Point of Order: Mahuta’s Three Waters bill flows through the third reading stage.....

......but only Labour MPs voted in support of it

The most triumphal statement posted on the Beehive website today came from Nanaia Mahuta, to bray about the Water Services Entities Bill passing its third reading in Parliament.

The Bill was supported only by Labour MPs, but they have enough numbers in Parliament to turn it into law regardless of the weight of public opposition and the objections of other political parties in the House of Representatives.

As Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta issued a statement to note that this is the first of three bills intended to ensure affordable drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services is provided to New Zealanders “now and into the future

Point of Order: Empowerment and partnership.....

........both concepts come into the considerations of Ardern’s Treaty-sensitive government

“Empowerment” is a bit like “Treaty partnership”. Just a decade or so ago you would rarely have heard of it.

Since then, its use has burgeoned and its meaning – like the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi’s three simple clauses – has evolved to be applied to whatever the government wants to validate.

In a book titled Empowerment: The History of a Key Concept in Contemporary Development Discourse, Anne-Emmanuelle Calvès writes: