Michael Bassett: On Three Waters

Dr Michael Bassett chats with Sean Plunket about Three Waters on The Platform.

Michael Bassett: Nanaia, Jacinda and the tribal takeover

Have you noticed that when Jacinda’s government is forced to make concessions under public pressure they never sacrifice co-governance? Maori domination of the revised hospital structure was defended tenaciously. With Three Waters, Nanaia Mahuta will fiddle around the edges of the legislation, but co-governance is still there in the middle, an immovable obstacle. Advancing it is central to Nanaia’s being; it has become her raison d’etre. After a lengthy, undistinguished political career, she can at last see her long-desired Tainui tribal takeover on the horizon, and she doesn’t want to give an inch. Jacinda Ardern and her low-level caucus understand so little about Maori affairs that most of them can’t see what Nanaia is doing right under their noses. They won’t lift a finger to prevent her tribal takeover bid.

Andrew Dickens: Co-governance should be the least of your worries

Friday saw the committee charged with reviewing public submissions on the Three Waters water reform return their recommendations.

Changes to co-governance was not in their list of suggestions

It beggars belief that out of the 88,000 New Zealanders that bothered to make their voices heard that co-governance wasn't high on the list of concerns.

Point of Order: The PM is telling us power resides in the ownership of water assets.

So we shouldn’t fret about how much muscle Maori can flex

It sounded curiously like something out of a Marxist textbook – the notion that power sits with ownership.

The relationship between ownership and power – it seems – should be more important to us than the issue of representation in the country’s democratic institutions or the concept of one person, one vote.

The Prime Minister might try explaining her ideas to the good people of Canterbury, after her government’s MPs enthusiastically voted in support of legislation which ends equality of suffrage in procedures for electing councillors to the Canterbury Regional Council. All residents will get to vote for the elected councillors (so far, so good), but residents who belong to the Ngai Tahu tribe get two more councillors, appointed by tribal leaders, for reasons that boil down to ancestry.

Graham Adams: Richard Prebble using the C-word is a step change.

A year ago the mainstream media was busily reassuring its audiences that the revolutionary document He Puapua being waved about in Parliament by David Seymour was merely blue-sky thinking by a working group that could be safely disregarded because it was not government policy.

Things have changed dramatically since then. Last week, the New Zealand Herald published a column by former Labour Cabinet minister and Act leader Richard Prebble that described the push for co-governance with Maori — particularly in Three Waters — as a “coup”.

What was remarkable was not only the Herald’s willingness to publish such an inflammatory article but it used the C-word in its heading online: “Richard Prebble: Three Waters is a coup — an attack on democracy.”

Richard Prebble: Three Waters is a Government Coup

Michael Laws speaks with Richard Prebble about his NZ Herald article: Three Waters is an attack on democracy.