The most hilarious part of the 3 Waters backlash is that it is now costing those who screamed, ‘Da Māaaaaaorees is stealing da water”.
Labour’s 3 Waters attempted to answer the issues of Māori interests in Water (which had been started by Key selling 49% of the water energy assets) and solve the issue of rising water infrastructure costs.
Dark Ag money circulated through the Right Wing Astro Turf organisations and it was manufactured into an existential race war.
Hilariously this focus is all on the pipes, not all the other rivers and lakes that Farmers pollute.
The Governments response is to push all their user pays charges onto Local Councils and then blame local councils for the predictable rates rise.
Here is the cost of National’s plan…
Councils expected to foot a near $48 billion bill for Local Water Done Well
Councils are expecting to spend almost $48 billion on water infrastructure in the next decade under the Government’s Local Water Done Well reforms.
…Labour’s plan was $41billion and it created large, multi-regional water service entities that would own and borrow for water assets centrally. That would have shifted debt and borrowing capacity off council balance sheets and allowed bigger, cheaper borrowing at scale and ultimately lower costs to households.
Instead we get a more expensive cost without the ability to lower costs to ratepayers with Māori legal action against their fresh water interests now in front of Court.
We got the worst of all worlds because ‘Da Maaaaaarees is stealing da water” from right wing astroturf influencers using Dark Ag money.
The ease with which your petty bigotries are manipulated.
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Too many bloody dumb naive NZ ders fell for Nationals bullshit again the same could be said for them advocating for localism and yet they are bullying local councils when they (the government) are very poor economic managers themselves. The COC government need to look in the mirror.
Yep, they all fell into Nationals trap. If you tell enough lies in policy announcement enough sheep will fall for it. Less than 40 % of the country were thick enough to fall for it and because of that we ended up with extremist coalition partners and thus an extremist government. But we can only hope the damage done in less than twelve months won’t be enough for a Labour lead government to undo. By the way, the lie on 500 extra police should have lead to his sacking.