3 Water reset: Chippy saves Labour again: how did pipes become an existential race crisis says something is wrong in NZ
Chippy has saved Labour again by doing what TDB has been arguing – move 3 Waters from the co-governance hate fest and make it about what it was always about – bloody drains!
You know what the most clever trick in the 3 Waters Culture War is?
It’s not how commercial agricultural interests have funded culture war groups to denigrate the debate into ‘Maaaaaaari is stealing da water’.
It’s not how Iwi had a whole bunch of fish hooks added into the guts of the legislation that give them veto powers in the The Te Mana o Te Wai statements.
And it’s not how Chinese Business Banks led delegations to Scotland to copy their water structures which ultimately make them easier to privatise.
Oh no.
It’s none of those tricks (although those tricks are neat), No. The pure genius of 3 Waters is the total focus on pipes and drains which amount to 1% of water ways. All the streams, lakes, rivers that are heavily polluted aren’t really part of this.
This won’t make those water ways safer.
We have 10million cows in this country.
Each cow shits the same as 14 humans.
That’s 140million humans pissing and shitting into every water way we have throughout NZ.
3 Waters focuses only on the existing infrastructure of water in this country, that does jack shit to stop the agricultural industry from polluting everything else.
We have been tricked into arguments over water infrastructure ownership without dealing with the current waste being pumped into our waterways.
Which is the way the corporate agricultural industry wants it because they don’t want to be held responsible for 45% of our rivers being too polluted to swim in.
The way 3 Waters has been twisted into some racist attack on democracy is remarkable.
When Elizabeth Rata coined the phrase ‘Ethno-Nationalist State‘ to describe attempts to share power with Māori as promised by the Treaty, every right winger wanting to be racist found glee in the shielding of their bigotry by the pretence of intellectualism.
What is most hilarious about Rata’s claims of Ethno-Nationalist State is that she is 100% right, it’s just that she’s right in a way she doesn’t want to admit to, which is NZ is an Ethno-Nationalist State, it’s just a White Ethno-Nationalist State.
Our systems of power and control are all white, our dominant culture is white, our benefitting from colonialism is white, our purposeful laws aimed at taking more Māori land were white, our confiscations are white, our dominant narrative is white.
So sure, NZ is an Ethno-Nationalist State, but for white people.
Any attempt to rebalance the damage caused by taking 90% of Māori land in less than a century and any attempt to live up to the promise of the Treaty must be denigrated and appallingly decried as apartheid.
The backbone of the economic success story that is NZ, is in stealing Māori land and NEVER paying the full price back!
NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!
We are a shallow juvenile settler country with all the cultural maturity of a can of day old coke, we are a low horizon people who lash out at others who see stars. Our imaginations are glued to cow udders, rugby and cars. To attempt a debate about identity when so many micro aggression trigger snowflakes are screaming is a feat beneath our collective dignity.
Co-Governance is the EXACT model that National and ACT developed, to now decry it because post covid stress has exacerbated economic anxieties isn’t leadership, it’s gutless capitulation to the lesser angels of our nature. What I find most hilarious is those screaming that Māori are taking over can’t name 3 councillors on their own local council.
3 Waters was an attempt to serve two masters, the Waitangi Tribunal ruling into water ownership triggered by Key selling 49% of the hydro assets and the need to find a way for Local Councils to fund water infrastructure. The way it has been manufactured into a racial smear on Nanaia Mahuta and her family DESPITE DECLARING ALL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST is proof positive that the angry and confused trump any attempt at rational debate.
What its most egregious is how these small attempts at creating basic consultation between the dominant culture and the indigenous culture they signed a Treaty with is now portrayed as a giant attack on the values of Democracy!
The way the right have framed 3 Waters as an attack on democracy is a masterclass of propaganda that would make your average Qanon Fear grifter blush.
The reason we have a vast under investment in water infrastructure is because Local Government won’t upgrade a system put under immense stress by Central Government’s open door immigration policy and low wage economy addiction.
Suburban home owners are fine with this mass immigration policy and infrastructure gridlock because it pushes up the untaxed house valuations they have gotten used to gaining year in and year out.
