Are You Waking Up Yet One News?

Dear One News,

Thanks for taking the time to poll the public on 3-Waters co-governance arrangements, finding that 79% of those polled had little or no understanding of the concept. It doesn’t help that you folks don’t have any understanding either. You’re a bit thick, so to speak: slow off the mark. You’ve been conned. You’re asleep.

3-Waters is a fraud. Ostensibly about storm, waste and drinking water, the protagonists of the arrangement are still pushing that propaganda line as though the bill’s backers have the public interest at heart. They don’t. The ‘Water Services Entities Act 2022’ now applies to all water in this country, right to our coastal marine boundary and includes ‘water in all its physical forms, whether flowing or not, and whether over or under the ground’ thanks to Ms Mahuta’s very last minute Supplementary Order Paper 306, 2022 amending the bill: an amendment you haven’t caught up with yet, nor have any of our nation’s mighty press, nor our parliamentary opposition. Such is the awareness of democracy’s ‘watchdogs’ in this sad and shabby state.

The Act includes all water, and rights to such, with a huge skew towards ethnically Maori interests: that’s neither right nor fair, nor democratic. The skew is enabled by the ‘Te Mana o te Wai’ (TMOTW) statements in the legislation which give Maori, and only Maori, huge leverage to tilt benefits their way. The ‘meaning’ and reach of TMOTW statements are deliberately unclear, but all-powerful in determining whose say prevails in all matters watery.

Evidence of the deliberate obfuscation of TMOTW Statements and their equally deliberate bias can be found in minutes of the series of nation-wide ‘hui’ conducted in preparation of the bill, but more so in the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring of those that believe they stand to gain, hugely and financially, from this Act.

Consider, (from the handy guide):

1) Only Maori can make a TMOTW statement
2) Their meaning can never be fully defined, except by Maori leadership.
3) The ‘terms’ and ‘concepts’ incorporated can only determined by Maori.
4) Their ‘focus’ will be on water ‘allocation’.
5) The ‘mauri’ of the water body cannot be understood except by ‘mana whenua’.
6) The so-called ‘Kaitiakitanga and Manaakitanga’ principles are to be administered “exclusively by mana whenua“. [their bold]
7) “Users of water for commercial purposes should not be enabled to participate” [except]…
8) “it should be clear, once the Te Mana o te Wai outcomes for the waters are secured, or in progress, commercial opportunities [for Maori] which operate within these limits should be welcomed.”
9) There are no limits: “Te Mana o te Wai applies to all freshwater, including groundwater and geothermal waters. Nothing is to be excluded.”
10) “Te Mana o Te Wai can only be defined by tangata whenua.”

So: there you have it One News, is it clear to you now? Co-governance means for Maori, by Maori, in Maori, only understood or defined by Maori, with no fixed meaning, ever-able to be renewed or re-imagined as any “individual iwi or hapu” see fit.

She’ll be all good, especially after a couple of those: “economically focused conversations, particularly with those sectors of the Maori economy that operate in each takiwa in collaboration with hapu and iwi.”

Are you waking up yet One News? Didn’t think so.