To date the level of sophistication of the 3 Waters debate has been ‘da Maaaris is stealing da water’ which I believe is smoke screening the far bigger issues around 3 Waters, and that is who is actually directing this, Wellington or Beijing?
In 2017, Infrastructure NZ led a delegation of 33 senior New Zealand public and private representatives to the UK. The purpose of the all expenses paid delegation was to investigate Scotland’s infrastructure innovations since devolution, especially their water system which ended up being the structural basis for 3 Waters.
Criticism of the financial structure of 3 Waters raises serious questions about the ease with which a failing water entity could be privatized.
Under the current 3 Waters legislation, the new water entities cannot be ‘bailed’ out by their council ‘owners’, and the entities are also empowered to sell assets if they can retain the capacity to exercise their duties functions and powers. The ‘owners’ can’t prevent this, nor can the Regional Representative Group or the appointment board.
Infrastructure NZ comprises of the China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Bank of China. These are the domestic pimps for China’s Belt and Road project, why are we allowing Chinese interests to influence our infrastructure?
Wouldn’t it be a tad outrageous for Chinese Business interests to push our officials into adopting a water infrastructure system that could lead to privatization which those Chinese Business interests might ultimately be the benefactor of?
Ultimately if China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China or the Bank of China offer to fund 3 Waters, a system they influenced, should we accept because that sounds an awful lot like the debt trap we have seen China use in the Pacific before.
We have been so easily distracted by ‘da Māoris is stealing da water’ we have not realised the corporate Chinese banking interests who are actually directing our infrastructure plans!
Who is playing who here and how have we ended up with a water structure that makes privatisation possible with China in the background of all of this.
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These guys are all corrupt government officials and/or drug lords. Legitimate businessmen – as in people who aren’t killing people with melamine and only engage in routine corruption have basically nothing to fear from Xi’s corruption crack downs. The Chinese government has only been going after corrupt government officials(mostly Xi’s enemies), not the people who bribed them.
Infrastructure NZ does not “comprise of the China Construction Bank, Industrial andCommercial Bank of China and the Bank of China”. This particular phrasing suggest that this is the totality of Infrastructure NZ. In fact, as your link indicates, Infrastructure NZ membership extends to just every firm in New Zealand involved in designing, funding and building all forms of infrastructure. The three Chinese banks would only have modest influence over Infrastructure NZ, given that Chinese banks are relative tiddlers within the New Zealand banking scene.
This is a scare story that is not much different to Phil Twyford’s attack on Chinese ownership of residential housing of a few years ago.
I would note that our local Councils already borrow to build their various facilities. This does not mean the lenders are the effective owners of the facilities. Anymore than regarding your banking mortgage lender as the the owner of your home. And the additional difference being that the lenders to Councils don’t really have any power of sale over Council assets in the event of default.
It is good that someone like Martyn is reading the small print on 3 Waters and other shady deals .. This type of exposure of potential under the table deals used to be done by reporters who had time and resources to do investigation reporting .Sadly these reporters have been laid off and replaced by articles feed out by the government of the day and public servants keen to protect their arse
Admit it Martyn, it’s just a terrible idea.
Can you elaborate?
PP2, keep the jokes coming lol
I have a question… several actually.
How the fuck did China get so far up and into AO/NZ? Who did that? Who enabled that? How did that happen? Why were we not fully and tirelessly informed by the politicians we employ then pay to keep us informed? Water, like air, is everywhere at all times. It doesn’t belong to anyone because it belongs to everyone everywhere at all times. Have I gone to bed then in good faith went to sleep only to wake up in an entirely different and lunatic reality? Prime Minister Chris Hipkins? Your opinion, guidance and advice please?
Just keep repeating “There is no corruption in New Zealand”…
There is nothing to see, nothing to worry about, everything will be OK. Yeah, Right.
Blackrock Inc and Paul Majurey and Co via the NZ Superfund.
Who really thinks that the government is the best people to decide water policy for the good of water supply with their appalling policy? Even with devastating floods their lack of commitment on the environment is clear. They have gone back on wetland protections for developers and mining.
