Diving back into uni with some water reform
We’ve all been drowning under water logged news this year: floods, rising sea levels and now the Three Waters Revamp. While it feels like we’re being washed with a downpour of news on three waters, the conversation is severely lacking actual information of what the policy actually does.
What is gearing up to be a hot water issue is essentially racism repackaged in a plastic drink bottle.
Ahead of the election, the Government has returned with an amended Three Waters reform proposal; It’s biggest change? The introduction of six more water service entities, bringing the total to 10 across the country. In theory, this change could strengthen the water entities’ credit rating and allow them to borrow more to fund improvements. In reality it’s more costly for ratepayers. Three waters in its original form was estimated to save ratepayers around $7000 per year but in its new form ratepayers will only save between $2100-$5000.
Local Government Minister Kieran McAnulty said that doubling the number of water management organisations would mean better connections to local communities. Importantly mentioning that the shake-up would not affect the co-governance component, which has become a highly divisive subject for some, partly due to the Crown’s Treaty obligations.
Divisive? Contentious? An asset-grab?
These are all words used to walk around the concept of sharing.
When one speaks of Three Waters and co-governance the idea of ‘ownership’ is usually the affair in question. There are large fears that by letting more Māori on decision making boards the entitlement of ownership will diminish for non-Māori. Labour has done a poor job of explaining its meaning and a 1News-Kantar poll found that only 17% had a good grasp of what co-governance in the Three Water reforms actually entailed. This has left a lot of space for political pariahs to muster and monger fear.
It’s become a talking point in the Stop Co-Governance tours. It’s low hanging fruit for parties and people desperately clinging to their last drop of political relevance—like that one uncle who insists this isn’t what his only Māori mate would have wanted for Ourtearoa.
The messy discourse has distracted from the core issues which are water safety and sustainability. The same happened with the proposals for Māori wards in local councils, the creation of the Māori Health Authority, Te Aka Whai Ora, and especially during the bid for Māori to switch between electoral rolls. It sure is interesting what issues the “definitely not racist” crowd gets riled up about.
It should be noted that Co-governance is not a new concept. Actually, the idea of Māori and crown working together has been foundational to our country. I’m no longer a law student so I won’t torture you with my 121 knowledge but I’m pretty sure the Treaty ensured Māori certain rights. It’s a fact that National’s spokesperson for treaty negotiations Joseph Mooney would do well to research. Last week he trotted out the extraordinary claim that article two of the treaty signed away tino rangatiratanga to all inhabitants of New Zealand. This claim is at best embarrassingly ignorant, and more likely maliciously misleading. Regardless, shouldn’t we expect better from the treaty negotiations spokesperson of a major party? If he’s against the treaty he should at least do us the courtesy of being honest about it.
In its simplest form the treaty gave the crown right to govern settlers, Māori the right to govern their own affairs, and formalised Māori as having the same rights as any other subjects of the crown. Grievous past violations of the treaty have made it hard to picture how we would apply this today. Recent governments have made attempts to better respect the treaty by giving more power to iwi in matters of importance to taonga tuku iho. Despite the best efforts of the crown and grassroots racists up and down the country; the treaty is a key part of our constitution, we cannot simply ignore it when convenient.
A working day example of co-management relationships is the Waikato River Authority, a co-governance entity managing said river. That’s right, a significant portion of Auckland’s water supply is already governed cooperatively. And yet, we haven’t been held hostage.
Under National, many treaty settlements included co-governance provisions for places like the Whanganui River and Te Urewera. In stark contrast, Luxton’s National has decided it’s happy to sit back and enjoy a little racism as long as it brings a vote or two.
Three waters provides an example of how racism can hurt all of us. Due to a controversy primarily motivated by white fears of co-governance (a thing that is already happening in local government) and seized upon opportunistically by the right. We will now all be paying significantly more for water, yay equality!
As Amanda noted last issue:
“Rights are not like a box of chocolates. We are not going to run out if we decide everyone should have some.”
Dying for a sip of something strong,
Mairātea & George
