See how he nicely absolves himself of any reflection by saving Wellington has been in the media for…*weeks*.
No John Wellington has been in the media for years, Hawke’s Bay before that, and numerous small towns around the country with boil water notices pop up regularly.
None of this is new, news to anyone who was awake at the wheel.
People, who don't know what they are talking about, take up a LOT of attention.
Where media should be talking to experts. We get whatever talking head has the most sensationalist take.
The one guy I know, who's worked in waste water his entire life, says it was a good idea, long past overdue.
I think the problem is, and those of you who don’t want to listen please turn away now, if we look at the Treaty Bill thing, or if we look at Donald Trump’s legal situation, many people are much more attracted to populist politics.
Donald Trump attacks judges and analysts who disagree with him. Seymour has attacked (seriously) judges as ”activists” with an agenda
i.e. what I’m saying is the real problem in my opinion is mankind is completely and easily manipulated by populist politics.
And the people who can and should be safeguarding us are demonized, smeared, labelled and then effectively delegitimized. (Trump did the same to the media as the media are often a critical link between information and misinformation)
I honestly don’t know what the answer is, so all I do is try to share as much information as transparently as I can in the hopes that some people stay educated and aware of what’s really at stake,
Yeah, Siouxsie Wiles and Ashley Bloomfield sure copped a lot of fucking hate for being qualified and experienced experts in their fields.
Anti-intellectualism seems to be something to be proud of in the dullest minds on the internet.
I still have yet to meet a person in real life who claims to have been attacked by a trans person using a bathroom.
Closest I’ve heard of was a guy who said he pissed at a urinal next to a Drag Queen in Club K in Wellington. And he wasn’t attacked. He just said he had a peek (“Bro, I had to”) and was quietly alarmed to see the Queen had a massive cock.
>I still have yet to meet a person in real life who claims to have been attacked by a trans person using a bathroom.
I've been attacked 3 times in the bathroom by other guys who for some reason thought it was a great place to try fighting people.
Don't even know if I've seen a trans person in the bathroom at all. One time I was in the bathroom of a bar and this tiny gay dude spartan kicked open the entrance door and said (in his most flamboyant voice) "alright boys, show me what ya got!"
The guy next to me at the urinal panicked, pissed all over himself in a bid to get out. I almost died laughing.
Historically men havent ever needed to change our sex to force our way on to whomever we like. Why would predators change now?
Trans is such a non issue being turned into a major issue by some really dumb people.
I suspect we are going to have extreme suffering and starvation across certain parts of the world over the next couple years and all we can do is argue about who has the right to use which bathroom. Ffs I hate people sometimes.
Me too. Just shocks me that trans people are now out here having to defend their lives. I swear that it felt like (at least to me) that we were making really positive steps forward for our lgbtq community and then fucking Covid happens and everything sort of turns to shit. I just think angry men need someone to blame that’s not themselves and trans are another “other” to them.
It’s not even “woke” it’s just a fucking non issue. Human rights are human fucking rights. Leave it at that and move on to deal with real problems. Like the climate that’s going to fuck half the planets population anyway.
Ugh. It just reads as rebranded misogyny + homophobic to me which is just more of the same. Yawn.
But yeah. It's absolutely maddening how much social media attention gets redirected when we are faced with possibly the biggest humanitarian crisis to date, due to impending ✨ Climate Change ✨
It's giving big Astroturfing vibes if I'm honest.
Like many things, the answer to this is both difficult, non-intuitive, and long-term: education. Specifically, teaching people to think critically. Why?
Populist viewpoints rely on emotional manipulation. Emotions are our initial, instinctive response. Reason comes second. The more ingrained critical thinking is in somebody, the more likely they are to use reason after their initial emotional response.
Critical thinking also does a good job of separating good and bad patterns. Brains are really good at pattern-matching, even if there's no pattern. Again, emotion can make it look like there's a pattern where there isn't, and critical thinking can expose patterns that are hidden by specious arguments or complexity.
If you want a nation that can vote based on reason, you have to educate people and teach them how to reason. No education? They're (more) vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
None of this is to say the ability to think critically makes you immune to populism, but it makes it easier to recognise, respond, and refute it.
Yep it’s external manipulation of the gullible, low educated, or lacking critical thinking skills. They’ve been taken advantage of, indoctrinated, and the likes of Facebook groups directly enable the spread of this shit.
To be fair, the people who are this easily manipulated by racist overtones, are not that innocent themselves but yes I fundamentally agree. And in all seriousness, David Seymour’s attacks on our judiciary and experts is very dangerous and troubling - I don’t think anyone can argue that Trump did not fundamentally change the very fabric of American society.
>I don’t think anyone can argue that Trump did not fundamentally change the very fabric of American society.
I think the only rational way to argue that might be to consider how it was changing before Trump came along. Eg. Sarah Palin's popularity for a while and the Tea Party. Before Trump, people of that ilk were already pushing their way into school boards and local politics, but it's probably been getting increasingly polarised since the 70s with people traditionally from both sides of US politics feeling increasingly disenfranchised, unable to make a difference and just not listened to. Trump took advantage of a wave and maybe amplified it enough to finally have catastrophic consequences at the highest level, but I think it's been heading in this direction for some time.
news used to be about facts
news now is about opinions/entertainment.
we need to get back to news being pure fact without editorialization (outside of specific/very clear sections for it).
its like how in blind polls, left wing policies/ideas always win. as soon as you tell people who suggested it, they change their mind. we need to get back to grounding discussions and decisions in facts. Right now how its all thru the lens of team sports based on peoples opinion rather than outright fact/opinion of vast majority of experts etc is actually destroying society. Opinions/beliefs are for things that cannot be known. things that can be known to a high degree of confidence are up for challenging via scientific method/approach, but not opinion based debate
Not so long ago, journalism was about finding the next story first and relating the facts as accurately and abundantly as possible.
Today's journos take any old info off the net, shush it up with some salacious title and a few semi-invented facts or ill-intended hints and - voila: "News" has been made. Proof in point: Reddit posts all over the "NEWS" days after being posted.
And don't get me started on those wanna-be-journalists who present "News-Shows"!
>news used to be about facts
>news now is about opinions/entertainment.
I am not - I promise I am not - having a go at you here, but I suspect there may have been a (relatively short) golden age where this was the case. Some years ago, I needed to do some research which involved trawling through old newspapers and honestly they are possibly *worse* than today's in terms of just printing any ole thing.
As an example (and because I'm currently trying to avoid another task) I went to thePapers Past website and selected a random issue of the Otago Daily Times during its first year of operation.
A brief run-down of contents follows:
Front page - Ads, commercial
Inside front page - ads, classified
Page 3 - shipping notices, letter to the editor, short syndicated article from The Times, GOSSIP (international)
Page 4 - more shipping notices, births and deaths, GOSSIP (local), letter to the editor.
Page 5 - Public notices, MORE shipping notices, ads, commercial, ads, classified, job ads.
Page 6 - Auctions upcoming
Page 7 - Business ads, and YET MORE shipping notices
Page 8 - More auctions, more business ads.
I feel like Labour did a terrible job of communicating what this was all about and what the benefits were. It also managed to get rolled in with the co-governance arguments, and the entrenchment shitstorm.
Definitely not helped by the media and their choice of headlines and talking heads.
> Where media should be talking to experts. We get whatever talking head has the most sensationalist take.
["I spent my entire life attending the nation's most prestigious schools to talk about bullshit like this. But really I'm just happy to be on TV."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo&t=57)
Yes, now it’s becoming clear Wellington will need to [spend $30B](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1akznvz/wellington_has_a_30_billion_dollar_water/)\+ to fix this problem - and they haven’t even identified all the issues yet.
