Such an approach will not endear the public to support the proposals, and the Government should be ashamed of itself for treating Three Waters matters in such a frivolous way.
It is an insult to councils and their engineers, who for generations have been producing and supplying safe, high-quality drinking water to their reticulated communities.
The $4 million spent on this advertising could surely be better spent on more meaningful things?
At the outset, NZ's water suppliers were not consulted over the advertising, and when they raised concerns the advertising was changed to say that the Government was "working with councils".
This isn't entirely correct either.
Councils have been given a short deadline to opt in or out of the proposals, without any in-depth knowledge of what the proposals consist of or how they will be implemented.
This hardly constitutes working with councils.
Following disquiet from councils over the Government's approach, it then offered a $2.5 billion bribe to encourage councils to opt in.
All this seems to be just another move in the Government's ideology-driven agenda to take control through centralism; like it is doing with the DHBs (20 DHBs into one agency) and tertiary education and national pay awards.
The Government is inferring it can do things better; regrettably, it has a poor record of involvement in activities that others are better at; the Kiwibuild programme and the recent MIQ debacle being good examples.
There is a huge risk to communities from losing democratic control with this transfer of control and ownership. It removes the well-proven concept of local solutions for local needs.
It is ludicrous to think that four entities covering the entire country will be manageable and efficient with the multiple layers of governance being proposed.
The logistics alone of operating water supplies from Gisborne to Blenheim, and the entire South Island, as two entities will be unwieldy.
Clearly, local control of operations (with some amalgamation) is more efficient and responsive than remote control.
The Government points to the Havelock North contamination event as a reason for taking water activities off councils.
However, this was a case of an intense rainfall storm resulting in flooding around a bore, and contaminated water getting into the bore.
Sadly, the reticulation was not chlorinated to protect the water in it; if it had been, the contamination would have been neutralised by the chlorine disinfection and consumers would not have been affected.
This has now been addressed by the Hastings District Council's $80 million programme to ensure the security of its supply.
The Palmerston North City is also proposing a $450 million new wastewater treatment facility to replace ageing facilities and meet higher standards.
These demonstrate that councils are quite capable of addressing three waters needs without the Government's approach of taking control and "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" in favour of four massive, top-heavy entities to control water operations throughout the country.
It is recognised there are issues with infrastructure renewals and ageing infrastructure.
The real issue here is affordability; it's not a matter of councils neglecting to upgrade their assets, but rather that many communities have small ratepayer bases and, despite the desirability of having fully renewed infrastructure, the reality is it's simply not affordable by the ratepayers.
The issue is complex, and creating four massive entities will not address this.
Perhaps the Government would be better focusing on how it could assist communities by helping councils meet the cost burden. Removing GST on property rates would be a good start.
Chris Davis is managing director at Nicis Consulting Ltd