Neither Central Government nor Local Government want to have an honest discussion with voters about higher water rates and higher taxes.
Someone has to come up with the $150billion over the next 30 years to keep up with the expected population growth from the mass immigration policies of both Labour and National.
20% of our water is lost between the tap and its source!
Christ we can’t even debate taxing the fucking banks windfall taxes without the Right clutching their pearls and fainting on behalf of the free market.
The way this refusal to debate the cost of mass immigration policies and the political power of middle class property speculators has been twisted into a racist debate about co-governance and Māori ethno nationalism is gasp inducing in its dog whistling audacity.
3 Waters isn’t about Māori taking over the fucking water, it’s about Local and Central Government refusing to pay for the mass immigration policies that are enriching the property speculating middle classes.
Yes there are issues about possible water privatisation, yes there are issues about how we arrive at Māori voice in these decisions, but ultimately this is all about no one wanting to pay for the mass immigration that is enriching property owners.
I don’t see the Co-Governance issue as the great bogeyman that the Right do. I see it as a simple extension of the Waitangi Tribunal ruling into water rights that was sparked by Key selling 49% of our Hydro assets.
That ruling said Māori water rights existed and that it was up to the Crown and Māori to negotiate that.
That’s what Labour has attempted to do but the way it has been maligned and miscast as Māoris stealing da water is utterly misreading what this is all about.
This hasn’t been helped by a Government (Willie Jackson aside) who seem too scared to actually try and explain how this will work to the public so that can be brought along with this reform rather than seeing it as existential threat to them (despite the vast majority of those complaining unable to even name a local councillor, let along their Māori representative).
Co-Governance is our strength in NZ, not a betrayal of Democracy.
Unfortunately, Labour were too cowardly to make this argument when 3 Waters was first released and it’s ended up as an existential race war.
The manner in which this debate denigrated into a racial slanging match says an awful lot about white cultural fragility and the engrained fear every white settler descendent has in a colonial post state that those we have oppressed will one day seek vengeance (because that’s what we would do).
There are still major issues with 3 Waters, the funding and debt side of this has yet to be reviewed, because water privatisation would be an abomination, especially if the very same Chinese Business interests that led the NZ delegation to Scotland in the first place also involve themselves in the borrowing of the debt.
Co-governance with Māori isn’t our problem, it’s the co-governance with the Banks, the Billionaires and the property speculators that is fucking up our country!
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Given the constant attacks by the opposition, media and councils on 3 waters, would it not be in the interests of the government to just walk away. Let the councils and rate payers pay the burden of poor water quality and infrastructure. The councils want that or do they just want the government to be the bank. One thing is for sure, the mess water is in today is no fault of the government or the previous government, the fault lies squarely at the feet of the councils. Sadly, it is us ratepayers who suffer.
You do your readers a huge disservice by simply believing that the opposition to Three Waters and specifically co-governance is a right wing thing. The overwhelming majority of kiwis in every poll I have seen do not want Three Waters or co-governance and that includes many on the left.
Chippy hasn’t saved anything. Co-governance remains, but now what was Three Waters is now ten and the benefits of the initial policy have been greatly reduced.
This decision will cost the left the election. Kiwis don’t like the policy and you damn well know it.
Agree MB. Dont know whether it will cost them the election or not. Chippie has been dodging some well aimed bullets for weeks now and the Labour vote has gone up so who knows if the silent minority really care about water as an issue. They should but I am not convinced.
I think 70% of Labour voters (and some on the right too) think that hard times are coming so we will be better off voting left and much as I wish it wasn’t, that is what will drive the next election I think.
Co governance, like when the Maori went into co governance with Key’s National party, shhhh?
Report..
MickeyBoyle is a sad little right wing troll where his mummy stopped breastfeeding him at 28.
He wanted to save Labour, he knew the co-governance aspect was unpalatable and a vote loser but in the end he couldn’t change it without breaking apart the Labour Party, and his government. Too late to walk back his predecessors legacy, and he knows it!