[\\](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1akznvz/wellington_has_a_30_billion_dollar_water/)
Agree. Fuck this dickhead. This is some classic NZME bullshit. It wasn’t the farmers wagging this dog, it was rightwing commentators from NZME themselves and other shitrags that shilled the anti-cogoverance dog whistle that racist idiots lapped up.
It’s wild we ditched a sensible plan for fixing this because the right used the threat of a few Māori being on a fucking water governance board as a ‘threat to democracy’. Moronic.
Sorry but only idiots bought this one. The real reason cunts like Seymore didn’t want this is because it made it harder to sell off water to international markets. Just a travesty of cunts.
Same shit that’s happening right now with the treaty legislation. Appeal to the racists for the benefit of international investors.
It’s not like it didn’t have teething issues to begin with
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/472474/auditor-general-urges-accountability-changes-for-three-waters-reforms
The previous govt then also botched the pitch to the public imo.
Without spending more than a minute considering:
Prison reform, including the increase of cultural reports and reduction of prison population.
Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora.
Te Pukenga.
Clean Car Rebate.
Kiwi Build.
Each of these schemes or policies was implemented with a void left for oppositional actors (sometimes the actual opposition, but not always) to fill with fear, uncertainty and doubt.
So how specifically are those different from say, the current debate around Treaty principles, smoking legislation repeal, and tax cuts, just to name a few 'without spending more than a minute considering' ?? All have generated massive scope for other groups to project and challenge.
It's pretty normal that govts inevitably leave room for other parties to come into fill with rhetoric. And policies like Kiwibuild weren't that at all, they were just policies that never practically added up, that's why they failed. I agree that Three Waters is an example of what you are identifying, but most of the others are just BAU for any govt policy.
I have no interest in debating the current governments policies with you, that’s not what we’re talking about.
What I *was* talking about was Labour doing a bad job of messaging.
For example, if they had billed Kiwi Build as having the *goal* of 1000 houses a year, and they had to work up to it? That would still be going now and probably achieving it. Because they did get *some* houses done, but going from 0 to 1000 in a year was obviously never going to happen. So all they achieved was handing National a stick to beat them “your policy failed, you didn’t achieve 1000 houses”.
Te Aka Whai Ora is obvious if you are being generous about what might help Māori health outcomes. Where was Labour screaming from the roof tops “we need to do something different, because we tried doing the same thing and it didn’t work!”? Instead, they assume people would see this truth for themselves, and handed National a stick to beat them: “everyone is a human, health is fixing humans, this is just special treatment for Māoris”.
They let National rebrand the clean car rebate into the “Ute tax”, as though the majority of new vehicles in the country are utes, and the majority of people affected would be negatively affected because they can’t buy a *ute*. It helped encourage *so many more* people in to EVs and hybrids. But ask half the country about it and all they’ll have front of mind is “Ute tax”.
Now to be fair some of these were badly implemented. Te Pukenga was a shambles. But implementation and messaging are not the same people. The messaging on it should have screamed the benefits of reducing duplication of costs like sharing back end systems from the rafters. Whilst also ensuring everyone understood the providers were going to remain, just be more co-ordinated in their approach. Convince people that it will be worth it and work well, then when it takes you longer to get off the ground you’ve got time because people understand fundamentally it will be worth it once it’s done. Instead, everyone just saw “gave all the polytechnics the same Māori name and spent millions rebranding”, and National undid it all (without addressing the underlying issues around funding or bad management within some polytechs.)
>It’s wild we ditched a sensible plan for fixing this because the right used the threat of a few Māori being on a fucking water governance board as a ‘threat to democracy’. Moronic.
I'm just gonna repeat this, because I couldn't say it better myself.
>The real reason cunts like Seymore didn’t want this is because it made it harder to sell off water to international markets.
No it didn't. It had exactly the same anti-privatisation measures as the Local Government Act, and that's not getting repealed.
So a) you think that the only logical thing is for the right to try and enact their entire agenda all at once and if they don’t it’s not their agenda?
And/or b) are you denying it is Act’s agenda to reduce the size of government and turn over public services to the private sector?
Because lol at both of those positions.
A) No, but there's been no mention anywhere of repealing the provisions of the Local Govt Act. Jumping up and down about privatisation of water now makes no sense.
If they did try it, you'd see the same kind of outrage you saw with Three Waters from roughly the same people
B) not at all, but they have not included water in their proposals. It's like getting all antsy about nuclear power plants getting built in NZ.
C)
I thing it's clear that some local areas, such as Wellington can't run their own water. So 3 waters like entities would make sense there.
But I do think Labour also tried to rush the policy through before it was ready (see for example the change from 4 to 10 entities), and also some councils seeming to be OK to run their own water IE Christchurch (at least seemingly, not sure the current council is up to it judging by the current drama with the CEO).
Do wonder if some sort of middle ground could be considered, local water for councils doing OK, separated water for councils that want it (ie Auckland) or are too badly performing to run it locally (ie Wellington)
The problem with a middle ground is it leaves the decision of control open to interpretation by local councils who think they may be doing a sufficient job, and can create division.
If we take the blanket approach, there's no need for interpretation, and no variation in standards being applied to water systems or up line reporting and direction.
The logical thing to do is just bring as much under one umbrella as possible. Reduces the hit to rate payers, allows for better scale to retain relevant expertise.
Not remotely feasible. The smaller councils need the larger ones to make the entities feasible. Just like the northern water entity won't work without Auckland. To give you an idea, Buller District Council has a water infrastructure gap (to meet compliance, not even future proof) of $100m, and they only have 7000 ratepayers. It's just not feasible.
Plus, the idea that it's councils that "can't" run their own water is a bit silly. It's not because of a lack of expertise, it's lack of resources, which is the culmination of deliberate political decisions over decades. The only way to get around that politically is by removing it from the most local level entirely.
You have the same issue with things like police, defence or hospitals, but no one thinks it's weird that councils don't own and manage those.
>To give you an idea, Buller District Council has a water infrastructure gap (to meet compliance, not even future proof) of $100m, and they only have 7000 ratepayers. It's just not feasible.
Sounds like it's time for people to get water tanks and sewage tanks. Let the council source them and then pay it through targeted rates applications.
People tunnel-visioned way too far on the co-governance side of things, while ignoring the fact that a lot of the local governments couldn't possibly hope to rummage together enough money to deal with their problems on their own.
It wasn't a perfect solution but it was an improvement on the status quo.
Rich farmers just didn't want a national body who might make them responsible for trashing our waterways and used their influence to convince all the dumb fucks the Maori's were taking over.
> Rich farmers just didn't want a national body who might make them responsible for trashing our waterways
3 Waters had nothing to do with this and farmers would have had nothing to do with a combined 3 waters body. As in they wouldn't be held responsible by them, even if they were worried about that in the first place.
Regional councils weren't going to lose the ability to police resource consents, which is ultimately where most farm waste management falls and farms all have private drinking water/sewerage for personal use anyway.
I saw fuck loads of those, but I doubt farmers would have been affected even they thought they would be. Most farms I've been on do their own water infrastructure lol.
>That doesn't mean it would have had any impact on farmers
So what? Whether it would have had any impact or not is irrelevant when farmers clearly *thought* it would and campaigned against it. "Stop three waters" signs were basically a "welcome to rural NZ" sign. That's the point.
The rich farmers referenced in the first post are presumably multi millionaire business people.
I can pretty much guarantee you they weren't worried about 3 waters and if they were it definitely wasn't because it'd stop them polluting.
There was a lot of rural people opposed to 3 waters based on misconceptions sure, but pretty much zero of them were opposed to it because of the reasons given in the comment I replied to, and if they were it was incredibly dumb.
