For clarity, I've been against Three Waters from the start.
Where I live, we saw it as a straight-out asset grab.
It was good facilities built up and paid for by ratepayers over decades being subsumed into a massive body, effectively subsidising Auckland, and patching over decades of incompetent management there.
Now, BusinessDesk is reporting the Government looks ready to dump the four "mega" water bodies plan so many people hated.
Instead of that, they're looking at having 10 of them.
Not four monstrous new unelected, expensive administration systems, but 10 of them.
I ask you, can these people not read the room?
It's also reported the other two most contentious elements of Three Waters, Māori co-governance and taking the assets off councils’ balance sheets, these will stay.
I ask you again, can these people not read the room?
Now what do governments - and come to that the private sector do - when an entity or a project or scheme has got itself such a bad name you dare not mention it?
You give it a new name.
Think about it, Telecom? Yuck. Spark? Mmmm, okay.
So Three Waters as a term will go, we'll get 10 new administrations instead of four, it'll get a new name, but otherwise nothing changes.
Where they went wrong with Three Waters was, as usual, issuing orders from Wellington. On top of that, the "my way or the highway" attitude of the former Minister didn't help.
Do you know what might work? A bottom-up approach. Let the councils tell Wellington what they need, not the other way around.
Tim Dower is a New Zealand journalist who works for Newstalk ZB as a newsreader and substitutes talkback announcer. This article was first published HERE
Now, BusinessDesk is reporting the Government looks ready to dump the four "mega" water bodies plan so many people hated.
Instead of that, they're looking at having 10 of them.
Not four monstrous new unelected, expensive administration systems, but 10 of them.
I ask you, can these people not read the room?
It's also reported the other two most contentious elements of Three Waters, Māori co-governance and taking the assets off councils’ balance sheets, these will stay.
I ask you again, can these people not read the room?
Now what do governments - and come to that the private sector do - when an entity or a project or scheme has got itself such a bad name you dare not mention it?
You give it a new name.
Think about it, Telecom? Yuck. Spark? Mmmm, okay.
So Three Waters as a term will go, we'll get 10 new administrations instead of four, it'll get a new name, but otherwise nothing changes.
Where they went wrong with Three Waters was, as usual, issuing orders from Wellington. On top of that, the "my way or the highway" attitude of the former Minister didn't help.
Do you know what might work? A bottom-up approach. Let the councils tell Wellington what they need, not the other way around.
Tim Dower is a New Zealand journalist who works for Newstalk ZB as a newsreader and substitutes talkback announcer. This article was first published HERE
4 comments:
That final goal of control remains the priority - by fair means or foul.
I'm prepared to wager that there will be no fundamental change. They'll put a tail on it and call it a weasel and the PR machine will no doubt go into overdrive (again at the taxpayers expense) but, it'll still be a dog as far as the majority are concerned. It's an outright power grab by Maori, for Maori and as David Seymour said a long time ago, it's a treaty settlement not an infrastructure project. Except that it's the former without any justification and the public will pay, and pay, and pay, and pay some more. One way or another, the majority will rise up and demand an end to it, and rightly so.
I knew nothing good would come out of the chief weasel being in charge of 3 Waters. More weasel words and solutions. It isn't going to work. Some transparent journalism about the proposed structure, tribal control, the debt structure and asset ownership would be wonderful.
It's only thanks to NZCPR and the Taxpayers Union that there is any awareness of the dastardly plan.
MC
You can rename it with whatever name they like....as long as the bottom line, legislated Te Mana o Te Wai issue exists it is simply theft to redistribute to Iwi with their ultimate control of all New Zealand developments. PERIOD.
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