Labour has announced a need for a $120-185 billion programme over thirty years to fix the country’s water infrastructure. This is a crippling amount of money. To put it in perspective, the total income tax paid in 2019-20 was $37 billion.
It is fundamentally the result of councils failing to invest properly in maintenance while spending depreciation budgets for several generations on statues and stadiums.
It is also interesting to note that briefing papers given to Cabinet barely 6 months ago put the figure at $50 billion. It appears inflation is worse than we thought.
These papers recommended taking responsibility for water away from councils. The Department of Internal Affairs presented various options for new water authorities based on amalgamating current regions.
The latest proposal is to have no more than 4 new authorities.
This demonstrates the astonishing lack of insight of our bureaucrats in Wellington. This is not surprising given that they engaged the Water Industry Commission for Scotland to come up with it.
The only sane split in the South Island is an East-West one. Rainfall and water demand on either side of the Southern Alps are completely different.
Lumping the north of the South Island with Wellington seems to ignore Cook Strait. It has nothing to do with water infrastructure. It is because Ngai Tahu wants a single co-governed entity for their iwi, which does not include Te Tau Ihu. Our country’s water management is to be divided along ancient tribal lines.
Splitting Auckland from Waikato also makes no sense. Auckland has spent 10 years trying to get an increased take from the Waikato River, so should be included in the same water catchment area.
Surely the Chathams are better off managing their own water without interference from Wellington!
The proposal is unaffordable and unworkable. Nanaia Mahuta doesn’t have the technical background to manage this. I am not blaming her as I cannot think of a current politician who does have that skill. We need better, more practical people in charge of decision making.
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