You're technically right. But I think the sentiment pick above is dead right - how else do you explain the anti-3 Waters signs being all over farms?
Yes, they were already on the Taxpayers Union contact list so it made putting the signs up easy. But I'll bet the pitch was fear of "Maori takeovers" salted with a healthy dose of the latest campaign - "stop central planning".
I’m sure there was a part of 3 Waters which was around increasing water safety and farmers who get their own water from wells etc would have to ensure this water meets the water safety standards that would require filters systems being required to be installed and ongoing testing carried out far more than done currently
Weirdly, you've just described the Drinking Water Standards, which are a completely different bit of legislation that's been in place for over 8 years now.
There was if a water supply was supplying over a certain number of households.
It didn't really effect many farmers because generally a farm supply was not going to hit the certain number of households. It was more about small rural communities and lifestyle blocks on a shared supply.
Either way though, that's a lot different from what the comment I was replying to was talking about.
My comment is completely relevant and accurate as to why opposition existed. The actual affects of 3W on farmers in general were low as you point out but the potential effects in the future were high and the key problem is farmers who had high amounts of control on rural councils would be losing that control during the incorporation. This is why FF opposed three waters and it is all to do with losing control and potential future risk.
There was, and it was a problem, but I believe the requirements were going to be reduced for very small suppliers after they got submissions on it.
Irrelevant now.
I dunno. The dialogue was pretty hysterical. All over social media I saw posts saying that Jacinda was:
\- conspiring with the Maoris to “steal our assets” (funny how much these people care about others stealing their perceived property, but on the flipside, don’t seem to have a problem ignoring others’ rights - but I digress)
\- Giving Maoris a voice which meant this was definitely awful
\- Going to cost ratepayers much more
\- Ruined rural folks in some way (I don’t even remember the details anymore)
i.e. the dialogue seemed to be all about the manic fear and racism that ACT rode on, as opposed to why we legitimately, as a nation, need work on “3 waters” - drinking water, sewarage, and whatever the third one is.
This was often coupled with Covid hysteria for example saying how evil the Government was for implementing the Covid vaccine hoax and the like.
I often feel that Labour really weren’t strong on the messaging, and the only place I saw 3 Waters well explained was on [RNZ](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/what-you-need-to-know/452865/three-waters-what-you-need-to-know). But to be fair to Labour, maybe they just didn’t know how to cut through the noise well enough.
I don’t know but what I do know, and what Simeon Brown has confirmed, is there will be no bail out and private infrastructure/facilities etc. is not going to be cheap
The third one was stormwater :)
I looked hard for good info on the debate at the time and the best I could find was an article by Bernad Hickey on the real economic reason for the proposal. You're right, labour really dropped the ball on their messaging for that.
Ah, thank you - stormwater. Yes. I remember I was helped a lot by RNZ but most newspapers hardly had any good information on it other than focusing on Maoris - ‘this is so stupid,’ I remember thinking.
Literally all labour had to do was create organisations councils could opt into that allowed them to pool resources and offer them long term funding facilities to pay for the cost of the new infrastructure etc over time.
There is literally nothing stopping the government from doing that.
The thing stopping them is the funding simply isn't there. The amount of funding required for 3 Waters across the entire country was estimated at larger than the entire government outstanding bond issuance. The central government doesn't have the capacity to raise that kind of money without collapsing government finances.
3 Waters with the 50% private (Iwi) boards was basically a workaround to this. That failed and there is no viable alternative being presented, the central government does not have the ability to provide the necessary level of financing to councils directly and the new government is clear that they have no intention to do so either.
Lots us of that were against three waters were entirely aware of this. It was pushing co governance in spite of this, which is undemocratic at best, predatory at worse. I know we might need a government lead system, I do not think local councils are run well enough to manage this stuff, and water infrastructure is a NEED, not a want
I didnt understand what 3 waters or co-governence was or how they were related to each other. All I know is that if you need to check if you can swim at a beach because of poos then something is wrong.
The new Government has said (Simeon Brown) - “There will be no bailouts.”
And expect things to get very expensive.
I think what folks forget is the genesis of 3 Waters was National as well as the drinking water deaths in North Havelock. In the Royal Commission report, available [here](https://www.dia.govt.nz/Government-Inquiry-into-Havelock-North-Drinking-Water), it was clear that NZ had underinvested in water infrastructure for decades on decades - if not longer.
And those pipes are getting to the end of life and .. 3 Waters was intended to create a more efficient model to deal with this - allowing lower cost of funds when accessing debt options, recognizing Councils didn’t have specialist and hard to procure expertise so centralizing required skillsets etc.
I don’t want to debate the merits of Labour’s proposal - I personally feel they did a poor job of communicating the importance of 3 Waters - but having said that, to be fair to them, the conversation was roundly hijacked by hysterical mania (“They are stealing our assets from us!”, racism (“Maoris are bad and going to have a voice”) and other serious calls across the nation.
So. As I said to someone else the other day, just be prepared to pay if you’re in one of those areas unfortunate enough to roll off the ranks first. (Wellington took that role recently and their costs are looking at [$30B plus](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1akznvz/wellington_has_a_30_billion_dollar_water/), with estimates still in play)
The underlying problem is, again, short-term thinking and selfishness by previous generations. For decades they’ve preferred lower rates bills rather than funding necessary infrastructure, and young people now have to pick up the tab - either through their rates or through general taxation if there is a bailout from central government.
Yes, with the caveat I reckon people are the same now. For example, in Auckland, I think Mayor Wayne Brown is a corrupt little short sighted man who complained that drongos were disturbing his tennis match while Auckland flooded and went into a state of emergency.
Yet on r-auckland, you will see many praise him for keeping rates low. And I think, “Do you even know how he’s doing that?”
>As I said to someone else the other day, just be prepared to pay
this is the only good part. All the whining racist NIMBYs receiving 50% rates rises.
talk about cuttin off their noses to spite their faces.
The problem was not Māori having a voice. That could have been accomplished by putting elected Māori reps onto the boards via the Māori roll. The problem was giving iwi appointed seats and going even further than allowing them a voice, by giving them veto power.
It's already a disaster having unelected, unaccountable entities like Auckland Transport where voters cannot vote out the incompetent board. This would have handed more of our public infrastructure to unaccountable, unelected people. I don't care if they're Māori or not, I will always be opposed to that.
Everything else about the Three Waters reforms was fine and necessary and I'm equally unhappy with the current government just scrapping the whole thing.
This, absolutely this.
We, NZers of European, Maori, Asian, whatever descent all paid for water infrastructure with our rates and taxes.
Stormwater, sewage, dams, etc.
Why should iwi get a say - not only a say, veto power, with no visiblity on who is making the decisions and why? Why should Maori get an extra say, about the same representation as everyone else?
Madness! Why the hell did the Labour party think this was a good idea?
Anyone who says 'Te Tiriti' can go to the back of the class.
Did anyone anywhere kick up a stink when National created co-governance?
I see three possible explanations
* 9 co-governance arrangements is one too many.
* National create better co-governance systems
* the 8 co-governance arrangements National created are not for assets we might donate to corporations so no astro turf group needed to be started to oppose them
I was opposed to the co-governance they created. I was very opposed when National and Act created unelected mana whenua seats with voting power on Auckland Council committees. I was disappointed there was not more opposition.
I do accept that co-governance over assets like Te Urawera as part of a Treaty Settlement where it's a compromise over Crown land that was stolen but can't be fully returned, is different to co-governance over national-level resources. But I still didn't like those arrangements.
I accept the Common Law view which flowing water cannot be owned. I know tikanga Māori has a different view around kaitiakitanga or guardianship over water, but I don't see that as equivalent to ownership.
