Govt fine-tunes Three Waters
The Government’s contentious Three Waters reforms will go ahead with local councils taking non-financial shareholdings in four new public water entities.
Cabinet has agreed to the bulk of 47 working group recommendations for the planned overhaul of the country’s three waters – drinking, waste, and storm water systems – which it hopes to complete by July 2024. The proposed co-governance of regional groups which will appoint the new entities’ governance boards and provide public accountability for the entities is set to remain.
The proposed reforms of New Zealand’s varied, and often inadequate, water systems has raised alarm within local councils across the country. Some local politicians and community groups have loudly opposed a loss of the control and financial heft that owning local water services provides.
The prospect of co-governance with Māori has also been cast as a loss of ‘‘ownership’’ over public water services, including by Opposition politicians, a perception the Government has been at pains to combat. In October, it formed an independent working group to provide recommendations on governance questions, in an attempt to further ease the concerns raised.
‘‘It’s been an issue that’s languished for far too long. We’re not prepared to kick the can down the road ... We are taking on a really significant, difficult challenge because, if we don’t, communities will pay more than they can ill-afford to do,’’ Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta said.
Mahuta and Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson were visiting a wetland in Porirua, Wellington, yesterday morning, to announce the Government would now push ahead with reforms by introducing legislation into Parliament in the coming months.
Grant Robertson Infrastructure Minister
‘‘Underinvestment has led to unacceptable situations in a developed country like ours: pipes regularly bursting onto our major city streets, the sewage flowing into our waterways, and half a million New Zealanders each year forced to boil their water because of faecal contamination,’’ Robertson said. He said the reforms would provide the entities the scale and access to finance needed to rebuild water infrastructure.
‘‘Without reform households are facing water costs of up to $9000 per year, or, the prospect of services that fail to meet the needs of their communities.’’
The Government had agreed to an adjusted ownership structure for the water entities that clarified that local councils were the direct, though non-financial, owners of public entities.
The shareholding of the new water entities would be distributed to local councils on the basis of one share per every 50,000 people within the council’s territory.
Though councils will in effect own the water entities, the entities would be governed by a ‘‘regional representation group’’ of which members would be a 50-50 split between local council representatives and iwi group representatives.
The Government would also insist on urban, provincial, and rural councils being represented within these groups.
These representative groups would appoint a board that will manage the water entities directly. The water entities’ day-today operations will be managed by its own executives, with oversight of the appointed board.
‘‘Without reform households are facing water costs of up to $9000 per year.’’