So what next? The brand new completely different but just the same but even worse, even more bureaucracy in the form of 10 district sub layers instead of 4. Oh, and the timeless, it wasn’t well explained before. How do you explain turd polishing any better than before?
Take out the deeply negative issue of boards of being selected on race and water buyers (us) being unable to remove 50% of the governing boards because there’s no democratic model working here, the actual governance model sucks. Its horrendously thick in oversight and with half been there by the virtue of what they are, it can only strangle any hope of this thing flying. I cannot think of a worse outcome other than straight privatisation. Both stink.
What was announced yesterday was the status quo. Chippy just gave Nationals chances of forming a government a major boost because its Labours 3 Waters ot Nationals cancellation of it. Luxon or not, Nats have Labour to thank for this gift.
Given Labours track record on reforms not to mention it’s abysmal health reforms that seem logical in comparison, this abomination will be the mother of Labours failings!
So what next? The brand new completely different but just the same but even worse, even more bureaucracy in the form of 10 district sub layers instead of 4. Ahem – wasn’t the earlier recommendation for 4 – down from the current 78. Then adoption of 10 rather than 4 is also rather than 78!
At least you have it right that privatisation over democracy stinks!
This is the same Chippy making a fool of himself on the world stage by extending the covid emergency?
I think he made a much bigger fool of himself on the world stage by his inability to say definitively what a woman is. Being cautious over a potentially deadly virus is excusable, willful ignorance of high school biology ais not.
Aha! The creaking of a hobby horse methinks…
I don’t believe anything will save Labour from being dumped now.
This country is so screwed on just about every level you care to look regardless of 3 waters.
That being said Act and National will propel this country down the toilet even further into the sewer.
We need a cultural revolutionary shift to overthrow neo liberal capitalism, wokeism and environmental neglect.
tend to agree
Opposition to 3 Waters, and co governance, is not a right wing thing. I have been a life long Labour voter, until now. There is no democracy or accountability within tribes about appointees to these positions which are recipes for obstruction over goodness knows what grievances. Nor do the new entities make geographical sense – Canterbury is lumped in with the West Coast but their water systems have nothing in common. Christchurch where I live has excellent water infrastructure apart from some inevitable leaks. The only enthusiast for 3 Waters mega bureaucracy is the mayor of Wellington where councils have failed to invest for years and now see the golden opportunity for all taxpayers to bail them out
Crisis! I am getting a phalanx of ants again and have Gisborne (fromport coming from furin parts) cockroaches occasionally. My friend has had an invasion and a confrontation with her landlord before fixing. The local Council blandly has no assistance to offer – get somebody private – I would like to get some of these authoritative people in the privates. Our port has ushered in Argentinian ants that are as determined as financial nazis – beware. And just thinking about blind people. Who looks after them and fights their battles against the encroaching pests of many sorts that they can’t even watch out for? Now what was the crisis that this post was about, they are ongoing as we sink …glug.
Leave our kids alone*… I mean leave our water alone you circular political types. In the old days they used to sing Ring aring arosie which was connected to the appearance of deadly disease on the body, those round circles showed danger. Perhaps it was bad cess to build a circular government building – too easy to run around and miss the right door where real power stands. There it faces problems, defines and decides the best alternative with money being spent wisely for best effect to match need. And each meeting starting with a karakia and then a reading of ‘If’ from Rudyard Kipling. God is good, gave us all the skills and brains needed so we don’t need to pray for more, and hope for intercession in our unholy schemes, we’ve skills enough and should get on with using them in good will and practicality and caring for each other.
(End of rant – but let’s get out of this pit of wriggling snakes and go forward.)
*PF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IpYOF4Hi6Q
Live with lighting 6mins – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9vqgq5gtjU
Maybe instead of co goverance we have democracy?
Seems a farce when in the dome valley case, a few members of iwi can change their mind and vote for a dump while getting incentives in a flood prone, low lying area that feeds the Kaipara river …….
Backflip by iwi shocks groups opposed to Dome Valley dump
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/backflip-by-iwi-shocks-groups-opposed-to-dome-valley-dump/EJXVRUX5NRASDH7QSKTXNL7SUY/
“For Mikaera Miru, from Te Uri o Hau, the settlement trust’s backflip is a bitter pill to swallow.