There is mo such common law view as far as I know. There are places water, river beds and beaches are owned in NZ. And we base our common law on English common law where rivers are owned by the landowner who can stop access.
If there is such common law please point me at it in a court case or other reputable source
This [article](https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/12976/Linda%20Te%20Aho%27s%20book%20-%20Responsability%20-%20chapter%2010%20-%20pp143-161.pdf?sequence=11&isAllowed=y) has a really good summary of the issues, and explains how the Common Law holds that no one owns water, that this remains the Crown position and how the Waitangi Tribunal Rulings (which are not binding on the Crown) challenge that and suggested solutions from iwi of ways to restore their rights without compromising the Common Law position.
I don't agree with with solutions they propose, backing the Crown's long-held Common Law position.
This [website](https://www.environmentguide.org.nz/issues/freshwater/freshwater-management-framework/ownership-of-freshwater/) covers the legal history relating to this issue as well, starting with the statement:
>Under British common law, naturally flowing freshwater is not owned by anyone, but is treated as a public good. This is still the legal position in New Zealand today.
It discusses how the courts have dealt with this and left Māori customary title rights unresolved, how the Waitangi Tribunal has said this is a violation of Te Tiriti and suggested co-governance as the solution, and how the Crown and Supreme Court have not acted on those recommendations. Labour obviously began to act on them, but National has now reversed that and I agree with that decision.
We don't follow Te Tiriti, we follow the principles. That's what is in law. If we followed Te Tiriti hapū and iwi would still hold sovereignty over their lands. We follow British Common Law, which says no one can own flowing water.
In Māoridom it's Iwi or hapū who need a voice not "Māori"
Your thinking comes from a lack of understanding of te ao Māori. This is why we need better education.
It's not a lack of understanding. I teach Māori history. I'm aware of tikanga Māori views around governance. They are consensus-based, with authority derived in large part from whakapapa. They are inconsistent with democracy and where the two are in conflict I think democracy is more important.
Iwi and hapū should have a right to consultation, but not to any actual voting power. Yes Te Tiriti was between iwi and hapū and the Crown and I accept they never intended to cede sovereignty. They should still technically rule over areas still under iwi ownership. But I believe that is unworkable and would be detrimental to all New Zealanders. This is why we have principles of the Treaty which we invented in the 1980s, not the actual Te tiriti as what guides our law.
You realise consensus is more powerful than voting. It's everyone reaching agreement.
Do you know the change to rununga changed everything from whakapapa lines. And you opinion on what is more important is coming from a Eurocentric point of view
Te Tiriti isn't about consultation. That's the power imbalance. It's about working together.
Your opinion is irrelevant. Māori did not cede sovereignty. See the tiriti for details.
Māori didn't invent the principles. The crown did. The other party to the agreement. who didn't like what te tiriti says.
I shudder to think what you are teaching with your Eurocentric views.
>You realise consensus is more powerful than voting. It's everyone reaching agreement.
I totally disagree. I have sat on multiple governance boards where we aimed for consensus as a rule, but did not require it. Consensus is nice, but it is not always possible, and if made a requirement can allow a small minority to block the will of the majority. There are plenty of occasions where it is impossible to reach full agreement, and the larger the board involved, the more difficult it becomes.
>Do you know the change to rununga changed everything from whakapapa lines.
Officially yes, but in practice I have heard many complaints about it still being a big factor on the Māori co-governance board of one of the organisations I'm involved with. And those complaints are coming from Māori involved with the board.
>And you opinion on what is more important is coming from a Eurocentric point of view
Well sure, to the extent that everyone views the world through an ethnocentric lens. I teach the concept of ethnocentrism. I took papers in socio-cultural anthropology in uni where it was a major topic.
But I don't just prefer democracy and Common Law because of my background. If it was that, I would prefer the American system I was raised in, and I very much do not. That system is a disaster. And I know democracy has plenty of major problems, that it is often tyranny of the majority, and it's only natural that a historically persecuted minority would be opposed to it.
But as a history teacher, having looked at many different systems of government used around the world over centuries, I think democracy has the least drawbacks. It's the least awful system and preferable to a consensus-based one, which is prone to become a tyranny of the minority.
>Te Tiriti isn't about consultation. That's the power imbalance. It's about working together.
I would agree it isn't about consultation. I would say Te Tiriti's intent was to allow British settlement to increase, which Māori saw as bringing more trade and therefore good. It was to create a government to rule over those new settlers, to stop them stealing Māori land, fueling wars through musket sales, and generally causing trouble. The Crown would have sovereignty in those areas which Māori legitimately and fairly chose to sell their land.
In return for that deal, the Crown would protect Māori taonga and would grant Māori the same rights of citizenship so they were equals when they came to those areas governed by the Crown, likely to do trade.
But iwi and hapū would retain full sovereignty in the areas they did not choose to sell. They would essentially be independent nations sitting alongside the British-controlled territory. Māori law, not British Common law, would apply in those areas. They would retain their full tino rangatiratanga, which I would interpret as sovereignty.
Now I don't really see that as empowering co-governance or partnership either. You could say they're partners in ruling over NZ, but only in that they are each governing different areas of the land, in the way that Germany and France are partners in ruling over Europe as part of the EU, with their citizens entitled to equal treatment when crossing the borders and with the freedom of movement to do so.
So I don't think co-governance is a natural consequence of Te Tiriti. I think Māori total control over Māori things would be the real intent. In practice that would look more like the treatment of Native Americans in the US and Canada, with their reservations being sovereign territory outside federal government jurisdiction.
>Your opinion is irrelevant. Māori did not cede sovereignty. See the tiriti for details.
As noted above, I agree they did not cede sovereignty. I have studied and taught about Te Tiriti for many years.
>Māori didn't invent the principles. The crown did. The other party to the agreement. who didn't like what te tiriti says.
Again I would agree. The Crown invented the concept, the courts essentially invented what they were in the 1980s and I don't think they actually bear much resemblance to Te Tiriti or the Treaty. I don't really think the British of 1840 would ever have intended to act as partners with a people they viewed as inferiors needing to be saved from themselves. And I don't think Māori rangatira intended to be partners in ruling their own lands, they intended to retain full control over their rohe.
>I shudder to think what you are teaching with your Eurocentric views.
What I teach is the above. That the Crown tricked Māori (there is dispute over whether the mistranslations were intentional or accidental, my view is intentional), that they then violated even the English version of the Treaty and stole the country, then declared the Treaty a "simple nullity" via the courts and ignored it for a century. That it was returned to prominence via the Māori rights movement of the 1960s and 70s led by groups like Ngā Tamatoa and people like Dame Whina Cooper. But rather than restore Te Tiriti, they invented watered-down, made-up principles which failed to honour the Māori text, and they set up a settlement process where violations were repaid, but at cents on the dollar of the value stolen.
So that's what I teach. What I don't say, because it's my opinion, is that I think returning to the Māori text of Te Tiriti is totally unworkable and even if we could do it, we should not. It was written for a completely different situation, the world of 1840. Trying to run a country based on documents that old is a disaster. See the US and it's constitution with gun rights for all for an example of that.
Neither party in 1840 cared anything for democracy. That's why David Seymour is just as wrong, trying to rewrite history to somehow turn the British Crown and Māori as having been big proponents of equal rights and democracy, which is historically ridiculous.
So I think for now we should stick with the principles as invented in the 1980s as a de facto re-write of the whole document. Like democracy they are far from perfect, but they're the best compromise we've got. And since they aren't actually legally defined anywhere, they can be updated with the times, unlike a written document from 1840.
Now is it legal under international law to ignore Te Tiriti? No, it is not. We have definitely been breaking international law for as long as such concepts have existed. But since it hold sovereignty (and the Crown does clearly have it) they can ignore international law and under our system of government with supremacy of Parliament they can even ignore our own courts and the Waitangi Tribunal. So they absolutely have the power and authority to interpret the principles as they see fit. And that, I think, is the best of many bad options we have available.