Government bows to mining industry and developers and weakens protections for wetlands
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/131222961/government-bows-to-mining-industry-and-developers-and-weakens-protections-for-wetlands
One of the reasons that the cost of living is so high in NZ is the ability of lobbying of and lack of enforcement on development, polluting and food related industries in NZ – polluters making huge profits while delivering poor service (Air NZ, Supermarkets). And it’s only getting worse. Government keeps putting up stealth taxes on the middle class who are easy targets and when things go wrong again target the middle class to pay for floods – rather than the industries profiting or contributing to disasters.
Insurance premiums are rising. Food is rising. Construction costs are rising. Obviously you make more profit in construction if within a short period the building/materiasl fail and you can then charge to rebuild it!
Many farms are being sold or devastated by poor climate change policy or policy that has been lobbied for that is for the benefit of multinational farming not the traditional NZ farmer small holding.
Fixed expenses are going up while labour is going down. While the low wage employers create immigration ponzis and narratives that are not true such as being unable to get workers.
Here is an example of when a salary is named above minimum wages and benefits given, they are inundated with people who want casual work.
Cash bonus and a free lunch – Wellington job ad pulls the punters
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131233038/cash-bonus-and-a-free-lunch–wellington-job-ad-pulls-the-punters
Funny enough the 50 hour working week, on minimum wages, starting at 5am is not attractive, and it’s meant to be like that, to bring in slave workers to bring NZ wages and conditions down. However when they get injured, the public have to pay for ACC from bad conditions (such as 50 hour weeks in freezing works at minimum wages)! In the US it is so bad that their meat is full of e-coli, due to practises about saving money rather than a quality, safe product being at the forefront.
Note many of the major companies in NZ have significant or controlling interests bought, from China in particular agriculture and construction, Silver Fern Farms, Fletchers, PG Wrightsons, Convita, China Forest Products.
Would question the minimum wage claim for employees in the “freezing works.”
Quality standards in the meat processing in NZ up with the best in the world if not the best in the world.
Sri Lanka here NZ comes!
Is Sri Lanka in a Chinese debt trap, or just trapped?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131137196/is-sri-lanka-in-a-chinese-debt-trap-or-just-trapped
Sri Lanka is in its worst economic crisis since independence. A large part of that comes down to debt, which is running at 122% of GDP with 70% of that debt denominated in a foreign currency.
The biggest part is in International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs) – also known as eurobonds – of the type that played a major part in various Latin American debt crises.
Outside these loans, Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral creditor is China.
Chinese lending to developing countries skyrocketed after the global financial crisis of 2008. In the two years afterwards China loaned out more to developing countries than the World Bank did.
While Asia and Africa have been the largest recipients of China’s recent lending binge it has also been seen in New Zealand’s immediate neighbourhood of the Pacific.
China is the largest creditor in the Pacific, according to a paper prepared for the Pacific Regional Debt Conference in April, with two-thirds of Tonga’s debt owed to China’s Export-Import (Exim) bank and 40% of Samoa’s debt similarly owed to China.”
what chinese debt trap snz? which country has china foreclosed on?
And then list ALL the countries the USA controlled IMF, have foreclosed on, OR issued HUGE penalty contract ammenments (to avoid being foreclosed upon).
AS per usual, the USA claims Russia and China are doing what it itself has been doing for decades now. And the simple people swallow the lies ‘hook, line and sinker’.
Whether China, US, or others – clearly having huge government dept and decisions that cause that, undermines the countries ability to govern in the interests of their citizens.
Would prefer international laws that stops predatory behaviour on other countries economies as that is the way to create peace and harmony. Both US and China seem guilty of that, as well as other countries.
As soon as people fall into poverty, their government is undermined by riots and so forth, disrupting peace.
The biggest threat to both China, US and everyone else is not other countries but the lack of climate/ biodiversity that is seeing many countries cities wiped out with floods, droughts, extreme temperatures such as 50+ degree celsius, cyclones, air and water pollution, and so forth each year.
Happened everywhere, US, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific.
Would prefer countries to work together rather than creating tensions such as surveillance balloons, overfishing, depts, illegal wars for oil. etc
Water advice in NZ is not objective.
