Peter Williams: My “Dirty Work” Mention

Hager’s book has it all wrong

Although it’s been the most talked about book of the year, in some circles anyway, finding a copy of Dirty Work by Nicky Hager has proved to be a difficult assignment in my neighbourhood.

In the last week I’ve tried Paper Plus in Cromwell, Wanaka and Queenstown Airport and drawn a blank. There was no copy at the Auckland Domestic terminal’s so called bookshop either, nor at an independent bookseller in Wanaka.

However I’d heard a rumour there was a mention of me so a friend kindly emailed the chapter where indeed I do get a name and activity check.

To be honest I’m pretty annoyed that Hager has misquoted me and placed my words very much out of context.

For reference, I’m in Chapter Three which is titled “Using Racism as a Political Tool.” On page 51 there’s reportage of a speech I gave in Invercargill in 2022 during the Taxpayer’s Union campaign against the Labour government’s Three Waters proposal.

Hager writes “Hundreds of people attended to hear a speech Peter Williams (not related to Jordan Williams), who had joined the TU board a few weeks earlier. It was a long speech, quoting friendly, super-right lawyer Gary Judd KC as their expert on water reforms. Peter Williams declared, without any factual basis: ‘Why do iwi and Maori deserve a cup of every litre of water that you and I use? If this proposal is allowed to go ahead or is forced through by the minister against the wishes of the people, iwi will control the water assets of this nation. And that must not be allowed.’”

The reference is a speech to the Groundswell public meeting in Invercargill on June 9, 2022. A video recording of that speech, and one the day before in Gore, are still available on line.

It’s a presentation I made in Alexandra and Balclutha as well during that campaign but the transcriber of the quote got it wrong because I didn’t say “why do iwi and Maori deserve a cup of every litre of water you and I use? ”

I said “why do iwi and Maori deserve a cut of every litre of water ….”

One letter, a T instead of a P but it makes far more sense.

I don’t know Gary Judd KC, or QC as he was then. I’ve never met him. But he’d written about the concept of ownership which I quoted.

“The Three Waters proposal has been deliberately designed to give iwi and Maori the predominating governance influence. Bear in mind that getting a return from an asset is a right attributable to an owner. Therefore the proposal would confer on iwi and Maori, but no-one else, a direct attribute of ownership.”

Remember that the Three Waters proposals were to take the water assets owned by 67 local councils around the country and fold them into four Water Entities, the boundaries of which were based on iwi areas of interest. For instance, the South Island Entity did not include Nelson and Marlborough because that isn’t part of Ngai Tahu territory.

The bureaucracy to govern these Water Entities was mind boggling in complexity. Each would have a 12 strong Regional Representation Group (RRG), six from the local councils and six of whom were iwi appointments. The RRG, which had to make all decisions with a 75 percent majority, then picked a Selection Panel - who then selected the Board of Directors.

The Board had to have collective knowledge of matauranga Maori and te ao Maori, while on the board there had to be some directors with specific knowledge of kaitiakitanga and the Treaty of Waitangi as it pertained to water.

At no stage was there ever any mention of recruiting directors with financial and engineering skills, quite important I would have thought for entities which were going to build infrastructure that would be paid for through multi-million dollar borrowing programmes.

There could be absolutely no doubt that the then Local Government Minister Nania Mahuta and her bureaucrats had designed Three Waters to ensure that iwi interests would take over all water assets. Councils would lose control of what they’d built and maintained, admittedly not always that well, for over a hundred years. A direct attribute of ownership of those assets, as Gary Judd said, would be conferred on iwi and Maori and no-one else.

Explaining this, Mr Hager, is not racism. It is pointing out nothing more than facts.

As to the line about iwi and Maori taking a cut of every litre of water that I use, a line that according to Hager I made “without any factual basis,” let me explain.

You’ll remember He Puapua. It was the report written at Mahuta’s request to suggest ways New Zealand could achieve the goals set out in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in particular self-determination or tino rangitiratanga.

Commissioned in 2019, He Puapua wasn’t seen by the public till it was leaked in 2021, the year before this speech. It was a report still being considered by the Labour government of the time.

Included in He Puapua was this which I had quoted earlier in my speech:

“Increased Maori rangatiratanga will require considerable resourcing and capacity building. If Maori are to exercise governance power there needs to be support for this and it may take time. Tikanga Maori will evolve and develop to greater application in the modern world but will also require support. The Crown’s main contribution to capacity building will be in resourcing. There are multiple streams from which financial contributions might be sourced including, for example, levies on resource use where Maori have a clear interest if not a strong claim to ownership, such as water.”

Again Mr Hager, it was there in broad daylight and in a readily available document on a proposed future for New Zealand - iwi and Maori, once they had effective ownership of the country’s water resources and reticulation, could be charging levies on water-users to fund their self determination.

I didn’t think that’s fair in a land where our so called founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, makes us in Article Three, all equal.

That’s why your assertion in Dirty Work about me not having “any factual basis” for my claim about iwi and Maori taking a cut of every litre of water is, in itself, without any factual basis.

Perhaps if you’d listened to the entire speech you may have found some context and then thought about the reality of our water. You might have considered how we have so much precipitation falling annually in this country that we use less than five percent of it. The rest evaporates, flows out to sea or freezes in our mountains.

This country is never short of water. We just have to find better ways to capture it and share it around.

I suppose my association with the Taxpayers Union as a board member and then as a speech maker and letter writer for them, was bound to get me a mention in a book about the organisation.

That I can handle. What really frustrates me are the broad brushed claims in a chapter entitled “Using Racism as a Political Tool” that I was indulging in some form of racist attack.

What I was doing was attacking the inherent unfairness of the ludicrous Three Waters bureaucracy and the plan by the He Puapua writers to enable water users to pay for their activism.

I was doing the country a favour. Three Waters and He Puapua were abandoned by this government.

We have to ensure no politicians ever try it on again.

Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - Where this article was sourced.