Thank you, Madam Speaker. In a debate like this, it’s always quite telling what Government MPs have to say. Now, throughout this debate, there have been many claims, based on evidence and fact, that this bill will see significant increases in rates bills. Now, one might think that if those claims are being made in this House, Government members would want to take the opportunity to refute that. Those are pretty massive claims. We’ve heard figures in the thousands for various communities around this country, but did they do that? No, they didn’t. They read their key lines, and they sat down.
If this was such a significant day for the Government, I would have assumed that they would want to take the opportunity to explain how this bill will make it better for New Zealanders. Ultimately, they campaigned on improving the cost of living, and, as we know, if we look across the board, they are actually making it worse, and there’s no better example of that than this bill.
Now, I have studied the ruling of the Speaker this afternoon in question time, so I’m going to be very careful with my language here, but there have been some repeated lies all amongst this broader conversation around water reform. It is unfortunate, because, as my colleague Dr Deborah Russell mentioned, what started this entire debate was, essentially, an entirely regrettable situation where people died as a result of consuming water that should have been safe. When we opened up the hood—in fact, it wasn’t us; it was a previous National Government under Anne Tolley. When Anne Tolley opened up the hood, she recognised that the system was broken, it was utterly unsustainable, and no cheap political PR exercise was going to fix it. They commenced that work to review the delivery of three waters across this country. We came into Government and continued that work.
What was clear is that councils cannot do this by themselves, and what is also clear from councils’ own figures is that this country needs to find $185 billion over the next 30 years. Now, that’s the first figure that I have mentioned, but it is still more figures than any of the Government contributions in this debate so far. None of them have stood up and said how this plan will add up, and I’ll tell you why: because it doesn’t. I’ll tell you something else: they know it.
In communities like Northcote and Upper Harbour and Hamilton and New Plymouth and Christchurch and North Otago and Maungakiekie and Bay of Plenty and Southland—in every single one of the communities that are represented by members here tonight—rates are going up because of this bill, and every single one of them is going to vote for it.
I mentioned earlier that there had been some repeated lies throughout this broader conversation. What is interesting is the way that they have gone about this, because, in their own documents—in the Government’s own documents—the advice is quite clear that Local Water Done Well, so-called, does not add up. It’s in their own documents. Did they refer to the advice today? No, of course they didn’t, because it doesn’t add up. Councils’ own figures showed that over the next 30 years, $185 billion needs to be found, and this model, which is, essentially, a carbon copy of the Castalia modelling, doesn’t add up, so isn’t it interesting that Simeon Brown, who was the Minister at the time, went on councils’ long-term plan numbers, which have projections over the next 10 years?
Even then, it doesn’t really add up, but they can just make it look like it does. They have neglected deliberately—this is a deliberate political decision—the councils’ own projections from year 11 to year 30. They knew that councils had backdated most of that work between that period, so it would be disingenuous if anyone were to claim that the 10-year long-term plan period is one-third of the projected work, because it isn’t. The only way that they could make this look like it added up was to take a fraction of the projected costs, and they did that deliberately, and they knew that they were neglecting years 11 to 30.
The public will soon be bearing the consequences of that disingenuous approach. How can they stand up and say to New Zealanders that this adds up when they know from their own advice that it doesn’t? It is extraordinary. The cost to ratepayers will be in the thousands. This is, in some places, going to cost them more than the status quo. It is extraordinary, and it is actually unbelievable. This is a momentous day in the sense that the next time New Zealanders get their rates bill and they see a significant increase, which they will, they can think back to today and they can think back to the regions that I just read out earlier and see if their local member of Parliament has participated in this debate. Perhaps they might like to contact them, because every single one of the Government MPs is about to vote for significant rates increases. We already know that there are people who cannot afford to keep their homes because of rates increases.
Now, they will say, “Oh, no, we’ve capped rates.” This isn’t capping rates—$900 in Christchurch isn’t capping rates; $1,700 in Hamilton isn’t capping rates. The list goes on. All this Government is doing is smokes and mirrors, and what the country needs is an upfront conversation about the state of the problem. They campaigned, and they whipped up hysteria about what? Not about the cost, but about Māori being on the regional representative board. Why couldn’t they just say it? Why couldn’t they just swallow their pride and say, “Look, actually, what is being proposed is proven to work, but we don’t like Māori on that group.”, which wasn’t an ownership group, which wasn’t a governance group but was a regional representative group. Actually, that’s all they didn’t like, because they knew it would get them cheap votes in an election campaign.
They got into Government and they realised, “Actually, do you know what? The thing that we promised New Zealanders would work actually won’t work, and we probably already knew it wouldn’t anyway. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I know, we’ll screw the scrum, we’ll fiddle with the figures, we’ll make it look like it’s going to work, and when it really hits home, it’ll be somebody else’s problem to deal with.”
But their calculation is mis-skewed to one little degree: it won’t be in 18 months’ time when this hits home; it will be immediately. There will be people that simply cannot afford their water bills. There will be people that lose their homes because they cannot pay these bills. It’s happening already, so they can’t deny it won’t happen in the future.
Now, there’s one more Government call left. Will they stand up and explain to New Zealanders, in the 10 minutes that they have, how this bill makes it cheaper for ratepayers? No, because all they have is this inaccurate claim that $1.2 billion was spent and that none of it went into infrastructure. We’ve heard it here tonight. It’s just not true. It is not true—$527 million of the $1.2 billion went into water pipes, so the best argument they’ve got isn’t true. I think that sums it up. Why should New Zealanders have to put up with this and put up with a Government that has no interest in actually sorting the significant issues that we are facing? No community is immune, even Auckland—no one.
This bill affects every New Zealander, and every New Zealander in the midst of an ongoing cost of living crisis will have even less money now, because even if they don’t pay their rates, they will through their rents. Landlords will be faced with increases of thousands of dollars a year because of all of them, and you know what’ll happen: they’ll put rents up to cope with it. This will impact every Kiwi in the pocket. Why? They’re too arrogant to say that their plan won’t work.