Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to pick up on something the Minister of Local Government said in response to one of the previous speakers. We were worrying about the difficulties and so on—so I take your point about we're going to discuss that further. He said that he's going to assume that councils can do their job.But I do want to draw the Minister's attention to the regulatory impact statement and to really question that comment that the Minister made because it runs up against some of the stuff that we were told in the Finance and Expenditure Committee about how many of the councils were going to struggle with some of the requirements. But it also runs up against some of the stuff that is sitting in the regulatory impact statement. Sitting in paragraph 30 of the regulatory impact statement it says that councils are already struggling to fund deferred maintenance and replacement of water services and they're facing increasing costs in their operation of their water services. Then the very next paragraph paragraph 31 says There are fixed costs associated with delivery of water services that are challenging for councils with very small populations to fund as councils consider vary considerably in … size." So this problem is already signalled loud and clear. I do take the Minister's point but I'm also going to say that perhaps some foresight could go a little way here.Then sitting in paragraph 40 of the regulatory impact statement it talks about the five root causes that contribute to the persistent systematic problems with the delivery of water infrastructure. In paragraph 40 it offers five root causes—cause (c) is varied decision-making quality and cause (d) is funding constraints. So with respect Minister I find it puzzling that then you could also say that you're going to assume that councils can do their job.Now I take it that councils want to do their job. I know that many of the councils who spoke to us during the select committee process either as individual councils or via Local Government New Zealand—the people presenting talked about their commitments to their communities and talked about why they were in local government talked about how they wanted to do a good job. So everyone wants to do a good job. And I take it that the Minister of course would agree with that too—that that the locally elected members want to do a good job. The problem is whether or not they are able to do a good job.Sitting in the regulatory impact statement prepared by the Minister's officials which he would have gone through himself and sent on to accompany this bill there is an absolute contradiction to his statement that he is going to assume that the councils can do their jobs. As I said there's a distinction between "want" and "can". It goes absolutely to the purpose of this bill—something that you know sits right in there about whether or not councils actually can do the job. The funding constraints the varied decision-making capabilities the huge contrast between some of our councils—you know comparing the incredible resources of Auckland to the very small councils like Buller and so on. And we haven't even talked about the Far North yet so far—Hon Rachel Brooking: I mentioned it.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Oh thank you Rachel Brooking—I hadn't realised you had done that.So there are real difficulties that councils face. I just want the Minister to comment a little bit more on that assumption that he's made that councils can actually do their job."