“It has been a huge surprise. We feel like our throats have been slit by Ngāti Manuhiri. This is not Ngāti Manuhiri people – this is a statutory board.”
In exchange for the settlement trust’s support, Waste Management has agreed to several conditions, including a return of 1060ha of Waste Management landholdings once the site is no longer required, $2m to construct six homes nearby, and a $10m environment fund should the river be exposed to risk.
It is also promising jobs at the landfill for Ngāti Manuhiri descendants.”
Not sure that system is better than democracy, in fact it is much worse and why NZ is failing in practically every environmental factor now.
Inch by inch successive governments have removed democracy from NZ and our resource consents and now we have more dumps, laughable recycling, more floods, more droughts, dangerous mines, killing people, polluting the environment and destroying flora and fauna, creating poverty through poor legalisation – many flood victims for example have no insurance, and alienating communities, with no end in sight.
“All the streams, lakes and rivers that are heavily polluted aren’t really part of this”.
That’s my understanding. Pipes, drains and infrastructure, particularly that under the watch of urban councils. What irks me then is whenever this topic comes up on msm TV we get shown images of pristine streams, lakes and rivers, never a rusty leaking pipe or images of suburban leakage. Simply a lazy association or is there a hidden agenda, akin to the manufacture of consensus through misassociation?
I think that this is a very telling sentence.
…the angry and confused trump any attempt at rational debate.
Probably the funniest thing you will read in media today. Worth visiting Granny.
Steve Braunias: The secret diary of a Three Waters policy adviser
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/steve-braunias-the-secret-diary-of-a-three-waters-policy-adviser/6BOEGCN7CNGR5IF4CPNGRJTHKY/
extract.
“TUESDAY
Gathered my team of assistant advisers, sub-advisers, consultant advisers, media advisers, HR advisers, Te Tiriti O Waitangi advisers, and advisers manque to work through alternative names for Three Waters.
“Two and a Half Waters. Like the sitcom.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Water 4 You.”
“That’s like a licence plate.”
“Water Solutions.”
“That’s good. But something more…personal.”
“Your Water Solutions.”
“Good. But we need something that speaks to a government that acknowledges Kiwis are doing it hard and wants to lighten their load.”
“Budget Water Solutions.”
“Budget’s a bit Homebrand.”
“Affordable Water Solutions.”
“Yes! Yes, that’s good. But maybe the ‘Solutions’ part isn’t quite right.”
“Affordable Water 4 You.”
“Could you please leave?”
The adviser manque left.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re nearly there, people. Affordable Water – what, exactly?”
“Affordable Water Whakamāramatanga.”
“What?”
“It means ‘explanation’ or ‘clarification’.”
“Right. Yeah. But maybe something less…”
“Māori?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. But you have to admit there are a lot of syllables in ‘Whakamāramatanga’. Plus I think we need something that speaks to a government that has changed tack and is longer so, you know, Jacinda.”
“Affordable Water Directions.”
“Good. Keep them coming.”
“Affordable Water Solutions.”
“I think we’ve been there.”
And that’s when one of the youngest consultant advisers – a recent graduate of political science at Victoria University, whose father had been a policy adviser in the Clark administration and whose mother had been a press secretary in the Key administration – rose to her feet in a kind of trance.
She said, “Affordable Water Reforms.”
The room went quiet. It’s at times like this that you realise you have the best job in the world. When there are moments not just of clarity, but a kind of genius. We all stood up and applauded. Some people shook hands, others hugged. A few wept openly.
I set up a Zoom with Prime Minister Hipkins. He loved it. “This,” he said, “is the kind of thing that wins elections.”
WEDNESDAY
Spent the morning fiddling around with the actual reforms in the Affordable Water Reforms.
THURSDAY
Prime Minister Hipkins announced the Affordable Water Reforms. We all watched it on the big screen at Parliament’s 3.2 bar and then drank low-alcohol craft beer way past our bedtime. I got home at 10pm.”