There’s nothing I love more than a good old fashioned comeuppance.
For too long, the ACT inspired Auckland SuperCity has been a far right experiment in killing off local democracy and ensuring public assets are kept for private interests. The ludicrously named ‘Council Controlled Organisations’ are the assets of Auckland City fastidiously protected by a bunch of rules designed to stop the Mayor having any real power or control over those organisations.
One such organisation is Watercare who pretend to care about long term capital investment but of course they aren’t…
‘Incompetent’: Clash between Auckland and Waikato over water rights as drought worsens
Even if Watercare was allowed to take more from the Waikato River it wouldn’t make any difference because it has to treat this water first and it hasn’t built the infrastructure required to do that.
“At the moment the constraint isn’t a consent constraint, it’s the infrastructure to treat the water that comes out of the Waikato River,” Environment Minister David Parker says.
The delay the Mayor complained about was, actually, in Watercare’s own words, “future planning” to meet demand 10 years from now.
So Waikato feels like it’s being unfairly blamed for the delay now, when it has nothing to do with today’s shortage.
…Watercare have done SFA to increase catchment or dam sizes to collect more rain water and instead want to take more water from the Waikato which is pointless because on top of not building more catchments, Watercare haven’t built the facilities to treat the water because so much corporate Farmer run off pollutes the Waikato.
So much incompetence, so much delay of real investment into infrastructure and so much political impotence all combine to give Auckland the worst water restrictions in recent memory.
Once again Auckland bears the brunt of the open door immigration policy because no one saw the rapid increase in population and thus the rapid increase in water consumption.
Nothing focuses voters minds more than going thirsty.
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This is what happens when you turn a utility into a business. Coupled with poor oversight and management from the Supercity council(s).
Bomber you are being supremely harsh on Act here. While it was their idea and Key stupidly went along with it, the direction of the council has been entirely of Labour design as they have held the numbers on the council since day one.
Asleep at the wheel is an appropriate analogy
CCO’s are in the law. The fact is that legislation strictly meant councillors and the mayor were purposely left out of real council business, but voting retained as a sop to democracy, so Auckland Council could be run like a business for business.
I would even argue that selling council assests was behind it too. It’s so we’ll written into law that the elected members get very little say. So little, it’s pointless voting
This monster was created by National and ACT. Labour had nothing to do with it but any bystander half awake could foresee this coming and maybe Labour should have looked at changing the legislation. But they missed the obvious.
Apparently the Watercare CEO is paid the most in terms of the councils rich list… $775,000 per year… there seems to be a relationship between high CEO salary and poor governance and planning for the future in NZ… https://www.ratepayers.nz/rich_list
possibly because NZ’s lack of innovation with CEO’s, penny pinching, networking and media for CEO’s have taken over their ability to actually focus on the actually nuts and bolts jobs at hand and actually look past their short term bonuses…
Same with Fonterra and Air NZ. NZ business should scrap performance bonuses as it seems to be doing the opposite of what the shareholders think it is doing, and instead creating financial accounting models and poor strategy, latest fads (aka disasterous overseas partnerships with Fonterra) for their bonus, not long term stability for the company, employees and society and risk controls going forward.
https://www.ratepayers.nz/rich_list
Number 2 and 3 on the list all are at Auckland Council which wastes a fortune every year with 50% of rates going to themselves in salaries and contractors, 1 billion in failed IT projects, constantly doing corporate welfare to Ports of Auckland, Malls, etc and technically broke and I think last time they dared to check more than 80% of the ratepayers were unhappy with Auckland councils performance…. Now Auckland councils and COO’s just employ literally thousands of communications firms (costing millions) to pretend they are doing a good job and stop any dissent about the council in the media and blogs.
You totally see it because not so long ago Watercare communications were on the news saying no need to worry about the water shortages even as people were waiting weeks to get water delivery to rural Auckland areas…
And then number 4 is the CEO of Auckland transport, another incompetent company that gets nothing done, has a laughing stock level of public transport and the use of technology (HOP) and has terrible customer service…..
As I write this it is raining, quite heavily. All that water off my roof going out to sea. But I’m yet to see encouragement to get each household and business their own water tanks, subsidized even. But no, Auckland Council simply could not bear the competition could they?
This situation is a mockery. The making of both central and local government. People responsible for this need to shown the door.
why would they show people the door they are all sniffing each others arses and patting each other on the back for turning up to work to drink coffee and pontificate. Raveen Jaduram should resign now!
Its not that Auckland Council couldn’t bear the competition but that any new, private owners of Watercare wouldn’t like it.
And, yes, water from our rooves going into household storage and/or being pumped into the dams would probably help.
And where would they get that? What new land can they create to have a place for new catchment and new dams?
See, as I understand it, the whole reason why we started taking water from the Waikato was because there wasn’t anywhere to build a new dam in Auckland itself. This leads to an inescapable conclusion: Auckland City is too big to sustain itself.
And that comes back to central government.
We need central government to do two things:
1. Develop other regions so that less people have a reason to come and live in Auckland (In fact, encouragement for them to leave would be good)
2. Put restrictions back in place to prevent Auckland getting bigger.
Of course, the reason why the central government doesn’t want to do that is because businesses like the profit such a concentration of people produce.
I want to know how Raveen Jaduram got the job of do nothing Chief Exec. It seems to me he’s had ample time to ensure the sustainability of water supply in Auckland, but to busy building an AGILE culture and spending loads of (rate payer) money on (consultants) wanting to be like a corporate. He hasn’t even got the people skills to negotiate with Waikato council. What exactly again does it take to do this job?? Apparently, nothing and he should be held accountable for incompetence.
Raveen Jaduram got in with the Natz supercity. In this interview he claims,
“I do consider myself lucky to be with Watercare at the time he moved the organisation through some major challenges like upgrading the Mangere wastewater treatment plant. He’s left Auckland with world-class water and wastewater infrastructure.”
Really, keep telling yourselves that!!! What a joke and they believe their own press. e
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11567948
Erm no… we saw it but stayed silent…
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Once again Auckland bears the brunt of the open door immigration policy because no one saw the rapid increase in population and thus the rapid increase in water consumption
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It was there all the time like every other facet of unbridled open door immigration and the problems it would incur… and we can put the blame squarely and rightly on the John Key led National govt who wanted cheap labour,- at not only the expense of our infrastructure, but also on our own young unemployed.
Perhaps if they had raised wages to a realistic level years ago instead of boasting about how our low waged economy is ‘ an asset to foreign investment’, – we wouldn’t have had this situation in such severity to begin with. We wouldn’t have had such a rapid population increase and thus the stress on our most basic of necessity’s – water.
The good thing however, is we no longer have to put up with such fabrications as ”most young New Zealanders are too drugged out and lazy to be employable” from both John Key and Bill English…
I cannot think of a more defeatist, negative, disgusting and ugly turn coat viewpoint as that when summing up our own NZ born population in favour of importing union busting cheap labour from either India or China (that was a deliberate move by the lobbyists that give large donations to the National party) than that…
It is beyond all comprehension how those two above mentioned could absolutely shit on their own nationals in the pursuit of their and their mates own personal greed, – and almost as incomprehensible how New Zealanders fell for their lies and bullshit. And then payed them handsomely to do it.
Perhaps a jug of roundup would have sufficed far better than ‘ wanting to have a beer with John Key’… the ‘ privatization man’.
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