Labour’s Three Waters Refresh Is A Tragi-comedy | Scoop News – Scoop

Friday, 21 April 2023, 8:40 amOpinion: The Common Room

The governments disdain for democracy is a gift toNational and Act.

Last week, we watched the PrimeMinister rebrand the contentious Three Waters project with aname so banal it is surprising he didnt fall asleep whileannouncing it. Affordable Water Reform is, in essence,a Post-It note to stick on your computer while you struggleto come up with an arresting title. If you suggestedAffordable Water Reform to your colleagues in anadvertising agency theyd assume you werejoking.

Theres a lot that is risible in Laboursongoing attempts to find a Three Waters arrangement thenation might even grudgingly accept. The Water ServicesEntities Act was passed in December and within hours asecond bill that included extensive amendments to the firstwas introduced to Parliament. In fact, that bill is as longas the Act it seeks to amend. Now, the government willintroduce and pass further legislation to implement thechanges Hipkins announced last Thursday as well asassociated matters all before this yearselection.

At the press conference held inauspiciouslyin a car park in Greytown, Hipkins also attempted to amendhis own partys history. Apparently, everyone hasmisunderstood all along what co-governance actually means.The Regional Representative Groups which have nowmetastasised from four overarching strategic groups to 10 arent examples of co-governance after all, accordingto the Prime Minister. This despite the extremelyinconvenient fact that he, and Labours most influentialministers including Nanaia Mahuta, Kieran McAnulty,Grant Robertson and the recently departed Jacinda Ardern have repeatedly referred to the RRGs, with their 50:50 splitof mana whenua and council representatives, as examples ofco-governance.

Inevitably, this bid to magic awayco-governance has resulted in a glorious muddle, with aNewshub headline declaring Hipkins rejects [that the] newwater reforms include co-governance while 1News announcedThree Waters reset: McAnulty explains why co-governancestays.

The Prime Minister and McAnulty faced themedia together in the car park. Hipkins promoted him fromAssociate Minister to Minister of Local Government in lateJanuary because it was clear that Nanaia Mahutas handlingof Three Waters had become electorally toxic. She retainedher portfolio of Foreign Affairs, however, and, despite herwell-known aversion to travel, has barely been seen since.It appears the minister has suddenly developed a taste forlong flights, high-level meetings and foreign hotels.Rumours that she has been locked in the basement of theBeehive until after the election are entirelymischievous.

McAnulty has shone brightly in comparisonwith his predecessor not least because he actuallyanswers questions rather than answering a question thathadnt been asked, which Mahuta had turned into an artform.

Lean and wiry as a whippet, McAnulty staresunwaveringly ahead while speaking without moving his lipsany more than is strictly necessary. You get the impressionhes happy to be seen as a hard man. Certainly, hiscultivated persona of a cross between good keen man BarryCrump and mixed martial artist Conor McGregor lends itselfto the perception of him being capable of tough in-fighting,which wont do him any harm. No doubt he will be hopingagainst hope that most voters wont see him and the PrimeMinister as having slavishly kowtowed to the demands of theMori caucus.

That hope would have been moreplausible if Waikato-Tainui grandee Tuku Morgan had managedto contain his effervescent glee and had not immediatelyperformed a victory dance for media, declaring he wasover the moon and that iwi were euphoric withthe changes to Three Waters.

Morgan was happy to boastthat when he and other iwi representatives had met ministersKieran McAnulty, Willie Jackson, Kiritapu Allan and KelvinDavis a week earlier and presented their immovable demands,they had been warmly received. Their three bottom linesconcerned Partnership Boards; the preservation ofEntity A incorporating Auckland and Northland; and thestatus of Te Mana o te Wai statements. All these demandswere met.

Morgan crowed: Those are the three pointswe debated with the ministers and we got what we wanted. Iam very, very happy.

Acts David Seymourcharacterised the situation as Mori caucus 1; Hipkins0. He said: Co-government remains part of Three Watersbecause the Prime Minister was either too scared to staredown the powerful Mori caucus, or he did and helost.

This shows how powerful the Mori caucus isand that Chris Hipkins has no control over them. If Hipkinshad control over of them, he would have at least dropped theunpopular and divisive co-government element of ThreeWaters. Instead, Mori MPs are riding roughshod overhim.

If this view becomes widespread, it will bedisastrous for Labour. After Hipkins sent Mahuta tumblingdown the Cabinet rankings from No 8 to 16 in late January,his apparent willingness to keep the Mori caucus on a muchtighter rein than Jacinda Ardern ever managed was animportant factor in his surge in popularity. And after hisannouncement there would be imminent changes to the ThreeWaters programme, many had high hopes he would dealdecisively with the most controversial aspects of ThreeWaters, particularly co-governance. Those hopes have beenshattered.

A perceived victory by the Mori caucuswill have ramifications far beyond the popularity of ThreeWaters (to use its dead-name, as most will). It will signalto voters that if the Labour Party is re-elected withHipkins at the helm of a coalition it will continue to giveway at every turn to the Mori nationalists not only inits own caucus but also in the Greens and Te Pti Mori(if either or both make it back into Parliament).