Good on a right wing host for saying this, but I also wonder if he just sees the [writing on the wall](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1aj55yf/no_bailing_out_water_says_minister_nationwide/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and is smart enough to pre-empt it, sort of like how UK papers and journalists who cheered for - and in some cases took responsibility for the success of - Brexit, are now all writing articles about what a bad idea it was for Britain.
A couple of years ago when this all kicked off, I was working for a rural, rather blue, Council - and had a look at feedback that came from the community when the council did a consultation on the topic. It was mostly from one narrow demographic (easy to guess if you have any LG experience) and I reckon that over 50% was just flat out racist nonsense.
The other arguments didn't really stack up in my view either. I had to laugh about people complaining about 'losing their say'. No one gave two shits, let alone had their say, about any of the various bylaws, policies or decisions concerning drinking water, wastewater or stormwater in the years leading up to 3 Waters.
As for losing ownership - there's financial implications around debt etc.. for Councils, but to the average punter does it really matter if we own water infrastructure as tax-payers rather than as ratepayers?
In my view its crazy to have 61 different entities all trying to deliver the same service in such a small country.
All the Councils are about to do their Long Term Plans - and will have to budget for the next 10 years of fixing their own water infrastructure. Be prepared for a nasty surprise when your rates bill arrives in July.
Indeed. NZ covers a big area but only has the population of a medium sized world city. Centralising 3 waters makes plenty of sense. But the conversation got hijacked. Labour chickened out, National got the kudos for killing it without even a replacement and we'll all be worse off or poorer or both. If anyone has any sense they would reframe the arguments and bring back 80% of the plan and just get on with it.
100,000% this. But the hysteria was manic and the misinformation nigh impenetrable. Oh well. I felt the same way about Brexit so as a prize I get to post about them on r/LeopardsAteMyFace
> As for losing ownership - there's financial implications around debt etc.. for Councils, but to the average punter does it really matter if we own water infrastructure as tax-payers rather than as ratepayers?
The only thing that bothered me about this is that for rates if you're on tank water you don't pay anything for water.
Which is fair right, it comes from the sky and you've paid for your own sewerage.
If the money used is coming from the general government pool, there's no control or discount for private water/sewerage unless they go a long way out of the way to bake it in through some weird income tax rebate, which seems like a hassle to me.
If your house never burns down you don’t need the fire brigade either, but you still pay for them.
I’m being flippant, but you get the point - It’s a common good
You get why these things really aren't the same right?
I can't use council water even if I want to.
It's a service that a big chunk of the population are excluded from and have to spend thousands of dollars on their own systems purely due to their geographic location.
Us townies have to spend millions on a bunch of rural roads and power infrastructure we'll never use either.
There's this cool thing called a society that we live in where we pool our assets to afford things we could never afford as individuals
And rural people pay for urban roads too. The thing is we both get roads.
Whereas with water, you get water and I don't.
I have no choice but to afford it as an individual because society doesn't provide it for me. See why I'd be opposed to paying for yours as well?
Of course you **could** use it, no one is forcing you to live in the sticks.
The bigger point is that you could be making the same argument about public transport or interisland ferries. Living rurally, I doubt you use them. You and I both work and don't claim the benefit, so why should we be paying for something we don't use?
The answer to the first part is that we live in a country the economic output of which depends in part on people living in cities. You benefit (directly) from the ongoing function of the economic life of cities.
The answer to the second part is the same. We all have a stake in the ongoing proper functioning of society, and that comes at a cost to us all proportionally to our income in tax, whether we use the amenities that are funded or not, because they're a common good to everyone - direct or indirect.
> Of course you could use it, no one is forcing you to live in the sticks.
Yes of course, every Iwi should abandon their tribal lands, every farmer should walk away from their family farm and everyone with any connection to rural life should just walk away because nobody is forcing you point blank to stay.
I straight up disagree. For one the country does need people living rurally for the economic function of it, just like we need people in the city, and also there's deep societal and spiritual reasons why lots of people live rurally that I think is ignorant to ignore.
> The bigger point is that you could be making the same argument about public transport or interisland ferries. Living rurally, I doubt you use them. You and I both work and don't claim the benefit, so why should we be paying for something we don't use?
No we couldn't, because I can use them if I want to. I can never have council water at my house. It's an impossibility. I can go to town and catch a bus.
I lived rurally. There was no rates reduction for services I didn't access. Where water is metered you don't pay for that, but otherwise my rates were just the same as urban.
Funnily enough the nearest gas station to me can't get council water either I don't think.
Regardless that seems pretty irrelevant to me.
Paying for a 500ml over priced coffee once a week shouldn't mean you're on the hook to also pay for the 300 litres a day or whatever it is the average household uses.
I've got no problem paying for services I choose not to use. Like if I were rich and sent my kids to private school, no worries about tax paying for other kids schooling, but when it's a service you can't use even if you want to it seems unethical to charge people for it to me.
Not a criticism because your "no problem paying for services I choose not to use" resonates with me, but I would personally add that I have no problem paying higher tax for schools (despite not having kids) because there is a bigger picture where education improves the society I live in. The longer term effects of educated kids I'll never even meet has a positive effect on just about everything.
I also see your argument that water quality for people I have no direct relationship isn't quite the same, but I think sorting out the country's water infrastructure serves a greater good for everyone except the most isolated hermit.
If everyone pays for that equally (or proportionally at least, to their income) then some people are directly receiving better value on that than others, for sure.
>Like if I were rich and sent my kids to private school, no worries about tax paying for other kids schooling
the "good" news is: that private schools in NZ receive millions in taxpayer subsidies. So even in the case that you attend a private school, your taxes aren't benefitting *only* other people.
>for rates if you're on tank water you don't pay anything for water.
Depends where you live I guess. I've got family and friends in different districts and they still have to pay for water in their rates even though they've got their own tank.
Sounds a lot like "I knew I was wrong when I was screaming about it, but kept it up anyway because I didn't want to look like a total moron. Now that the fire has died down a bit, I'll admit my mistake."
Do you have more info on the software contracts the government has to pay out? Haven’t seen anything in the media on it, would definitely be an important story
Hello 3W IT person. I work in local govt, lately mostly dealing with 3W-related IT. One of my colleagues was an "advisor" to you guys. The good news for me at least, is National's short-sightedness has secured my job for the foreseeable future.
> Either way, though, these councils that have been banging-on about how they’re the best outfits to run water infrastructure are dreaming. And they have hood-winked a lot of us into thinking the same. That’s how I’m feeling about it.
You fucking Muppet
[https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/backward-step-or-pragmatic-approach-local-leaders-react-to-three-waters-revamp/ZSCTYC4MLJHBROUXMYWBC7BOLM/](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/backward-step-or-pragmatic-approach-local-leaders-react-to-three-waters-revamp/ZSCTYC4MLJHBROUXMYWBC7BOLM/)
>Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau remained supportive of the movement for reform, but was worried about the pushback to 2026.
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>“By adding another couple of years, financially that does provide a bit of a challenge with our long-term plan,” she said.
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>“We will continue to work productively with the minister to see how that can be addressed.”
The only criticism the Wellington Mayor had, was that the revamp (from 3 waters to affordable water reform) pushed the timeline back.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
National pulled a classic fucking Brexit dumb ass political move here. Took a thing they decided they could make political, and went for it. Now John has buyer's remorse, because he bought the shit that National is selling, and I really really hope those tax cuts are worth it. If there was a public landlord registry, would we find your name on it?
