Our water is a treasure that has been abused, stolen and polluted for far too long and it is beyond time that someone had the political courage to stand up to the Farming lobby and water bottling companies.
Allowing corporations to take our water for free and bottle it is an obscenity. One recent attempt to take our water is from Mount Aspiring National Park through a Kiwi sanctuary so that 800 million litres of water per month can be pumped out to water tankers at sea. That we are allowing a company to take water from a National Park, through a Kiwi sanctuary to tanker ships off the coast highlights the utter madness we are witnessing under National.
National are too frightened to anger their Farmer mates to do the right thing and that cowardice is why they are allowing companies to bottle water for free.
No company should be taking our precious water for free. Farmers who continue to pollute our rivers must pay for the pollution they are creating and Maori, who have always been the guardians of these waterways have every right to have that historic role respected.
Labour is promising a new way forward.
Companies taking water will be forced to pay for it and Farmers will be forced to pay as well, but the money won’t be taken as Government revenue, which would only incentivise future Governments to see water as a commodity, the funds will be plunged back into protecting, managing and replenishing our water ways.
Our Ready for Work programme will take young people off the dole and give them jobs improving waterways with fencing, planting and repair work to ensure the waterways are respected.
As soon as Labour are in power, Jacinda will host a roundtable discussion on water at Parliament and ensure every sector, including Farmers and bottling companies, environmentalists, Iwi and freshwater fishermen can all sit down and discuss a fair and just water management system.
This isn’t just politically courageous, it shows Labour’s commitment to the future of our home.
The election is in September and Labour are showing we are ready for the challenges of tomorrow by being brave today.
Join us and make that future real.
Copy and past.
Lets be clear. There is development testing or engineering testing and there’s operational testing. Engineering testing is to demonstrate that tapping aquifers meets its contract specifications and meets the various regulatory regimes specifications and environment, RMA and all that but it’s purely an engineering thing just to confirm that pieces of the water extraction process work as designed.
Operational testing is where you tune over the extraction process to people who don’t give a dam what the contract says and they are people who have to manage and work the machinery that extracts the water, and they are there to ring out the monthly targets and front all the nasty situation that they can think of to meet monthly production targets and say yeah we can surge in production or back off as orders come in or no we can’t or you got to do this and then we can make the monthly production target.
None of this has started. There are operational testers working with production crews. Right now the water bottling industry is in development testing with production crews in full swing and accessing the same data developers look at while looking over every ones shoulders.
So when we talk about test results for water management there aren’t any test results in realistic environmental stress scenarios and that’s the problem. What we are seeing in water ways that meet the oceans is sediment build up from a rebalancing of the water table and despite the sales pitches from sales and marketing the water bottling industry do not report the facts on the ground.
I have mixed feelings about a CEO being so enthusiastic about a water well. Just don’t think it’s a great attitude and that’s very common now amongst the industry. The industry is so wound up with procuring contracts and people and those who are critical about there equipment tend to have shorter careers. A useful production manager gives his crew crap but they meet there monthly targets any how. Every one from the labourer up to the CEO and regulators should be real sceptical about the equipment used to extract resources. No one should be a true believer and rock up to work and say wow! This is the greatest thing and my job is so safe ect, and wind up on the dole que.
Back to the testing question. The testing that is taking place so far is very benign. It’s engineering testing. There hasn’t been any rough testing and the water management system has performed very badly on a whole score of issues and there are plenty of shitty NZ pure, water memes around, and they don’t test water exraction processes under stressful conditions particularly during summer when water cycles ebb lower because managment sabotage operation tests. The operational tests are so late and so crippled by lack of resources it’s unbelievable and this is very deliberate. Because operational testing not just for water extraction but oil extraction and other mining and minerals test (Pike River?) can be dangerous because and if you fail the permit to extract might be canceled. So the natural reaction of the developer themselves not only as a permit holder but the supply chain that develops and development testers are very reluctant to say anything negative because it effects the possibility of profits, and that’s a terrible thing. That kills transparency, and it kills progress and it kills the possibility of turning resource extraction into many things known as the Value Add economy.
