John Bishop: Three Waters is still a shameless asset grab

”How did Three Waters go so badly wrong?” asked the newspaper headline.

From the Government’s point of view, the answer is that it hasn’t gone wrong. The scheme to grab assets paid for by ratepayers over many years and put them into four new entities well out of reach of ratepayers is still going ahead.

These entities will be governed and managed in accordance with “the principles of the Treaty, Te Mana o te Wai and mātauranga Māori, tikanga Māori, kaitiakitanga, and te ao Māori”, according to the various Cabinet papers on the subject.

Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta trumpets that councils will still own the assets, which isn’t even sort of true. Councils may own the assets, but they certainly will not control them.

It would be like owning a house which you can’t live in, where the tenants set the rent, and you can’t get rid of them. Yes, you still own the house, you just can’t exercise any real control over what happens in it, but you still pay the bills.

Mahuta is still delivering the control of the assets to iwi who have not paid for them (other than as ratepayers like everyone else). Nominally they will have half the say, but the fine print shows they get effective control.

The new entities must apply Māori values, councils’ appointment rights are diffused, they have no power to remove directors or managers. In practice, iwi have veto powers.

All of that is in line with the Treaty principles of partnership and active protection of Māori rights, a view apparently endorsed by Crown Law, although the advice and the reasoning behind the advice is not available.

There are issues about water quality in some places in New Zealand, arguably in too many places, but is co-governance the only possible solution? Hardly!

The statements about the Crown’s obligations to Māori under the Treaty are about to be challenged in court in a case brought by the Water Users Group and led by prominent QCs Gary Judd and Grant Illingworth.

Their claim will test the correctness in law of Mahuta’s central claim, that partnership and active protection of Māori rights must lead to co-governance and in the form she proposes it.

At the core of the case is Mahuta’s contention that “iwi/Māori have rights and interests in Three Waters under the Treaty ... and the structure and mechanisms [proposed] would give effective recognition to [these rights]... and would fulfil the Crown’s duty to comply with the principles of the Treaty”.

The Water Users Group is asking for the Crown Law advice to be released, so it can be examined and its reasoning tested in court.

Mahuta has refused, which only raises questions about what the advice actually says, and about how robust that advice actually is.

It is legally contentious, says the WUG, that the Treaty requires the Crown to seize and share assets which did not exist when the Treaty was signed.

The group also argues that generally Māori have no greater interest in water than non-Māori (except where Māori already own water assets).

The three Cabinet papers comprising the Government’s policy decisions all assume that Māori have rights and interests in Three Waters, and much of the papers is devoted to descriptions of how these interests have been addressed.

Oddly, there is hardly anything said about water quality, a factor the Government has heavily relied on in its public communications to justify its asset grab.

John Bishop is a Wellington political veteran, who helped set up the NZ Taxpayers’ Union. He has never joined any political party. He is the father of National list MP Chris Bishop. This article was published HERE.