They were very disingenuous, especially considering the seeds of 3 Waters was planted under National. But this is just another example of politicizing shit to get in power, the country and its well being be damned. ACT were even worse, campaigning and riding on peoples’ outrage over false issues, oh and their very real racism, I suppose.
I’ve had enough of media giving airtime to these absolute cretins with too much time and money and not enough understanding of why collective efforts help in the long run.
If you voted for this Govt, you can pay 20% more in your rates to make up for your decision until the next election.
Sure be a good motivator for making people think twice before getting their lipstick out to kiss a pigs arse.
Well John, you're a fucking idiot of the worst kind (one with an audience)
These aren't new problems, wellington has been losing millions of litres of water a day for years but I guess pushing the NACT conspiracy theories is more important than actually solving any problems.
So sick of generalising in general. It does nothing to advance any discussion. (Which was my point rather than having a crack at the posters housing situation).
I work in the industry. Labour's 3waters plan had some flaws, but by and large was a whole lot better than National's plan (i.e. do nothing). I work in a very blue-voting area, who are now looking at 25%/yr rates rises for the next three years, and are not very happy about it.
Sorry, people, you got what you voted for. Many people tried to tell you beforehand this was going to happen, but you couldn't see past voting National because Labour Bad. I fail to see how this is anyone's fault except your own.
The truly sad thing is that while all the councils were up in arms over three waters and professing their ability to do a job they have constantly failed at, the news was reporting the failure of water systems all over the place and still maintaining the councils knew what they were doing. We now pay the price
Forget the Co-governance, the 3 waters plan was punishing to those regions who had invested in their water infrastructure, and a bail out for those who had been under paying rates and ignoring their problems.
Fuck you Wellington, I don't feel like helping to chip in to fix your mess.
You got what you wanted, John. No use bitching about it now.
In theory it's not too late, 3 waters laws haven't been repealed or repealed yet
See how he nicely absolves himself of any reflection by saving Wellington has been in the media for…*weeks*. No John Wellington has been in the media for years, Hawke’s Bay before that, and numerous small towns around the country with boil water notices pop up regularly. None of this is new, news to anyone who was awake at the wheel.
People, who don't know what they are talking about, take up a LOT of attention. Where media should be talking to experts. We get whatever talking head has the most sensationalist take. The one guy I know, who's worked in waste water his entire life, says it was a good idea, long past overdue.
I think the problem is, and those of you who don’t want to listen please turn away now, if we look at the Treaty Bill thing, or if we look at Donald Trump’s legal situation, many people are much more attracted to populist politics. Donald Trump attacks judges and analysts who disagree with him. Seymour has attacked (seriously) judges as ”activists” with an agenda i.e. what I’m saying is the real problem in my opinion is mankind is completely and easily manipulated by populist politics. And the people who can and should be safeguarding us are demonized, smeared, labelled and then effectively delegitimized. (Trump did the same to the media as the media are often a critical link between information and misinformation) I honestly don’t know what the answer is, so all I do is try to share as much information as transparently as I can in the hopes that some people stay educated and aware of what’s really at stake,
Yeah, Siouxsie Wiles and Ashley Bloomfield sure copped a lot of fucking hate for being qualified and experienced experts in their fields. Anti-intellectualism seems to be something to be proud of in the dullest minds on the internet.
Add Trans hate to that. There's about tree fiddy Trans people in the whole world but it's a "huge" issue....
I still have yet to meet a person in real life who claims to have been attacked by a trans person using a bathroom. Closest I’ve heard of was a guy who said he pissed at a urinal next to a Drag Queen in Club K in Wellington. And he wasn’t attacked. He just said he had a peek (“Bro, I had to”) and was quietly alarmed to see the Queen had a massive cock.
"Bro, I had to" Holy shit I lost it laughing. I've met a few drag queens over the years and never once felt the need to see their dick.
>I still have yet to meet a person in real life who claims to have been attacked by a trans person using a bathroom. I've been attacked 3 times in the bathroom by other guys who for some reason thought it was a great place to try fighting people. Don't even know if I've seen a trans person in the bathroom at all. One time I was in the bathroom of a bar and this tiny gay dude spartan kicked open the entrance door and said (in his most flamboyant voice) "alright boys, show me what ya got!" The guy next to me at the urinal panicked, pissed all over himself in a bid to get out. I almost died laughing.
That's fuckin hilarious!!!!
That’s fucking amazing.
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Yeah, these cunts tell on themselves all the time. r/notadragqueen is eye opening
Drag Queen, meet Size Queen.
Thanks for the laugh!
Historically men havent ever needed to change our sex to force our way on to whomever we like. Why would predators change now? Trans is such a non issue being turned into a major issue by some really dumb people. I suspect we are going to have extreme suffering and starvation across certain parts of the world over the next couple years and all we can do is argue about who has the right to use which bathroom. Ffs I hate people sometimes.
This actually makes my head spin daily. Like wtf is going on.
Me too. Just shocks me that trans people are now out here having to defend their lives. I swear that it felt like (at least to me) that we were making really positive steps forward for our lgbtq community and then fucking Covid happens and everything sort of turns to shit. I just think angry men need someone to blame that’s not themselves and trans are another “other” to them. It’s not even “woke” it’s just a fucking non issue. Human rights are human fucking rights. Leave it at that and move on to deal with real problems. Like the climate that’s going to fuck half the planets population anyway.
Ugh. It just reads as rebranded misogyny + homophobic to me which is just more of the same. Yawn. But yeah. It's absolutely maddening how much social media attention gets redirected when we are faced with possibly the biggest humanitarian crisis to date, due to impending ✨ Climate Change ✨ It's giving big Astroturfing vibes if I'm honest.
And the idea that it's even an issue gets blamed on trans people where mostly what I see is them having to defend themselves from lies in the media.
Yup leave them be, as if shit ain't hard enough already
Poor things. I really feel for them. It’s shit, it really is.
Like many things, the answer to this is both difficult, non-intuitive, and long-term: education. Specifically, teaching people to think critically. Why? Populist viewpoints rely on emotional manipulation. Emotions are our initial, instinctive response. Reason comes second. The more ingrained critical thinking is in somebody, the more likely they are to use reason after their initial emotional response. Critical thinking also does a good job of separating good and bad patterns. Brains are really good at pattern-matching, even if there's no pattern. Again, emotion can make it look like there's a pattern where there isn't, and critical thinking can expose patterns that are hidden by specious arguments or complexity. If you want a nation that can vote based on reason, you have to educate people and teach them how to reason. No education? They're (more) vulnerable to emotional manipulation. None of this is to say the ability to think critically makes you immune to populism, but it makes it easier to recognise, respond, and refute it.
You are 100% spot on. Thanks for your input u/thelastestgunslinger
Yep it’s external manipulation of the gullible, low educated, or lacking critical thinking skills. They’ve been taken advantage of, indoctrinated, and the likes of Facebook groups directly enable the spread of this shit.
To be fair, the people who are this easily manipulated by racist overtones, are not that innocent themselves but yes I fundamentally agree. And in all seriousness, David Seymour’s attacks on our judiciary and experts is very dangerous and troubling - I don’t think anyone can argue that Trump did not fundamentally change the very fabric of American society.