Lack of transparency has crippled maori many times on any number of turkey policies that the crown has kept going vastly longer than they should have, or that we could have fixed but didn’t because people where defending them to the hilt so the profits will keep on flowing. This is the dead hand of capitalism which is really hard on Maoridome, and the real problems are published, and there is an amazing window of honesty coming from Maoridome thanks in part to Metiria Turei and that’s a window we’ve never had before that Miss Turei established, and you can go to it and that is a good place for Labours Māori electorate strategies to argue from.
Maybe the melting pot isn’t quite working, but, yeah? Maybe it can be cured. But let’s start from a very clear perception that the water management quota system is not working and it’s giving off false signals. So let’s not start from the future will be beautiful. Let’s start from here and now and these are the facts, and then talk about which future is beautiful and is it achievable or not.
Just getting interested parties together won’t give you the real vibe. It will give you the sales pitch vibe. But the real vibe is published in public RMA/council submissions in away that no body else can do because the people writing reform proposals are the actual resource extraction operators who provide all the assessments and data and because all the people involved are in love with the profits so they all come back saying everything awesome.
Unfortunately these is the way the tax payer gets rung out.
An excellent summary Willie Jackson
Labour’s policy on Water is inclusive, and absolutely necessary.
Of course the cowardly incompetent National Government will try and trash it.
And yet again the Farmers (Because they are collectively greedy destructive Bastards) are out on their usual raucous whinge again.
They have been whingeing forever. Why don’t they shut up and fix the damage they have caused. !
Uh huh. So all that said, you presumably do realise that most of NZ’s surplus wealth (from which your very livelihood is paid) is created by farmers and other agricultural activities – ALL of which utilise our collective water resources. while I agree that polluting/exploitation of our waterways should be mitigated, taxing water itself is almost certainly a mistake… well it is if you want NZ to remain a first world country (and allow you to continue the “work” you do – have you ever followed the money that pays you Willie? You’ll find it quite enlightening. Google is your friend – all the relevant stats are available online).
Well said Willie water is the new liquid gold we only have to loo at eh water problems in America. The farmers have been propped up by the gnats and your own party for far too long. Someone needs to have some balls and stand up to these powerful lobby groups.
It is time for change but be careful the nasty gnats have been busy scaremongering not with just our farmers, horticulturalist, and any company that uses our wai.
Another issue is why do we the tax payers have to pay for these very expensive irrigation schemes for the farmers. This in my view is extremely unfair its one thing for them to degrade our waterways but for us tax payers to pay for them to destroy pristine land and conservation land ( that belong to all of us) that is an utter disgrace.
I am in full support of Labour’s new policies on the care of our water Willie.
It incenses all of us who see how the water quality in our cities toady are declining to the stage that bacteria is now found at such high levels that they are now shoving in our drinking water and harming us all.
The deep sores are where the best water is and the bottling companies are operating them ton drain off the best quality water, while all of us get the water from shallow bores as we all found out in Havelock North as the bores are shallow and water is polluted easily.
Funding is required for the councils to drill deeper bores and curtail the commercial usage also.
And we need to remember that “road runnoff” is yet another effect that Truck transport of their water to bottling plants now is involved in causing tyre and diesel oil fumes and particulates collecting on the roads is being washed into our aquifers and into our water supplies.
Bottling water has effects on our environment that is so far unconsidered.
Good stuff Willie, there have been calls for such moves and now that Labour have shown strength of conviction the usual suspects have begun their false narrative and are scaremongering.
Here we go again Farmers crying.
Some group calling itself Federated Farmers is calling paying for water a tax.
Water is a commodity not a tax. Polluted water running off farms is a very serious blatant dangerous outcome of farming and horticulture. Farmers don’t give a shit about it.
How could it be a Tax when actual Farmers currently get allocated water and onsell it to other farmers at a profit. ?
Farmers also tell the world we are clean green. What utter bullshit. All our rivers are dying with the farmers’ toxins. Dangerous poison.
For crying out loud, there must be some Farmers who don’t lie and who want our streams and rivers to run pure and clean as nature intended.
Surely!
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