Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I want to pick up on my previous questions in regards to the Minister on three waters and the Minister actually mentioned an interesting point in regards to the key problem that that is trying to be solved by three waters. She referred to unsustainable finance which I read into being around the funding and financing mechanisms in regards to this infrastructure. That itself is actually quite a change in terms of the narrative because—if we go back to that advertising campaign of actually you know slime coming out of the taps—maybe it was just me but I think the Government was saying that this is driven by a health issue and it's actually driven by maybe the issues that happened with the campylobacter outbreak in Havelock North in 2016. But we're now hearing from the Minister that actually No no actually the issue is in regards to unsustainable finance." I think on that basis my questions for the Minister are quite simple: why did you as a bottom line in regards to these reforms dictate that there had to be four entities in regards to the way in which the three waters infrastructure or the reform would be structured? It was it was quite clearly stated that that needed to be a four-entity model. And the other bottom line that came in from Government was in regards to the 50:50 co-governance. But I'm more interested at this point around the four entities because if the issue and the problem statement is as the Minister articulated in regards to unsustainable finance then why are we leading with a solution that we need to create four entities to solve that problem? Why do we not simply look at the underlying problem statement as the Minister's articulated around unsustainable finance and deal with that? Because there's multiple mechanisms and ways in which and alternative models that can deal with the way in which you fund and finance infrastructure over the long term. I acknowledge as with the Minister that we as we need to do more in regards to how we fund and finance infrastructure over the long term: plan commission and actually importantly deliver that infrastructure. But if that is the problem and if that is the one thing that we're trying to fix why are we going about creating these mega-entities—centralised bureaucracy hiring of all name of things. Leading into that point that I articulated right at the start around the fact that that there's huge levels of turnover at local government; central government entities are in effect poaching staff out of local government at the moment sometimes with 30 percent premium on salary. And so therefore those staff coming out of our local communities and local government is weakening our local government capability. So why did it have to be four entities and why was it dictated around that? The second aspect around the financing mechanisms is: why are we not simply just utilising existing mechanisms for funding and financing of infrastructure that are already in play and in the Minister's disposal today in regards to matching long-term assets with long term funding? Because when you look at Auckland specifically part of the challenge there is that we've got assets that last you know maybe 50 years or so yet the way in which they're currently financed is maybe between three and five years. Well I don't know. I've got you know my nine-year-old son at home who probably could work out that—that sounds like a mismatch to me right? So why are we simply not matching the duration of funding to the duration of the asset? Quite simple. Because if we did that then we would be able to sustainably fund and finance this infrastructure. We don't need to create—and maybe I'm being simplistic but we don't need to create a mega-entity model mega-bureaucracy; try and centralise 67 councils into four big entities; create a governance model which means that within these entities there's only seven seats at the table for 22 councils and again I didn't do too well at maths but I can work out that actually that means that two-thirds of the councils won't have a voice. Why are those two elements bottom lines when we went into this process which means now we're dealing with a bill and a piece of legislation on the table and all the costs that we talked about through the Estimates process that have been spent and we've got hard-working taxpayer dollars out of the pockets of taxpayers in this country—why have we got to that point? Because of those underlying bottom lines."