Three Waters: Government pushing on with reform plan
New Zealand’s water overhaul has seen the Government accept almost all recommendations on the Three Waters proposals from an independent working group, as it ploughs ahead with transferring authority into four new regional entities.
Good. I’m glad the Government is pushing ahead with this reform!
Our water systems are a joke!
Farmers have stolen it and polluted it for so long they believe they have a right to.
Maori have been impoverished for so long they jump at anyone with a few flash bucks to give them access to water.
City Council’s have kicked the can so far down the track in terms of upgrading their water issues that we have run out of track.
So I endorse the State just moving in and taking the entire country’s water systems under its control because the mix of incompetence and corruption is intolerable for such an important resource.
The problem however is that the 3 Waters proposal can’t answer the most important question which is will it, once implemented, be able to stop water being taken by foreign companies and can it stop water privatisation?
What is the use of water reform if it can’t guarantee in a dangerously warming planet where fresh water will become scarce that overseas interests can’t simply steal our water like they do now?
Once a country becomes dependent on us for fresh water, do you think they will allow us to stop them taking it?
I’m all fine for taking water assets and running them by the State, but are they protecting our water for us or foreign interests?
We need to halt all foreign taking of water in NZ. The planet is burning, we have the water, let’s keep it for us!
To date 3 Waters has been sold by critics as ‘stealing da water for Maaaaaaaaaaaaori’, when it’s nothing of the sort!
I like the need for ACT and National to have a super majority before they could attempt to privatise the water, but the simple truth is that ACT and National ARE SO RIGHT WING they just could never be trusted to not privatise the water.
Better that we never elect National and ACT to any position of power where. they could privatise water.
If Labour fight water reforms from a position of stopping foreign interests from taking our water and stopping privatisation, they will have a political winner for the 2023 election.
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So the areas under government control at the moment health transport education are all run so well that we should be over the moon at them controlling water . To me it is one more sneaky way of their drive to co government.
There are problems with water but we do not need a completely new system .
It is a corporation by another, fancier name, with the representation question serving as a giant red herring to hide many serious genuine concerns. The water of Aotearoa should not be treated in this way.
You are quite right about selling our water. Allowing (if I recall) a Chinese firm to bottle gigalitres from a site just north of ChCh (did they take over a previous right held by a freezing works? — someone may know), to the anger of locals, and charging a pathetic royalty, is complete stupidity. It’s a bit like Saudi Arabia allowing us to take their oil out of the ground, for a penny-a-barrel royalty.
Our water should never be privatized.
But Labour have messed up what should have been a no-brainer. (1) They acted in bad faith, having said that Councils could opt in or out; but then reneging, and saying opt in as the only option. (2) The puerile advertising campaign, aimed at a kindergarten level, and costing a million or more, undermined their credibility. (3) The mess-up about co-governance, and what that may, or may not, mean.
And a curious irony: Water, which we can’t live without, costs very little (free, if you collect the rain); while diamonds, completely unnecessary, cost millions.
Yes they did take over an existing resource consent .
I think it was 99 years or some ridiculous figure.
Here is an analogy:
If Aotearoa were a human being, it is as if this being were misdiagnosed with kidney failure and hooked up to a clunky, untested dialysis machine, one with NO guarantees that it will even do the job. …And, when what was actually needed was a radical change of lifestyle, and restored health in other parts of the body.
Yes it will, most definitely. What else, that’s worth more than a jot, is left in this country to privatise? Fuck all! It’s all been ‘stolen’ in one guise or another over the last 38 years. Unless kiwis can really wake up and stand as one against the few who deem it necessary to own it all, at our expense, it will be lost.
How’s your power bill, phone bill, internet bill, lack of availability of forestry products, branch line train trips, banking services and everything else the neocons have hoovered up ever since that traitor Roger Douglas let his greedy politic loose on a once independently wealthy Aotearoa.
Where was all the neocon bastards money when this young country’s infrastructure was being built? Fuck that! That shits expensive to build, let the hoi poiloi pay taxes for our companies to build it, then later, when all the teething issues are sorted, at their expense, we’ll come by with a shady plan and pull it out from under them. As the snake John Key said, do it little by little and they won’t notice, or words to that effect.
Absolutely traitorous behaviour. Once water is gone, and read the rhetoric if you don’t believe they won’t try & sell it. We’ll only sell if – ‘there’s a 74% majority in parliament.’
Fuck that political language. If you’ve no intention of stealing every NZers right then have it written 100% into law and stop trying to give yourselves a weasley weasel way out through corporate double speak.
Fuck three waters and all the pricks under the covers who want to add, eventually to all NZers, another lot of payments to privateers for something they have already bought and paid for.
What’s next? Ooh look…ACC!
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