Cam Slater: Three Waters Flushing Millions Down the Dunny

The Government touted Three Waters as a way to save ratepayers and taxpayers money but within a week of them ramming the bill through parliament we find out that the cost of the new IT system, to replace IT systems councils already have in place to manage water, has ballooned out to $659 million. It was originally estimated at between $300-500 million. And you may be sure it’ll actually cost far more than that.

The Treasury has forecast it will cost $659 million to build and operate a new computer system for the four entities that will manage the country’s drinking and waste water after the Three Waters reforms.

It estimated in its half-year economic and fiscal update (Hyefu) on Wednesday that the system would require $75m in capital expenditure and $582m in operational expenditure.

It said there was a risk “additional funding may be required” and that the actual split between operating and capital expenditure could also differ from its forecast.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson said funding at about that level had been factored into the Government’s fiscal plans for “quite some time”.

Internal Affairs deputy chief executive Michael Lovett told Parliament’s Governance and Administration select committee at the end of June that it would need an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system of a size that would cost “in the order of $300m to $500m”.

He said then that the department was “at a point where we’re in some commercial conversations with vendors”.

Stuff

Wouldn’t it have been more effective to spend $659 million on improving infrastructure in existing councils, than confiscating ratepayers’ assets and then massively duplicating systems that already exist?

This just proves that this Government is pushing this through, not for any cost savings, but rather as an ideological burp where assets are being transferred into the hands of iwi elite, for no demonstrable improvement in services.

This will end up a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that will be almost impossible to unravel. Costs to taxpayers and end users will balloon despite the assurances otherwise.

When you add in other expensive and doomed-to-failure IT projects like the Police gun register that is reportedly so full of security holes that it isn’t fit for purpose, we are going to see billions burned on the bonfire of good intentions, fuelled by unintended consequences.

The lunatics are truly in charge of the asylum.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE