Mike Hosking is very blunt about Three Waters. He calls it a con. But this Government is hell bent on stealing your water assets, using a complex shell game that ends up by vesting control into the hands of the unelected Iwi elites. We need to Just Say No to this and any other form of co-governance.
Three Waters is a con, and no amount of the tinkering around the edges, as we’ve seen yet again with the release of the select committee’s work, changes that.
The fact the report was dumped, like so many reports have been dumped, on a Friday, doesn’t help the Government’s cause.
Three Waters is also based on a series of lies.
The main one is that our water is no good and only a centralised system can bring it to a standard we could find acceptable.
That simply isn’t true.
I have been drinking the water in this country for 57 years in all the main centres I have lived in, as well as smaller places like Gisborne where I lived as a small child, and none of the glasses I have had killed me or made me sick.
Havelock is the Government’s poster child for how bad the water can be.
The reason they cite Havelock is because that’s it, there aren’t really any others, and Havelock was six years ago, and was not an example of how mass reform would have saved the town.
The reality is the water in this country in general terms is fine. Yes, there are issues with major infrastructure work in small places where the rating base is small but the bills are big – but that is not a reason to roll into town, as the Government has, with a dangerous ideology and a few billion in bribe money to nick control.
NZ Herald
It is a dangerous ideology. Quite how vesting control and veto powers with Maori will fix the water supply issues in the small number of places that it is needed is beyond any logic.
It is wholesale asset stealing, degradation and abrogation of voting rights, all in favour of one race of people, based entirely on a heroic re-writing of a nearly 200-year-old piece of paper.
In fact, the maddest thing about the whole idea is the premise that somehow the Government believed that, in taking assets off councils for next to no compensation, we would go along with it.
What idiot, having owned and invested in infrastructure for decades, hands that over, loses control, gets nothing back and thinks they haven’t been stitched up?
The next part of the fallacy is when they tell you, if you don’t do it their way, your rates will go up.
That may well be true for those who need upgrades in their systems but it isn’t for those many areas that have done a decent job over the years and don’t in fact have any sort of problem at all.
That’s the thing. Auckland’s water is pretty good actually. Just some tweaks to storm water and it’s all good.
But consider this: name one major reform in any sector in New Zealand that has led to lower costs for anything…go on, just one.
Bradford power reforms? Nope.
Auckland Super City? Nope.
Changing from one Ministry of Health to multiple Health Boards, and back to two massive Health organisations, again race-based? Not even remotely true.
There isn’t one. Politicians the world over just outright lie about perceived and theoretical benefits, and the end result is the opposite of what they promised.
But more importantly, since when did central government start worrying about local rates? Rates go up every year everywhere … I’ve never heard a peep from Wellington.
When was the last time central government was in angst about rate increases?
It’s not their business, that’s why we have local councils, local authorities, who make local decisions.
So what we have is a bad idea, badly sold, trying to solve a problem that for many doesn’t even exist, using a mechanism that pretty much rips off anyone who is foolish enough to buy into it.
NZ Herald
The liars in government are threatening us with the prospect of rate increases if we don’t do this reform. But nowhere have they said that because they are now looking after it rates will go down. Worse still, there are material and real accounting issues with stealing these assets. They are actually propping up council debts…and the government certainly isn’t going to expunge those, are they? Councils will see a loss of assets from the balance sheets, which will result in them breaching their lending covenants which will necessitate the rapid injection of capital that the lenders will insist on, which will be paid for by higher rates.
Why are we doing this again?
Also, never forget that this policy was never part of the Labour campaign in 2020. Show me where Nanaia Mahuta or Jacinda Ardern told voters that their local water facilities were about to be taken off them and handed to a centralised authority with Maori appointed to run them.
We weren’t told, and by the time we were post-election, the disingenuous stench was overwhelming.
The policy is a dog, and if Labour had half a brain they would bin it, especially given their polling troubles.
But how beholden to the Maori caucus is the wider party? And do they hold so much sway that they are prepared to sink their re-election chances on one of the most divisive policies in decades?
NZ Herald
This is why we need a referendum on this. We need to tell the politicians that we aren’t happy with it. We need to Just Say No!
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