Mind-boggling grab on water

If the Government, particularly Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta, had imagined the Three Waters reforms would sail through without too much opposition, this week’s poll should have shattered any such illusions. The poll shows a majority of New Zealand oppose the reforms, 56 per cent to 19 per cent. And that is across every political party, age group and region. ACT and National voters are most opposed but Labour voters are against it 39 per cent to 28 per cent, and the Greens too – 37 per cent to 31 per cent. It was conducted by David Farrar’s Curia Research for the Taxpayers’ Union of 1000 eligible voters contacted by mobile and landline phones. Maximum margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Under the proposed reforms, two things happen. One is that the billions of dollars of water assets owned and operated by the 67 territorial councils are transferred to four new entities.

Many councils have already separated their water businesses from everyday council activities, but this move would take the assets even further away from the control of ordinary citizens.

The proposed governance and management arrangements further compound this lack of control. The new arrangements have councils and iwi appointing a Regional Representation Group, which will appoint an independent selection panel and this panel will pick the board members to run the new entity.

What chance has any ordinary person of influencing policy? This is simply a massive shift of power and control away from the elected representatives of our people to an unelected elite.

If you are more conspiracy minded – and plenty are on this issue – you’ll see the new entities, which will have strong iwi representation, as a cover for transferring ownership, or control, or cashflow to Ma¯ ori. A sharing of resources with a Treaty partner, but without a mandate from the people to do so and without the consent of the ratepayers and water users who built up the assets.

Minister Mahuta has not directly addressed that issue, and her silence has only raised the level of paranoia on the right.

For my part I just cannot accept this is the Government’s agenda. No minister could possibly imagine that they could, by some sleight of administrative hand, remove billions of dollars of assets from councils and put them in the hand of an unelected elite remote from the people.

The audacity of such a scheme boggles the mind. Ordinary people would quickly rise in indignation and cry ‘‘asset grab’’, ‘‘hands off our water’’, ‘‘leave our pipes alone’’, and similar.

It would be irresponsible and politically foolish for any government even to contemplate that and to risk the backlash that would follow when people worked out what was happening.

Also revealed last week was the agreement between Local Government New Zealand, the body representing city, district and regional councils, and the Crown. A head of agreement between the two states, ‘‘The Crown is proposing to provide ongoing support to LGNZ, by way of separate funding agreement(s) with LGNZ . . . to enable LGNZ to build support within the local government sector for the Three Waters Reform Programme.’’

The LGNZ supposedly represents councils to government. Instead, it is being paid to represent the government to councils. It’s a perversion of the normal representation process and coloured by money to boot. It’s a disgraceful lapse of judgment and anti-democratic as well.