction because co-governance is already happening. One key take-up from that that I had from one council was their concern that co-governance might water down the strong relationship they already had with iwi. So to be able to whip up co-governance is a distraction and I agree with those local authorities. Therefore in conclusion this bill is not just rushed through in five months; this is five years of hard work. It would be easy to let it go and to kick it down the can. So I acknowledge the Minister her DIA advisers who were our advisers and the Parliamentary Counsel Office who drafted a very clear bill which is no mean feat for a new regime. The bill was actually the easiest document to read out of the tens of thousands of documents that are available for this bill. We've also listened we recommended the changes and again in the absence of a real viable alternative this side of the House is making the hard decisions to ensure that we have water services that will account for growth and for climate change and to ensure we have safe sound fit for purpose water infrastructure for our future generations. Again I call those members on the other side of the House: do your homework read the policies read the documents and come back to me—after you've done a lot of work on it—with your plan because in the meantime there is no plan. I commend this bill to the House."