OPINION
When Maori King Tuheitia, cousin of Nanaia Mahuta – our Minister of Local Government, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Associate Minister of Maori Affairs – brazenly suggested in 2012 that “We own the water” he was roundly shouted down. Even well-to-the-left Stuff denounced him:
Scientists estimate New Zealand broke away from the Gondwana supercontinent about 85 million years ago. Give or take a few hundred millennia, that means Maori have inhabited the country for about 0.0009 per cent of the time it has existed as a distinct entity. Rain fell from the skies, coursed down the hills and found its way into rivers, streams and lakes for millions of years before Maori first hauled their canoes up onto beaches, and will continue to do so long after humanity has ceased to exist. Claiming ownership of the water is about as foolish as claiming ownership of the wind, the air or the stars.
The former truck driver king would explain at the time, “The ultimate goal for iwi is to retain management and control of water, or the power to allocate it” according to RNZ, while the NZ Herald reported Kingi as saying, “The ultimate goal is for Maori to take back these roles from the council.” Well, sheesh. In only ten short years his (wildly unpopular) vision is about to be fulfilled, and it’s thanks to you New Zealand, for trusting in Ardern, hereafter referred to as the useful idiot.
Because this unrolling theft of water rights, this coup, is being engineered by the Kingi’s cousin who in reality is not part of Team Labour Party, nor of Team New Zealand, nor even of Team Aotearoa: she belongs only to Team Mahuta, and is interested only in how that family circle can advance themselves.
Maybe that’s OK, just pure and simple ‘tikanga’, the veritable and oh-so laudable ways of the past of which Samuel Marsden noted in 1818:
There is no middle class of people in New Zealand: they are all either chiefs or (in a certain degree) slaves.
Never, ever, have this country’s inequities nor inequalities been greater than under ‘tikanga’, yet this is what Mahuta, her Kingitanga coterie and posse of so-called progressive ‘Professors’, her academic cabal of conspirators, not to mention the useful idiot, wish to lead us and our children to, indeed indoctrinate them in.
So how did she pull it off: The Great Water Robbery?
Mahuta, who “failed four of her seven law papers and had to drop out” of the University of Waikato, surely qualifies for her Masters in Rat-Cunning with her latest political manoeuvres. Two weeks ago, following public submissions overwhelmingly opposed to her proposed reforms, she doubled down – hoping nobody would notice her mission creep. She added “coastal” and “geothermal” waters to the Water Services Entities [‘3-Waters’] Bill subject to “Te Mana o Te Wai” – an idea as nebulous as clouds, literally, and loaded with conceit and contempt, claiming, as she does, it has something to do with ‘te ao maori’: the sacredness of water in the Maori world-view.
Water is sacred to all creeds and colours. That’s why Jesus of Nazareth was baptised in it, Druids had sacred pools, Babylonians too, as did King Arthur. Robbie Burns was wed to his betrothed as they straddled a brook in keeping with ancient, very ancient, tradition. ‘Te Mana o te Wai’ is pure piffle.
However, much more of a concern is the introduction of “Te Mana o Te Wai Statements”, an entirely different, and powerful, thing which can only be advanced by those blessed with special super-power DNA giving them insight and relevant ‘tikanga’ to enforce, correct and chastise water authorities for infringements of water quality, or purity. But that is not all. They also are to ensure they work to enhance “economic, cultural, social and environmental expectations” of local iwi, or not so local, depending if one tribe or the other suggests that full ‘ownership’ of such resource has never been truly resolved, but whose ‘statements’ must be acted on, or responded to, by the relevant authority, subject to penalty.
But that was only part of Mahuta’s plan to elevate her tribal fiefdom, her Kingitanga. Her final part: the masterpiece, was to insert (during the second reading of the 3-Waters Bill) a new, and altogether different, scope to the range of view.
From last Wednesday, 23 November forward the legislation, thanks to Part 1 of “Supplementary Order Paper 306 2022” from one Nanaia Mahuta, expands the meaning of 3-Waters well and beyond the original Fresh, Storm and Waste water from which the Water Services Entities Bill derives its moniker to all water everywhere, in every form and almost every enclosure:
water — (a) means water in all its physical forms whether flowing or not and whether over or under the ground:
(b) includes fresh water, coastal water, and geothermal water:
(c) does not include water in any form while in any pipe, tank, or cistern
Lemmings are welcome to jump over the cliff if that is their wont. But they’re not welcome to take us with them as the brain-dead Labour and Green Party’s wish:
Can you believe that, New Zealand? Aotearoa? That 74 numbskulls, including the useful idiots’ vote can set racial minority control over our water, all water, in all its forms? That we will be forever in the grip of Mahuta and her imagined and re-imagined Maori water-rights? I say no.
The bill is due to be re-introduced, with its new outreach, for its Third Reading before parliament is suspended for the holiday break. My wager, if I were a betting man, would be Dec 15th, immediately before recess. Yes: they’re that sneaky and cynical.
The prime minister, the useful idiot, God bless her, has been double-crossed by Mahuta and, so far, realises it not. Mahuta doesn’t care. The NZ Herald, finally catching up with Labour’s shenanigans well after The BFD exposed them, in an editorial headed ‘Three Waters murk needs clearing up’ (Saturday 26 November) said “Of all the reforms this sixth Labour Government has tabled, this has caused the most division.” This is somewhat of an understatement: this legislation is set to be the most divisive delivered in this country so far this century. Ardern needs to pull the reins in on Mahuta’s power-play, but she may be too late.
A contemporary of Samuel Marsden’s, one Thomas Kendall, lived and served among Northern Maori for many years. He saw it as his duty to record, before a formalised written form of their language had been embedded, in a little dictionary the common-heard words, idioms and phrases of their te reo and examples from the ordinary tikanga of their daily lives. One of those idioms was ‘Kai kumu’ – to ‘eat the arm of an enemy’ – the intricacies of which I will spare the squeamish, but the metaphor succeeds in arousing the sentiment of helplessness in the victim set against the utter contempt of the limb’s consumer.
Mahuta is eating Ardern’s arm, her political capital and her credibility, and there’s very little Jacinda appears to want to do about it.
Will our prime minister finally see what she chooses not to see? Will she stand up to Mahuta and scupper ‘3-5-All Waters’ or will she stand aside like the useful idiot?
In the same Herald editorial previously mentioned they closed with:
A third reading of the Water Services Entities Bill is scheduled for December, prior to Parliament rising for recess. One suspects any more surprises will incense the electorate.
Be incensed, Herald. And for God’s sake wake up and do your job; the “surprises” have already happened, right under your nose. The Mahuta-First family ‘fix’ is in: “water in all its physical forms whether flowing or not and whether over or under the ground”, just as her cousin wished for.
I can only hope everyone who reads this is equally, and very, incensed.
