Pee Kay
No Minister
“You don’t miss the water until the well runs dry” is an expression meaning that until something is gone you take it for granted and don’t appreciate what you have.
Water is the essence of life and in New Zealand we are fortunate to have an abundance of water. All living things on our planet need water to survive. In our modern society, water plays a vital role in things like comfort, hygiene, transport, science and even mythology.
There is a minority section of New Zealand society that, dangerously, believe they control/own the water and if they are not disabused of that belief, New Zealanders may well find that the well may run dry!
Unless we pay Māori for the water that is!
Māori claiming ownership of our water should not surprise us and is nothing new.
You only have to look back to 2012 when the Māori king at the time, Tuheitia, proclaimed – “We have always owned the water!” He went further by stating, “the ultimate goal for iwi is to regain management and control of water…”
It is that control of our water and the enormous financial rewards that will flow from that control, acquired through te Mana o te Wai, that is of the most significance to Māori!
There are 70 major rivers in NZ and then there are thousands of streams that are estimated to run to over 425,000 kilometres. We also have more than 4,000 lakes that are one hectare or more in size.
If you then add in the immeasurable outstanding aquifers and you start to get an understanding of why Māori elite have long eyed acquiring control of those prized natural assets!
We are not only talking about our natural waterways but also our water storage, delivery and use! Māori elite and their activist ‘soldiers’ have long known that enormous financial benefits would accrue from gaining control of this vital resource!
And they came very close to attaining that enormous payout with the Labour governments Water Services Entity Act 2023.
That bill established 50/50 co-governance of the country’s entire water infrastructure with iwi given the power of veto through Mana o te Wai statements.
That power of veto gave Māori the absolute power to block, stop and finally control. Full control in the hands of the minority!
In 2020 John Tamihere stated, “Māori own the water because this country was settled by consent, not conquest, under the Treaty of Waitangi. Article 1 gave the Crown custodianship, not ownership.”
He added, “Article 2, for the avoidance of all doubt, retained, for Māori, absolute control of our waters, our land, and all domains.”
Tamihere further claimed, “The New Zealand government has allowed foreigners to pillage our water and monetarise the waters. What we see is a new-age gold rush where hundreds and hundreds of people are now staking a claim over water allocation rights and buying existing allocation rights.”
“But, in 2020 New Zealand, 180 years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Māori Party is asserting Māori rights to the ownership of this asset.”
“If Pākehā want to continue to assert their ownership over an asset they don’t own, we consider that to be state-sponsored theft. The government represents white power. It doesn’t represent sharing with the brown Treaty partner.”
His old ‘partner in crime’ Tuku Morgan, when speaking for Tainui in 2023, stated “…we are duty bound as Iwi to explore the full extent of ownership as outlined by the Waitangi Tribunal”.
Adding, “Iwi and Māori will be involved in water reform make no mistake about that. It will not be determined by fringe elements in our communities who are more interested in political grandstanding.”
Also in 2023 John Tamihere chimed in with this gem – “To what extent do you have a conversation with the generators on the Waikato to say, “times up, there’s got to be a levy here’?”
John leaves absolutely no doubt about what he has in his sights!
Maori elite’s posturing around getting their hands in the cash register is continually wrapped and swathed in expressive statements purporting to portray a superior environmental minded guardianship.
“As kaitiaki, The Māori Party will continue to lead the debate on protecting our environment from corporate greed and restoring the life force of our environment for future generations,” said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
“When we tell the story of the decline of the well-being of our own ancestral Waiapu catchment, we often link it to the depopulation of our rural lands. Indeed, in many cases the degradation of our waterways, from a Māori perspective, is a part of a larger story of colonisation, urban migration and the loss of ancestral knowledge around care and communication with nature.” https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/06-11-2018/wai-maori-a-maori-perspective-on-the-freshwater-debate
“The reduced ability of Māori to exercise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over natural resources has led to a loss of mana.” That statement was from Living Water, a 10-year partnership between Fonterra and the Department of Conservation. https://www.livingwater.net.nz/about-living-water/
But we all know guardianship is not what they are after, is it?
Even as far back as 2010, local Māori on the West Coast were objecting vigorously to Meridian Energy applying for resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal.
Surprise, surprise, upon the exchange of a financial ‘inducement’ objections disappeared and agreement for the scheme to proceed appeared!
Then in 2020, during a period of a prolonged drought, the co-governed Waikato River Authority demanded 10 cents a litre, from the Auckland Council as payment for the water. That paltry 10 cents a litre actually amounted to $20 million a day!
In the end, consent was granted, you guessed it, in return for a $2 million a year payment to the Waikato River Authority!
A further example of the monetary windfalls to Māori via alleged guardianship of our water was Meridian and Genesis Energy, in 2023, being reported to have paid Ngāi Tahu over $180 million to ‘grease the wheels’ for the re-consenting of the Waitaki hydro scheme.
Cause for even more alarm is the current legal action by Ngāi Tahu, who is taking the Crown to court seeking to force the co-management of all freshwater in the South Island. If successful, it would give Ngāi Tahu the power of veto over water management and allocation. Put simply, total control!
Forget about $180 million. Ngāi Tahu have now set their sights on the grand prize!
And the superior guardianship ability is again asserted by stating “…it wasn’t taking the action just to protect cultural practices, like traditional food-gathering “but for the good of all”, given the state of freshwater within its territory.”
…“but for the good of all”… Yeah right!
Those examples of the greed of Māori elite are only scratching the surface. There will be many more millions of dollars changed hands that the public are kept totally unaware of.
So, why do the ‘victims’ of these shakedowns pay up? Afraid of the furore that would be created by the disadvantaged and deprived Māori?
They engage in this ownership fraud and crude extortion yet there is no legislation, no law that in any way confers ownership!
This self-appointed authority and misappropriation of power and extortion is carried out right under the noses of government. Do they decry, do they denounce, do they debunk these blatant extortive demands? NEVER!
National heads what is now a visibly divided coalition and National is truly reluctant to confront the race issue that is eroding our democracy. Luxon simply ignores the public concern and refuses to tackle Māori related issues head on or even at all. In the context of dismantling the excesses of Māori authority and control he seems to be walking on egg shells.
Prime Minister Luxon, presumably, sees Māori as victims of colonisation. Why else would the power of veto, conferred on Māori via Te Mana o te Wai statements, remain in Water Done Well? Why else does he not challenge the Māori elite and activists claims of water ownership and, indeed, sovereignty?
The current coalition government was elected to curtail the bureaucratic waste, cease the financial profligacies and most crucially, terminate the ideological, all-pervading, race-based-advantage and privilege Labour undemocratically conferred on Māori.
Many National supporters now consider he is ignoring or being irrationally blind to the ethnically skewed legislation and assistance afforded to Māori. That, after all, was the fundamental motivation for his election.
There is a cultural agenda being imposed on New Zealand. It has been allowed to develop and thrive thanks to successive governments to the point where our civil service, our education system and even our courts and judiciary are pervaded by an irrational desire to disembowel democracy and replace it with ethnocracy!
All, seemingly, to atone for the horrendous act of colonisation!
This article was originally published by No Minister.