IN NZ
Consent granted for Chinese water bottling giant to purchase Otakiri Spring
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/104695650/consent-granted-for-chinese-water-bottling-giant-to-purchase-otakiri-spring
Chinese water bottling plant’s proposal to take water from Whakatane aquifer ‘sustainable’, court hears
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/chinese-water-bottling-plants-proposal-take-whakatane-aquifer-sustainable-court-hears
Canterbury water on way to Chinese market as bottling plant starts production
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/107721548/canterbury-water-on-way-to-chinese-market-as-bottling-plant-starts-production
Whakatane locals outraged on government’s encouragement of Chinese water bottling investment
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/whakatane-locals-outraged-governments-encouragement-chinese-water-bottling-investment
NZ Government Secretly Funded Water Bottling Companies
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1904/S00055/nz-government-secretly-funded-water-bottling-companies.htm
Very easy to see why ‘free’ water is big business and driving poverty into communities around the world – not just China – 3 Waters will aid and abet this practise.
The scandal of millions of Americans deprived of running water
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/jul/02/the-scandal-of-millions-of-americans-being-deprived-of-running-water-podcast
What happens to locals as the councils and governments give the water away to private firms…
The fight to stop Nestlé from taking America’s water to sell in plastic bottles
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-fight-over-water-how-nestle-dries-up-us-creeks-to-sell-water-in-plastic-bottles
Coca-Cola sucking wells dry in indigenous Mexican town – forcing residents to buy bottled water
Bottling plant ‘consumes more than a million litres of water a day’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coca-cola-mexico-wells-dry-bottled-water-sucking-san-felipe-ecatepec-chiapas-a7953026.html
Coca-Cola Charged With Groundwater Depletion and Pollution in India
https://www.thoughtco.com/coca-cola-groundwater-depletion-in-india-1204204
The company admits that without water it would have no business at all. Coca-Cola’s operations rely on access to vast supplies of water, as it takes almost three litres of water to make one litre of Coca-Cola. In order to satisfy this need, Coca-Cola is increasingly taking over control of aquifers in communities around the world. These vast subterranean chambers hold water resources collected over many hundreds of years. As such they the represent the heritage of entire communities.
https://waronwant.org/media/coca-cola-drinking-world-dry
Chinese company approved to run water mining operation in drought-stricken Queensland
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/28/chinese-company-approved-to-run-water-mining-operation-in-drought-stricken-queensland
Yikes. I’m feeling a fit of paranoia descending on me.
Oh.My.God. You have to watch this. @IM RIGHT? You included. Especially if you’re fat.
Russell Brand talking to:
‘Coke Whistleblower EXPOSES Big Food’
“Here is my conversation with Calley Means, who is the founder of TrueMed, a company that issues prescriptions for food and exercise, enabling tax-free spending on items promoting health. ”
https://youtu.be/ugGg_R2C9ko
Thanks Martyn…..appreciate your insights.
This from Feb.17/23 https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2023/02/17/the-privatisation-two-step-is-three-waters-a-masterpiece-of-misdirection/: —
is good to arise into eyes and minds again, or at last if not already absorbed.
The most obvious vectoral candidate is the National Iwi Chairs Forum. This is an outgrowth of the Treaty Settlement Process – the New Zealand state’s inspired mechanism for de-radicalising Māori nationalism by setting-up a series of neo-tribal capitalist buffers between the traditional/professional Māori elites and the urbanised, poorly-educated and culturally unmoored Māori working-class. The leaders of these tribal corporations are already more than half-way into the deracinated world of global capitalism – a fact they keep well-hidden from their own people behind swirling veils of Māori mysticism.
Enlist the support of these commercial rangatira, and the journey towards the privatisation of water will be underway long before the nation realises. And if an iwi already seething with bitter historical resentments steps forward to lead the process of detaching New Zealand’s water resources from the state, then so much the better. What’s more, any politician willing to front this iwi power grab is bound to become a lightning-rod for all manner of racially-charged criticism and abuse. Cui bono from this cynical exercise in political misdirection? Who else but the true instigators of the project: the always silent, always patient, foreign investor/s.
(My bolded.)
“Under the current 3 Waters legislation, the new water entities cannot be ‘bailed’ out by their council ‘owners’, and the entities are also empowered to sell assets if they can retain the capacity to exercise their duties functions and powers.” – the issue isn’t the Chinese but the continuation of the Neo-Liberal Monetarist economic and social policies introduced by Labour in 1984 and carried on ever since. In other words, the privatisation of public assets.