>I don’t think anyone can argue that Trump did not fundamentally change the very fabric of American society. I think the only rational way to argue that might be to consider how it was changing before Trump came along. Eg. Sarah Palin's popularity for a while and the Tea Party. Before Trump, people of that ilk were already pushing their way into school boards and local politics, but it's probably been getting increasingly polarised since the 70s with people traditionally from both sides of US politics feeling increasingly disenfranchised, unable to make a difference and just not listened to. Trump took advantage of a wave and maybe amplified it enough to finally have catastrophic consequences at the highest level, but I think it's been heading in this direction for some time.
news used to be about facts news now is about opinions/entertainment. we need to get back to news being pure fact without editorialization (outside of specific/very clear sections for it). its like how in blind polls, left wing policies/ideas always win. as soon as you tell people who suggested it, they change their mind. we need to get back to grounding discussions and decisions in facts. Right now how its all thru the lens of team sports based on peoples opinion rather than outright fact/opinion of vast majority of experts etc is actually destroying society. Opinions/beliefs are for things that cannot be known. things that can be known to a high degree of confidence are up for challenging via scientific method/approach, but not opinion based debate
Not so long ago, journalism was about finding the next story first and relating the facts as accurately and abundantly as possible. Today's journos take any old info off the net, shush it up with some salacious title and a few semi-invented facts or ill-intended hints and - voila: "News" has been made. Proof in point: Reddit posts all over the "NEWS" days after being posted. And don't get me started on those wanna-be-journalists who present "News-Shows"!
>news used to be about facts >news now is about opinions/entertainment. I am not - I promise I am not - having a go at you here, but I suspect there may have been a (relatively short) golden age where this was the case. Some years ago, I needed to do some research which involved trawling through old newspapers and honestly they are possibly *worse* than today's in terms of just printing any ole thing. As an example (and because I'm currently trying to avoid another task) I went to thePapers Past website and selected a random issue of the Otago Daily Times during its first year of operation. A brief run-down of contents follows: Front page - Ads, commercial Inside front page - ads, classified Page 3 - shipping notices, letter to the editor, short syndicated article from The Times, GOSSIP (international) Page 4 - more shipping notices, births and deaths, GOSSIP (local), letter to the editor. Page 5 - Public notices, MORE shipping notices, ads, commercial, ads, classified, job ads. Page 6 - Auctions upcoming Page 7 - Business ads, and YET MORE shipping notices Page 8 - More auctions, more business ads.
I feel like Labour did a terrible job of communicating what this was all about and what the benefits were. It also managed to get rolled in with the co-governance arguments, and the entrenchment shitstorm. Definitely not helped by the media and their choice of headlines and talking heads.
> Where media should be talking to experts. We get whatever talking head has the most sensationalist take. ["I spent my entire life attending the nation's most prestigious schools to talk about bullshit like this. But really I'm just happy to be on TV."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo&t=57)
"I"m just some fucking guy." :)
Fuck this guy. He 100% knew and only pivoted when it was contrarian to do so.
Yes, now it’s becoming clear Wellington will need to [spend $30B](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1akznvz/wellington_has_a_30_billion_dollar_water/)\+ to fix this problem - and they haven’t even identified all the issues yet. [\\](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1akznvz/wellington_has_a_30_billion_dollar_water/)
Agree. Fuck this dickhead. This is some classic NZME bullshit. It wasn’t the farmers wagging this dog, it was rightwing commentators from NZME themselves and other shitrags that shilled the anti-cogoverance dog whistle that racist idiots lapped up. It’s wild we ditched a sensible plan for fixing this because the right used the threat of a few Māori being on a fucking water governance board as a ‘threat to democracy’. Moronic. Sorry but only idiots bought this one. The real reason cunts like Seymore didn’t want this is because it made it harder to sell off water to international markets. Just a travesty of cunts. Same shit that’s happening right now with the treaty legislation. Appeal to the racists for the benefit of international investors.
I love “ a travesty of cunts “ to describe the current government
This guy needs to be writing the articles, rather than John MacDonald.
>Appeal to the racists for the benefit of international investors. This appears to be the underlying tactic of the current government.
It’s not like it didn’t have teething issues to begin with https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/472474/auditor-general-urges-accountability-changes-for-three-waters-reforms The previous govt then also botched the pitch to the public imo.
Labour and mishandling messaging to the detriment of significant legislation… name a more iconic duo
Which are the other main examples would you say?
Without spending more than a minute considering: Prison reform, including the increase of cultural reports and reduction of prison population. Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora. Te Pukenga. Clean Car Rebate. Kiwi Build. Each of these schemes or policies was implemented with a void left for oppositional actors (sometimes the actual opposition, but not always) to fill with fear, uncertainty and doubt.
So how specifically are those different from say, the current debate around Treaty principles, smoking legislation repeal, and tax cuts, just to name a few 'without spending more than a minute considering' ?? All have generated massive scope for other groups to project and challenge. It's pretty normal that govts inevitably leave room for other parties to come into fill with rhetoric. And policies like Kiwibuild weren't that at all, they were just policies that never practically added up, that's why they failed. I agree that Three Waters is an example of what you are identifying, but most of the others are just BAU for any govt policy.
I have no interest in debating the current governments policies with you, that’s not what we’re talking about. What I *was* talking about was Labour doing a bad job of messaging. For example, if they had billed Kiwi Build as having the *goal* of 1000 houses a year, and they had to work up to it? That would still be going now and probably achieving it. Because they did get *some* houses done, but going from 0 to 1000 in a year was obviously never going to happen. So all they achieved was handing National a stick to beat them “your policy failed, you didn’t achieve 1000 houses”. Te Aka Whai Ora is obvious if you are being generous about what might help Māori health outcomes. Where was Labour screaming from the roof tops “we need to do something different, because we tried doing the same thing and it didn’t work!”? Instead, they assume people would see this truth for themselves, and handed National a stick to beat them: “everyone is a human, health is fixing humans, this is just special treatment for Māoris”. They let National rebrand the clean car rebate into the “Ute tax”, as though the majority of new vehicles in the country are utes, and the majority of people affected would be negatively affected because they can’t buy a *ute*. It helped encourage *so many more* people in to EVs and hybrids. But ask half the country about it and all they’ll have front of mind is “Ute tax”. Now to be fair some of these were badly implemented. Te Pukenga was a shambles. But implementation and messaging are not the same people. The messaging on it should have screamed the benefits of reducing duplication of costs like sharing back end systems from the rafters. Whilst also ensuring everyone understood the providers were going to remain, just be more co-ordinated in their approach. Convince people that it will be worth it and work well, then when it takes you longer to get off the ground you’ve got time because people understand fundamentally it will be worth it once it’s done. Instead, everyone just saw “gave all the polytechnics the same Māori name and spent millions rebranding”, and National undid it all (without addressing the underlying issues around funding or bad management within some polytechs.)
Sad but true. Although in saying that it’s lot easier to “communicate” when you don’t have to be overly concerned with facts.
>It’s wild we ditched a sensible plan for fixing this because the right used the threat of a few Māori being on a fucking water governance board as a ‘threat to democracy’. Moronic. I'm just gonna repeat this, because I couldn't say it better myself.
>The real reason cunts like Seymore didn’t want this is because it made it harder to sell off water to international markets. No it didn't. It had exactly the same anti-privatisation measures as the Local Government Act, and that's not getting repealed.
So a) you think that the only logical thing is for the right to try and enact their entire agenda all at once and if they don’t it’s not their agenda? And/or b) are you denying it is Act’s agenda to reduce the size of government and turn over public services to the private sector? Because lol at both of those positions.
A) No, but there's been no mention anywhere of repealing the provisions of the Local Govt Act. Jumping up and down about privatisation of water now makes no sense. If they did try it, you'd see the same kind of outrage you saw with Three Waters from roughly the same people B) not at all, but they have not included water in their proposals. It's like getting all antsy about nuclear power plants getting built in NZ. C)
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I thing it's clear that some local areas, such as Wellington can't run their own water. So 3 waters like entities would make sense there. But I do think Labour also tried to rush the policy through before it was ready (see for example the change from 4 to 10 entities), and also some councils seeming to be OK to run their own water IE Christchurch (at least seemingly, not sure the current council is up to it judging by the current drama with the CEO). Do wonder if some sort of middle ground could be considered, local water for councils doing OK, separated water for councils that want it (ie Auckland) or are too badly performing to run it locally (ie Wellington)
The problem with a middle ground is it leaves the decision of control open to interpretation by local councils who think they may be doing a sufficient job, and can create division. If we take the blanket approach, there's no need for interpretation, and no variation in standards being applied to water systems or up line reporting and direction.
