SpeechHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Sometimes I wonder why I bother preparing speech notes particularly when I'm on call 11 in a debate because I diligently beaver away at what I want to say and then spend most of the 10 minutes refuting the nonsense that comes from the other side of the House. I'll be doing a little bit of that. But before I do Mr Speaker I trust you'll indulge me as this is the first time I have spoken since the announcement by the sponsor of this bill of his intention not to stand in the 2023 election. Dr Clark and I go back a wee way—over 10 years now and it'll be—well 11 years now isn't it? How has he been here? About eleven years? We certainly don't see eye to eye on all things but I want to wish him and his family all the best for his future. He has been a diligent worker for the city that we both love and I wish him all the best.Now that's probably where the love fest ends because this bill establishes an economic regulation and according to the explanatory note a consumer protection regime. But let me be really really clear: the protection the water users of this country need most is from this Government.The irony is extreme: that we are considering a bill at first reading here to control the prices that water users will pay—so to prevent them from being too high—only a week after this Government passed a bill that took away the assets at bargain basement prices because the Government wasn't prepared to pay for them.Those assets were taken away at nearly no cost. Where was the protection of the owners of those assets when they needed it? It certainly did not come from the Government. I've said it before I'll keep saying it: this is the largest State-sponsored theft of assets since Treaty breaches in the 19th century. It is unconscionable and there's no way to polish that up.Rachel Brooking: Oh goodness gracious!Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh here they go. Yeah. Oh. See when they don't have a good argument they just attack the arguer. And here's a remarkable admission: remember that the case for water services entities is that the prices that users will pay are going to be lower than they otherwise would be had the 67 councils continued to rate their ratepayers for water as they have. If that's the case why do we need to regulate to control the overcharging by water services entities? I've got a reason why. My theory is this and it's a pretty strong one I think: there is no way in hell that those four water services entities can deliver the cost reductions in capital and operating costs that were purported by the Water Services Entities Bill. It's just not possible.There's another admission in here and that is that the consumers need protection—the protection that was taken away from them in the ability to vote out councils they don't agree with when they're not doing the right thing on water. So on the one hand we take away the very strong powers that consumers have if they don't like what their councils do and then provide a legislative protection from the very council that took those protections away. It's a complete oxymoron.Now we've heard from both Shanan Halbert and Anna Lorck—ad nauseam as the Labour members have done—that our water quality is poor. Now Auckland had extreme weather events over the weekend. I was actually there on Monday and it was beautiful 27 degrees hardly a cloud in the sky not a breath of wind. Aucklanders were breathing a big sigh of relief because they had had significant downpours that had led to the faecal counts in stormwater going into Auckland harbour to be unacceptably high. That's not good enough.What they don't say is that that problem is being fixed by one of the largest infrastructure projects in Auckland's history—the Central Interceptor I think it's called. Andrew Bayly and I visited it didn't we when they put the Tunnel Boring Machine—I'm not sure if it had a fancy name like the City Rail Link but it was heading underground and going under Manukau Harbour; a massive water tunnel that will more clearly separate our storm and foul water and prevent the sorts of unacceptable discharges into the areas like Simon O'Connor's electorate—the beautiful area of Tāmaki—and on the North Shore as Shanan Halbert said.But the point is: we didn't need legislation for Watercare Auckland to do what it needed to do. It had sensible rates and it has gone ahead and fixed it. Even in Anna Lorck's electorate which was the so-called genesis of this State centralisation project they've already fixed their water-quality issues a $35 million project by the Hastings District Council. That has not needed State intervention it shouldn't have happened in the first place; it was fixed. It didn't need a State intervention.But the most ironic thing is trying to reconcile Ms Lorck's comments with the Minister's. Because the very case for a fees regime is that larger metropolitan areas like Auckland are going to subsidise smaller metropolitan areas like I don't know Waipukurau or Havelock. Because as he said if this didn't happen then the water rate increases on those smaller councils would be disproportionately higher than Auckland's. So Aucklanders are going to be paying more for their water—or rather more for water—and it's going to be going to other parts of the country.Now I'm not sure what I think about that. There are many reasons to live in smaller areas and sometimes that comes at a cost. So the lower house prices lower land prices the ease of getting around the quality of schools and the opportunities for jobs in the regional sector—all good reasons for living in smaller cities and towns around New Zealand but one of the costs of living in those areas is sometimes a slightly higher rate on things like water. Now that is being taken away and the 1.5 million Aucklanders are going to have to pay more than they otherwise would because of this arrangement. Labour's own Phil Goff opposed that very very strongly when this regime came out and not surprising.The other very interesting part of this bill is the nexus between price and quality that the regulator is going to be required to enforce. Which begs the question really: what the water-quality regulator—which was set up with the support of the National Party last year—is actually there to do. It is the principal water-quality regulator. Why is a branch of the Commerce Commission then going to make arbitrary judgments about the nexus between price and quality? Because if it does have to regulate on price it's probably going to have to say to a water services entity In order to control the prices that you charge to your users there needs to be some compromise on quality." Otherwise I'm not sure why this bill actually even mentions that. So I want the Finance and Expenditure Committee to have a very close look at how this is going to play out and how it reconciles with the water regulator that's been established by last year's regulation.We'll oppose this because we oppose the State-sponsored theft of assets. We oppose the candy-coating of the benefits the catastrophising of water quality right now and the demonising of councils. And we will reverse this legislation at the first opportunity."