Clive Bibby: Negotiations over water rights at Waitangi

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall of the participant's changing rooms as they each prepare for the next round of talks at Waitangi between the Crown and Iwi leadership regarding this hardy annual issue of rights to the nation's fresh water resources. 

Back here in the provinces we are watching with baited breath for any announcement of a breakthrough but are, as always, reliant on the news media for reports of progress. 

Unfortunately that usually means we will be subjected to the individual commentator's spin on the issue that will inevitably reflect their version of who holds the moral high ground during these discussions. 

David Round: Questions of Water Rights and Ownership

Water! Cool clear water. Adam’s ale, the first and most delicious drink of our ancestors; the water of rebirth, the cleanser, the gift of life itself. And in our own over-populated, drying, increasingly desperate days, ‘the new oil’. 

Some of us may remember the film Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski ~ that takes you back a bit ~ with a plot hingeing around the huge amounts of money to be made by manipulating the Los Angeles water supply. The story was not implausible. 

Prof Martin Devlin: Business and the Partial Asset Sales

Business commentators are now starting to reflect upon the business consequences of the government’s decision to delay the first of the partial assets sales until the second quarter of 2013. Rod Oram, writing in the Star-Times of 9^th September comments on the related issues of a glut of electricity generation, a downturn in domestic and industrial power consumption, the possibility of problems with electricity usage at the Tiwai Point smelter, and the downturn in coal imports by China as issues which will have an impact of the value of Mighty River Power (MRP) shares at float. From any prudent investor’s point of view each and all of these issues represent risks which need to be taken into account when deciding whether or not to invest.

But, he could also have included some assessment of the impact of the MRP delay and the options presented to the government by the Waitangi Tribunal, which, if taken seriously, constitute an additional raft of investment risks which possibly exceed those which Oram considers.

Michael Coote: National underestimates tribal ambitions for racial superiority

Potential investors have been rightly dismayed by the racial water rights fiasco that has engulfed and contaminated proposed partial sales of Mighty River Power, Genesis Energy and Meridian Energy. The supposedly slick, market-savvy National minority government of prime minister John Key has been left looking feckless, outflanked and amateurish in the process.

It will be remembered that the three publicly-owned electricity generators, along with ailing Solid Energy, were touted as partial equity selldowns by National without any serious thought given at the time to Treaty of Waitangi contingencies embedded in the State-owned Enterprises Act. It was the beginning of the end when National was subsequently cornered into putting a Treaty clause into the enabling legislation for the mixed ownership model (MOM) of SOE partial privatisation.

Martin Devlin: A Government in Crisis?

Belatedly, our pathetic media has finally cottoned on to the enormous and sinister implications of the Waitangi Tribunal report on fresh water ownership claims by Maori. A snippet in the Dominion Post of 6 September by a reader sums it up beautifully:

“Did I miss the coup? Who decided a few unelected bodies could stop democratically elected governments following through on their election promises? - signed Paul Rayner, Wadestown.”

Gary Judd: Undiscovered resources do not constitute wealth

In relation to water rights, at the beginning of Chapter 2 “Wealth and its Role in Human Life” of Reisman's Capitalism*, this appears:

Wealth is material goods made by man. It is houses and automobiles, piles of lumbar and bars of copper, steel mills and pipelines, foodstuffs and clothing. It is also land and natural resources in the ground in so far as man has made them usable and accessible. Man, of course, does not make the material stuff of land and natural resources, but he certainly does create their character as wealth. 

Elizabeth Rata: New Zealand Constitution - why iwi have got it wrong

*The NZCPR WEEKLY newsletter is delivered free each week - register here. This week's Guest Commentary extract:

There is deep disquiet throughout the country about iwi claims for water rights. However by focussing on the resource itself; previously the foreshore and seabed, this time water, next time airwaves, geothermal energy, and so on, we are in danger of overlooking the source of the issue, of overlooking why such claims can be made in the first place. To find the fundamental flaw in the tribes’ case for the ownership of  public resources such as water we need look not only at what is to be owned but at who is claiming ownership. The essence of the tribal claim is that iwi represent a separate ‘public’ – the Maori people - and are therefore entitled to own the resources of that ‘public’... Read More

Muriel Newman: Are we one or two?

*The NZCPR WEEKLY newsletter is delivered free each week - register here. This week's extract:   

Masquerading as servants of their people, an elite group of tribal leaders have persuaded governments to give them public riches that they do not deserve. Today they are claiming the ownership of New Zealand’s water. Last year they were given the right to make secret deals for the ownership of our mineral-rich foreshore and seabed. Before that, the Clark Government gave them a slice of the electromagnetic spectrum – hardly something that tribal leaders could claim they “owned” at the time of the signing of the Treaty... Read More

Mike Butler: Water rights argument flimsy

Prime Minister John Key may seem to be talking tough when he said that the outcome of the Waitangi Tribunal hearing into the New Zealand Maori Council’s claim regarding Maori rights to fresh water would not be binding on the government, and that no one owns water. However, based on Key’s past actions, you better be prepared for the likelihood that tribal corporations will be given shareholdings in power generators. It is worthwhile to look at some of the assumptions and arguments that could compel otherwise sensible political leaders to want to give tribal groups a percentage of resources. Public law specialist Mai Chen, Maori law specialist Joshua Hitchcock, and commercial lawyer Stephen Franks, have made assertions on the issues, which are reproduced here, with comment.