Mahuta tackles the ‘mistruths’
Local Government minister Nanaia Mahuta has used a Christchurch speech to ‘‘dispel some mistruths’’ about the controversial three waters reforms she is leading.
Mahuta gave a keynote address and hosted a short Q&A at Water New Zealand’s Stormwater conference in Christchurch yesterday.
As local government minister, Mahuta has led the Government proposal to strip councils of water infrastructure and hand control to four mega-regional entities, which would be co-governed by iwi and councils. In a bid to dispel what she called ‘‘mistruths’’, Mahuta pointed out the following facts during her speech:
■ Three waters assets will remain in the collective ownership of councils in the entity region – a change which the Government recently announced. Councils will own the entities on paper with a shareholding based on their populations.
■ Co-governance exists at the strategic, goal-setting regional representation level of the reforms, but it will not be part of the independent boards that will oversee the entity’s operations. There is no right of veto by iwi anywhere in the model, ‘‘but there is accommodation and provision of greater recognition through every layer of Te Mana o te Wai [the vital importance of water].’’
■ The reforms are a public model of water service delivery and there are safeguards against privatisation.
Mahuta said it was vitally important to ‘‘build the three waters system we all want and deserve’’.
‘‘We are not starting from place of perfection, so we need to continue to remain engaged and evolve the system that we want to see for the benefit or our communities, our children, our future.’’
Mahuta was asked by the event MC Mark Sainsbury whether she expected such a strong reaction to the reforms.
Mahuta said she expected the reaction because the issues were foreshadowed by the Office of the Auditor-General, when she was first elected to Parliament in 1996.
‘‘I knew it was going to be hard, I just didn’t anticipate how hard it would be along every part of the way,’’ she said.