Clean water and dirty politics
So it seems sensible to create four mega-entities to run thewater serviceswhile leaving ownership at council level. Yet the same sense of scale scares some people, who think something is being removed. Of course, no-one is pulling pipes out of the ground and taking them away and no-one, including Māori, will suddenly ‘‘own’’ the water.
A defence against privatisation is one feature of the structure for
ThreeWaters reform, announced yesterday by Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson in Porirua.
Aworking group ofmayors and mana whenua was created last year and the majority of its recommendationswere adopted, including an extra level of regional governance and shareholdings for councils. Those are good ideas.
The location was interesting because Porirua is one of the councils that has not defected to Communities 4 Local Democracy (C4LD), a confederation of largely rural mayors and councils created to oppose the reforms.
The group has the backing of National, which has claimed it would repeal ThreeWaters reform if elected in 2023. National, ACT and C4LD have all made the otherwise neutral and boring subject of water infrastructure into a political issue.
There may be some opportunism in this, aided by confusion and misinformation about what cogovernancemeans. But separatism is one thing co-governance is not.
It is a form of partnership that is already working successfully in many contexts. National leader Christopher Luxon is not doing his party or his country any favours by claiming to be confused by it. Rather than remaining stuck in confusion, Luxon should learn what it is and convey that, asmore visionary National leaders would have done.
Yet the Government seems to be downplaying the co-governance angle. The clumsy handling of a bill to increase Māori representation in Rotorua, whichwas shot down by Attorney-General David Parker, may have spooked it.
It’s likely that most of us don’t carewho governs water services. We just don’t want to get poisoned by it. We want it to be fluoridated if it is supposed to be, and we want to knowwho to blame if it is not. We wantwater that isn’t contaminated and we don’t want sewage in rivers and harbours, or even streets.
We want to see waterways and wetlands improved and even restored, which also happens to be a key interest ofmana whenua.
These reformswill be one of the few major pieces of work finished by this Government. It will soon be time for the Opposition and others to stop playing racial politics with reform that is clearly necessary.