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Reforms must be crystal clear

Gone are the days when it appeared the Ardern-led Government could walk on water. Now it’s increasingly a case of wading against powerful currents, by which standards yesterday’s decision to make the Three Waters reforms mandatory for councils was an act of breathtaking determination.

Councils will be required to hand over management of their drinking water, wastewater and stormwater to one of four new publicly owned entities. It is a move Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta acknowledged ‘‘may not be popular’’.

Indeed not, particularly since the abandonment of suggested opt-out provisions makes that offer seem hollow. Opposition parties, and more than a few local bodies, will portray this as a jackbooted disregard for democratic accountability and an unconscionable seizure of assets that had been built up by generations of ratepayers.

Built up, sure. Maintained – a far patchier picture. Some councils have reliably done well, others have at least improved their act of late, but among the 67 local bodies many lacked the financial wherewithal, and some the political will, to do the job properly. Or even safely. The 2016 Havelock North campylobacter contamination may have faded somewhat from vivid public memory, but Mahuta points out that to this day about 34,000 fall ill annually because of the state of their drinking water.

The costs of funding water infrastructure are going to increase massively, to meet mounting pressures of growing population, climate change resilience and extreme weather events. By the minister’s figures, destined to be hotly disputed, the status quo will cost households between $1900 and $9000 during the next three decades, reducing to between $800 and $1640 under these changes.

Amalgamating the management of these hugely expensive assets and removing the cost of maintaining them from politicians who may be tempted to give greater priority to higher-profile, if less essential, projects, has its intrinsic appeal. But critics are right to raise the issue of appropriate measures for accountability and community representation in the decision-making processes.

Councils have been assured they will retain ownership of these services through the new entities, and local communities that they will retain influence. But ownership and influence are not to be confused with direct control. Calibrating the right measures of influence is a key task that awaits the working group of council and iwi representatives that the Government has agreed to set up.

This is a move that Local Government New Zealand, while disappointed at the mandated nature of the change, has acknowledged as, potentially, a way to address councils’ critical concerns. Underpinning all of this, protections against future privatisation are crucial – and they are explicit in the Government’s planning.

It should surprise nobody that the commitment to equity for rural communities is being championed by iwi and Federated Farmers alike. As Ngā i Tahu historian Te Maire Tau put it earlier this month: these reforms are an opportunity to share strengths, by working together. True. These are not simply assets, but services, and they simply must function better than they have been.

National and ACT have committed to repealing the planned law. Yet what the Government proposes is far from the disintegration of a functioning system. It’s integration to redeem a malfunctioning one. To this end, much will depend on whether the working group gets its act together.

Councils have been assured they will retain ownership of these services through the new entities ...

Opinion

en-nz

2021-10-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281749862566169

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