NZCPR Newsletter: Labour Delivers Control of Fresh Water to Maori

“Hipkins and McAnulty can only hope the mainstream media remains largely dozy, lazy and uninformed on the role of Te Mana o te Wai statements until the election. For if the general public fully grasp that Maori will be given extensive — and exclusive — rights to direct how water is managed at a local level, the public mood will change from sour to downright septic. In short order, Hipkins’ hopes of re-election will be sunk by a wave of revulsion at such blatantly undemocratic and divisive race-based policy.”

–  Journalist Graham Adams, 7 April 2023

Back in February, New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins attempted to distance himself from the Ardern administration by announcing he would put a match to unpopular policies. Claiming Labour had tried to do “too much, too fast”, he said he was refocusing priorities to put the cost-of-living front and centre of a new direction.

Graham Adams: Labour’s Three Waters refresh is a tragi-comedy

The government’s disdain for democracy is a gift to National and Act.

Last week, we watched the Prime Minister rebrand the contentious Three Waters project with a name so banal it is surprising he didn’t fall asleep while announcing it. “Affordable Water Reform” is, in essence, a Post-It note to stick on your computer while you struggle to come up with an arresting title. If you suggested “Affordable Water Reform” to your colleagues in an advertising agency they’d assume you were joking.

There’s a lot that is risible in Labour’s ongoing attempts to find a Three Waters arrangement the nation might even grudgingly accept. The Water Services Entities Act was passed in December — and within hours a second bill that included extensive amendments to the first was introduced to Parliament. In fact, that bill is as long as the Act it seeks to amend. Now, the government will introduce and pass further legislation to implement the changes Hipkins announced last Thursday — as well as “associated matters” — all before this year’s election.