JohnTamihere a former co-leader of Te Pti Mori and nowits president did nothing to allay such fears when hetold Newshub Nation in the weekend that the debate aroundco-governance was simply misguided. The right to theasset called water is still a customary entitlement to allMori, he said. Mori rightly say, How do we getco-governance when we own 100 per cent of it? The realissue is how do the Pkehs get into the room [viaco-governance]? Evidently, for Te Pti Mori,co-governance is simply a way station towards full controlof water at every level.

And any lingering hopes thatLabour might defend democracy disappeared when McAnulty wasinterviewed by Jack Tame on Q&A on Sunday. Asked whetherhe agreed that the RRGs, with their equal numbers of iwi andcouncil representatives, are not strictly a one-person,one-vote model, McAnulty said firmly, Yes. In hismind, democracy with equal suffrage seems to be an academicconcept that is incompatible with honouring theTreaty.

Voters, of course, have never been asked toapprove such a profound constitutional shift. Yet it isclear that we now have democracy with New Zealandcharacteristics sanctioned at the highest levels ofgovernment.

All this opens a clear path for Nationaland Act to legitimately damn any prospective Labour / Greens/ Te Pti Mori coalition as the sworn enemies ofdemocracy at least of the traditional one person, onevote of equal value kind that New Zealanders havecherished since suffrage was extended to women in 1893.Its obvious now that a win for any combination of thethree main parties of the left will further embed themechanisms and policies of an ethno-state.

AlthoughMcAnulty told Newsrooms Jenna Lynch that while hedidnt think Three Waters would be an election issue, healso said voters have a clear choice at this election.Nationals proposed water management model, he said,doesnt have mana whenua representation; our onedoes. A general election is rarely fought on a singleissue but this is so important to the nations future itwill undoubtedly be pivotal.

One consequence ofHipkins and McAnultys clumsy attempts to diminish theimportance of co-governance in Three Waters is that itinvites a focus on the power and scope of Te Mana o te Waistatements. These are edicts that only iwi and hap canissue and as Mahuta and the Department of InternalAffairs have affirmed the Water Services Entities areobliged to give effect to them. They give Moriuntrammelled power over freshwater and coastal andgeothermal water. Although many believe the statements onlyrelate to the purity and health of water, that is far fromthe truth.

Anything an iwi or hap thinks is relevantto Mori wellbeing whether in employment opportunities,investment or spiritual matters can be the subject of aTe Mana o te Wai statement. In fact, the last category mayeven include accommodating the presence of a taniwha. WhenAct MP Simon Court asked Mahuta last October: Arespiritual beliefs such as the existence of a taniwha ona bend in the river permissible subject matter for TeMana o te Wai statements?, she did not deny thatpossibility.

Former mayor of Kaipara Dr Jason Smith,who was appointed to Mahutas Working Group on ThreeWaters in late 2021 and has been a consistent critic of thestatements undemocratic nature, responded to Hipkinsand McAnultys announcement last week by drawing attentiononce again to their role.

Describing the edicts asthe very core, the citadel at the heart of the ThreeWaters programme, he wrote: Te Mana o te Waistatements are in a league of their own within the ThreeWaters reforms, far removed from the already-controversialco-governance arrangements, or entity size andshape....

Te Mana o Te Wai statements arelegislated to cover every square centimetre of all the land,including under every home, farm or place of business aswell as many kilometres out to sea. Simple and powerful,whatever these statements contain must be put into effect,no questions asked. The problem is only some parts ofsociety are allowed to write them, though they affect usall. There is no co-governance in the simple truth thatMori only may write Te Mana o te Wai statements. There isnothing co- about this, its a different type ofconstitutional arrangement from anything weve seenbefore.

Dr Smith predicted the undemocratic anddivisive nature of the statements sets up everyone forcivil unrest in the future.

Given that thestatements have been almost entirely ignored by mainstreamjournalists, it was surprising that Hipkins felt the need tomention them in last weeks announcement. Discussingco-governance, the Prime Minister said: There is also anability for Te Mana o te Wai statements [to be issued byiwi]. And weve introduced an equivalent for othersignificant interested parties in water use to also have asay in that.

The operating principles of the WaterServices Entities, which manage day-to-day operations on theground, already include engaging with the communities theyserve but they are under no obligation to act on theirrecommendations.

Tuku Morgan made it clear, however,that no matter what legislative amendments are introduced,Te Mana o te Wai statements will lose none of their force.He told the NZ Herald: Even though theres a provisionfor communities to have a priority status, it will not inany way shape or form, overshadow, minimise, or compromisethe standing of Te Mana o te Wai statements being providedby iwi and hap.

The fact Hipkins referred to TeMana o te Wai statements, albeit briefly, means news hasreached his ears that they are an issue that needsaddressing publicly. But hell have to do a lot betterthan glossing over them or offering a sop to the 84 percent of the population excluded from issuing them if hehopes to placate the growing number of voters who are awareof their scope and deeply undemocratic nature.

Labourstrategists should be very worried. Co-governance is alreadyelectoral dynamite but Te Mana o te Wai statements arethermonuclear devices in comparison.

For more articlesand videos go commonroomnz.com.

TheCommon Room - GrahamAdams

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Labour's Three Waters Refresh Is A Tragi-comedy | Scoop News - Scoop