Jacinda Ardern was quick to correct him on Monday, as quick as she was to remove some constitutional dynamite Nanaia Mahuta had slipped into the Water Services Entities Bill. But ministers should be better than this, and a prime minister should be awake when an outrageous proposal comes to her caucus.
Were any in the caucus awake? It’s hard to believe there was no discussion of an “entrenching” clause, requiring a 60 per cent majority in Parliament if the entities were ever to be privatised. More likely there was a discussion, a foolish one, too embarrassing to admit, about how the clause would put National on the spot?
The entrenched provisions of the Electoral Act, defining our voting rights, can have their entrenching clause repealed by a bare majority of Parliament. It should not have taken an alert legal academic, Dean Knight, to warn Parliament of the risk to our rights if contentious policy was set in the same constitutional stone. Give that man a gong.
I don’t much care what the Government does with its radio and television, we have alternatives. I do care what it does with networks such as water pipes, drains and sewers, because it’s not practical to duplicate them. That’s why no party in Parliament has proposed to privatise them.
Privatisation is a red herring the Government has tried to use several times to divert attention from the real reason for sustained public opposition to its seizure of water assets. The supreme irony is that privatisation is not very different from what the Government is doing with them.
There is more than one way to deprive the public of effective control of a public service. Māori tribal authorities are independent and fiercely “private” organisations. Three Waters is giving them as much say over water services as any business acquiring at least a half share in a public asset.
“Co-governance” does not fully describe it. As well as having equal seats on the body appointing the boards of Three Waters entities, tribes within the entity’s region will be able to issue water quality “statements” to which the entity must “give effect”.
City and district councils, representing all of the people within the entity’s territory, will not have that power. They may remain nominal owners of their water assets but their only say in the running of them will be through appointments shared 50/50 with mana whenua.
What ultimately matters is not whether a service is run by public officials, company directors or tribal elites, but whether they can be punished if need be, by the paying public using either money or ballot papers. The water entities will not be accountable to customers or voters.
They will serve, and finance, a new water-regulating bureaucracy already established in Wellington. The entities will be able to borrow on their account, which the Government seems to think relieves us of the cost of maintaining, improving and enlarging the networks as populations grow.
After the local body elections, Ardern told us we’d face crippling water rates if the Government didn’t proceed with this reform. We should have politely replied that we think we have the right to decide what we need and that facing the costs helps us decide. Furthermore, we don’t trust off-budget borrowing that must be secured against us.
And finally, now that Three Waters is becoming law despite the weight of public feeling against it, we still have one vote we can use.
John Roughan is taking a break for the next two weeks.
