Troubled Waters Ahead

Dr Muriel Newman established the New Zealand Centre for Political Research as a public policy think tank in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament. A former Chamber of Commerce President, her background is in business and education.

It was certainly a howl of a protest last Friday. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders from all walks of life turned out to support the Groundswell protest. With convoys of tractors, trucks, utes, dogs and horses, Kiwis in more than 50 towns and cities across the country joined together to send the Prime Minister a message: “Enough is enough”.

As one of the protest organisers said, “They only seem to have four sports in New Zealand at the moment, that’s rugby, cricket, netball and bashing farmers – and farmers and rural people have really just had enough.”

The Government’s ‘divide and rule’ approach has seen farmers villainised for far too long. It’s undeserved and unacceptable.

From the imposition of a bureaucratic farm planning regime to regulating when crops can be planted and where livestock can be grazed, under the guise of the United Nations Agenda 2030, private property rights are being undermined through a multitude of sustainability and biodiversity controls – including ‘Significant Natural Area’ land confiscations.

On top of that, climate change restrictions loom as a major threat.

In spite of AgResearch confirming our dairy farms have the smallest carbon footprint per kilogram of milk in the world at 70 per cent lower than the global average, with sheep and beef farmers having the smallest environmental footprint of any red meat producer at 50 per cent lower, the Climate Commission wants farmers to slaughter a million cows and 4 million sheep to meet Jacinda Ardern’s excessively harsh emission targets.

This is in spite of the UN Paris Accord specifically requiring governments to exempt food producers from restrictions. In fact, if reducing global emissions really was the goal, instead of penalising Kiwi farmers, the regulators would be encouraging them to increase production to gain a greater share of the global market.

For many New Zealanders, Jacinda Ardern’s ute tax on essential work vehicles for which no electric alternative exists was a final straw.

Her dismissal of their concerns: “I do not accept any suggestion of a rural-urban divide”, shows just how out of touch the PM is with real New Zealand.

Instead, she is fixated with imposing her radical socialist values onto society – expanding the power of the State not only through tighter controls over farming and other businesses, but also through centralising the management of services that have traditionally been devolved to communities.

In addition, the PM is covertly embedding her separatist “partnership” agenda into every aspect of our lives.

Last year’s creation of the mega agency, the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, is a case in point. It not only ‘hoovered up’ community-based polytechnic and trades training assets, but it also introduced separatist control.

The new health reforms are following the same model: power is being centralised and local democratic control lost through the abolition of District Health Boards, with Maori control of a separatist health authority – and the power of veto over the entire New Zealand health system.

These two reforms were mapped out in He Puapua, the report commissioned by the Labour Government in 2019 to provide a roadmap for Maori co-governance of New Zealand by 2040.

The New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claims the Prime Minister “deliberately suppressed” the report, keeping it from his party and the public.

But Jacinda Ardern denies the report was deliberately hidden, compounding her deception by claiming He Puapua was just a discussion document and is not being enacted.

Her comments bring to mind the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

When it comes to fresh water, He Puapua outlines the separatist goals: “provisions to make co-governance and co-management of freshwater bodies compulsory” – and “receive royalties for the use of natural resources such as water.”

The Three Waters proposal  Prime Minister Ardern is currently forcing onto local government, delivers the He Puapua objectives. By transferring the ownership and management of drinking water, storm water and wastewater infrastructure, from 67 local authorities into four new agencies co-governed by tribal interests, Jacinda Ardern will pass control of fresh water to Maori.

Co-governance of these water authorities would give Maori the right of veto over all decisions relating to the allocation and use of fresh water. As sure as night follows day, the end result will be free or heavily subsidised water for Maori users, and a royalty paid to Maori whenever anyone else turns on the tap.

As Victoria University’s Dr Bryce Edwards observes, “Coming on top of the He Puapua report, with its vision of 50-50 co-governance with Maori, this will stoke suspicions that the Three Waters project is as much about power-sharing with iwi as it is about reducing costs and ensuring consistency of water quality and administrative efficiency.”

Jacinda Ardern has no mandate for her Three Waters proposal.

While Labour’s election manifesto stated, “Labour will reform New Zealand’s drinking water and waste water system and upgrade water infrastructure to create jobs across the country”, it did not specify control would be delivered to Maori.

Nor did it signal that local government would be stripped of major assets and a core role, with communities no longer able to have any say in the delivery and pricing of water services.

As political commentator Ashley Church says, a main weakness of the proposals is the “loss of local democratic control, unwieldy and illogical boundaries and, most alarmingly, the likely creation of huge, bloated, faceless bureaucracies which will almost certainly be less efficient than the bodies they replace. It’s also important to note that water is not the same as a utility like electricity where scale provides cost and delivery efficiencies. Water issues are usually quite specific to local communities and require localised solutions based on geography and a unique mix of lifestyle, commercial activity and rural production.”

Furthermore, there are no guarantees the reforms will produce the improved outcomes being claimed. Labour’s dreadful track record of over-promising and under-delivering, give local communities little confidence that the cost savings would eventuate – or that there would be any avenues for redress.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, Bruce Smith the Mayor of the Westland District Council, has produced an excellent video HERE explaining the debacle of the Three Waters reforms – and is kindly sharing the details of his ‘journey’ with us:

“Some months back, government announced a one-off payment with no strings attached, costing $740 million across New Zealand, to stimulate the economy during the covid recovery period. All the councils had to do was supply the Department of Internal Affairs with a full analysis of their current Three Waters assets and programmes. Councils also had to spend the money on Three Waters assets…

“There were very tight timeframes for the supply of information over Christmas 2020. Then came a series of rushed meetings around the country. The key message from the government’s PR team was ‘we have proven the case for change’. PR spin at its very best.”

Bruce explains that a further carrot was dangled for councils that decided to join “the Masterplan for centralised control of water.”

This $2.5 billion bribe was available for councils that agree to sign up. But it has strings attached – the money must be spent on the Government’s priority projects including climate change and engagement with Maori. $1 billion of the funding is coming from central government, with $1 billion from the new water authorities – in other words, from future water users. The remaining $500m is to refund unavoidable costs incurred by local authorities during the transition. 

Bruce Smith describes the Three Waters project as “PR spin at its very best”. He explains that the government stressed participation in the scheme would be optional, and councils took them at their word.

They advised that Three Waters assets owned by each council would be transferred into one of the operating entities, and while councils would receive cash to retire any debt, there would be no compensation.

While councils would still own the assets through some form of joint ownership of the water authorities, there would be no shareholding. The new entities would then borrow up to $160 billion (more than the Government’s total net debt) to fund their activities using council assets as security.

Bruce says, “Government’s proposed governance structure takes all decisions in relation to Three Waters away from Councils. Ratepayers will be billed direct from the water company. The governance structure has been proposed as 50% councils who have put in 100% of the assets and 50% Iwi.”

It is no coincidence that the boundary lines of the four water authorities have been aligned with tribal boundaries. In the South Island it is proposed that six elected members of the agency would represent 21 South Island councils with their population of 1 million, while the other six would represent those who affiliate with Ngai Tahu, which has 68,000 members, only half of whom live in their tribal area.  

When it comes to progressing the Three Waters proposal, the Department of Internal Affairs warns, “A large scale communication eff­ort is required to ensure local government support reform.”

That “large scale communication eff­ort” is now underway in the form of an infantile and patently incorrect $3.5 million propaganda campaign depicting local government as failing to provide safe water to the public.

Journalist Karl du Fresne says it takes “advertising to a new low”, and he outlines the ridiculous text:

“Imagine Aotearoa without good water. What a stink as place that would be. Trout would be grumpy. Boating no fun. And dirty ducks a sad sight to see. Mean as manus wouldn’t be mean. Showers a complete waste of time. Bathrooms would be just rooms. Togs just undies. And our awa, all filthy with slime. That’s why we’ve got a plan, ‘cos we’re water’s biggest fan. So let’s make it better than fine.”

He explains “The accompanying illustrations, crudely drawn comic-style, showed a pipe belching noxious-looking waste into a river, a duck swimming through sludge and a horrified child bather coated in muck, all eye-catchingly presented in full colour… That’s right: we’re paying for an extravagant advertising campaign aimed at persuading us that the government’s grab for control over the nation’s water infrastructure is in our own best interests.”

The country’s Mayors were incensed by the adverts, and, as Bruce Smith explains, “collectively wrote to Minister Mahuta asking her to withdraw the ad which was considered inaccurate and insulting”.

He says the Minister’s answer was “a firm no”.

It’s time the country’s Mayors woke up to the tapestry of lies being told by Minister Mahuta and Prime Minister Ardern.

Being rolled out is a plan for an unprecedented transfer of billions of dollars of ratepayer-funded assets to central government with control given to Maori tribal interests.

This is being done without any offer of compensation and without any consultation with the communities that own the assets – even though the Local Government Act requires councils to consult their communities when considering the disposal of strategic assets.

Local Mayors and Councillors must surely realise that if they do not unite to block this radical proposal, they will be progressively stripped of virtually all of their useful purpose.  

Not only that, but they will become known as the ones who failed to stand up to the heavy-handed tactics of central government, which wants to seize ratepayers assets without compensation, removing the right of communities to have a say in the quality and cost of the essential services being provided to them.

Mayors have until September 30 to advise the Government whether or not they agree to join the scheme.

All councils should urgently hold a binding referendum of the residents and ratepayers they were elected to represent, to ask whether they want their assets transferred to central government without compensation, so control of water can be passed to iwi.

This Week’s Poll Asks:

*Do you believe local councils should hold a binding referendum of residents and ratepayers before deciding whether to opt in or out of the Government’s Three Waters proposal?

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