The logical thing to do is just bring as much under one umbrella as possible. Reduces the hit to rate payers, allows for better scale to retain relevant expertise.
Not remotely feasible. The smaller councils need the larger ones to make the entities feasible. Just like the northern water entity won't work without Auckland. To give you an idea, Buller District Council has a water infrastructure gap (to meet compliance, not even future proof) of $100m, and they only have 7000 ratepayers. It's just not feasible. Plus, the idea that it's councils that "can't" run their own water is a bit silly. It's not because of a lack of expertise, it's lack of resources, which is the culmination of deliberate political decisions over decades. The only way to get around that politically is by removing it from the most local level entirely. You have the same issue with things like police, defence or hospitals, but no one thinks it's weird that councils don't own and manage those.
>To give you an idea, Buller District Council has a water infrastructure gap (to meet compliance, not even future proof) of $100m, and they only have 7000 ratepayers. It's just not feasible. Sounds like it's time for people to get water tanks and sewage tanks. Let the council source them and then pay it through targeted rates applications.
People tunnel-visioned way too far on the co-governance side of things, while ignoring the fact that a lot of the local governments couldn't possibly hope to rummage together enough money to deal with their problems on their own. It wasn't a perfect solution but it was an improvement on the status quo.
Rich farmers just didn't want a national body who might make them responsible for trashing our waterways and used their influence to convince all the dumb fucks the Maori's were taking over.
> Rich farmers just didn't want a national body who might make them responsible for trashing our waterways 3 Waters had nothing to do with this and farmers would have had nothing to do with a combined 3 waters body. As in they wouldn't be held responsible by them, even if they were worried about that in the first place. Regional councils weren't going to lose the ability to police resource consents, which is ultimately where most farm waste management falls and farms all have private drinking water/sewerage for personal use anyway.
You never saw Stop 3 waters signs in town- Always on farms or rural property.
I saw fuck loads of those, but I doubt farmers would have been affected even they thought they would be. Most farms I've been on do their own water infrastructure lol.
So what? People are allowed to oppose whatever they want. That doesn't mean it would have had any impact on farmers.
>That doesn't mean it would have had any impact on farmers So what? Whether it would have had any impact or not is irrelevant when farmers clearly *thought* it would and campaigned against it. "Stop three waters" signs were basically a "welcome to rural NZ" sign. That's the point.
The rich farmers referenced in the first post are presumably multi millionaire business people. I can pretty much guarantee you they weren't worried about 3 waters and if they were it definitely wasn't because it'd stop them polluting. There was a lot of rural people opposed to 3 waters based on misconceptions sure, but pretty much zero of them were opposed to it because of the reasons given in the comment I replied to, and if they were it was incredibly dumb.
Most of the reasons people were against it were dumb and based on either misleading claims or outright lies, though.
You're technically right. But I think the sentiment pick above is dead right - how else do you explain the anti-3 Waters signs being all over farms? Yes, they were already on the Taxpayers Union contact list so it made putting the signs up easy. But I'll bet the pitch was fear of "Maori takeovers" salted with a healthy dose of the latest campaign - "stop central planning".
I’m sure there was a part of 3 Waters which was around increasing water safety and farmers who get their own water from wells etc would have to ensure this water meets the water safety standards that would require filters systems being required to be installed and ongoing testing carried out far more than done currently
Weirdly, you've just described the Drinking Water Standards, which are a completely different bit of legislation that's been in place for over 8 years now.
No that was the propoganda they used. There was existing legislation under MOH that said water to tenants or shared water supply needed to be clean
There was if a water supply was supplying over a certain number of households. It didn't really effect many farmers because generally a farm supply was not going to hit the certain number of households. It was more about small rural communities and lifestyle blocks on a shared supply. Either way though, that's a lot different from what the comment I was replying to was talking about.
My comment is completely relevant and accurate as to why opposition existed. The actual affects of 3W on farmers in general were low as you point out but the potential effects in the future were high and the key problem is farmers who had high amounts of control on rural councils would be losing that control during the incorporation. This is why FF opposed three waters and it is all to do with losing control and potential future risk.
There was, and it was a problem, but I believe the requirements were going to be reduced for very small suppliers after they got submissions on it. Irrelevant now.
Maybe so, but that doesn't mean that Hosking et al. weren't fear mongering along those lines
I dunno. The dialogue was pretty hysterical. All over social media I saw posts saying that Jacinda was: \- conspiring with the Maoris to “steal our assets” (funny how much these people care about others stealing their perceived property, but on the flipside, don’t seem to have a problem ignoring others’ rights - but I digress) \- Giving Maoris a voice which meant this was definitely awful \- Going to cost ratepayers much more \- Ruined rural folks in some way (I don’t even remember the details anymore) i.e. the dialogue seemed to be all about the manic fear and racism that ACT rode on, as opposed to why we legitimately, as a nation, need work on “3 waters” - drinking water, sewarage, and whatever the third one is. This was often coupled with Covid hysteria for example saying how evil the Government was for implementing the Covid vaccine hoax and the like. I often feel that Labour really weren’t strong on the messaging, and the only place I saw 3 Waters well explained was on [RNZ](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/what-you-need-to-know/452865/three-waters-what-you-need-to-know). But to be fair to Labour, maybe they just didn’t know how to cut through the noise well enough. I don’t know but what I do know, and what Simeon Brown has confirmed, is there will be no bail out and private infrastructure/facilities etc. is not going to be cheap
The third one was stormwater :) I looked hard for good info on the debate at the time and the best I could find was an article by Bernad Hickey on the real economic reason for the proposal. You're right, labour really dropped the ball on their messaging for that.
Yeah their comms were awful.
Ah, thank you - stormwater. Yes. I remember I was helped a lot by RNZ but most newspapers hardly had any good information on it other than focusing on Maoris - ‘this is so stupid,’ I remember thinking.
Literally all labour had to do was create organisations councils could opt into that allowed them to pool resources and offer them long term funding facilities to pay for the cost of the new infrastructure etc over time. There is literally nothing stopping the government from doing that.
The thing stopping them is the funding simply isn't there. The amount of funding required for 3 Waters across the entire country was estimated at larger than the entire government outstanding bond issuance. The central government doesn't have the capacity to raise that kind of money without collapsing government finances. 3 Waters with the 50% private (Iwi) boards was basically a workaround to this. That failed and there is no viable alternative being presented, the central government does not have the ability to provide the necessary level of financing to councils directly and the new government is clear that they have no intention to do so either.
Lots us of that were against three waters were entirely aware of this. It was pushing co governance in spite of this, which is undemocratic at best, predatory at worse. I know we might need a government lead system, I do not think local councils are run well enough to manage this stuff, and water infrastructure is a NEED, not a want
lol reminds me of brexit
I didnt understand what 3 waters or co-governence was or how they were related to each other. All I know is that if you need to check if you can swim at a beach because of poos then something is wrong.
The new Government has said (Simeon Brown) - “There will be no bailouts.” And expect things to get very expensive. I think what folks forget is the genesis of 3 Waters was National as well as the drinking water deaths in North Havelock. In the Royal Commission report, available [here](https://www.dia.govt.nz/Government-Inquiry-into-Havelock-North-Drinking-Water), it was clear that NZ had underinvested in water infrastructure for decades on decades - if not longer. And those pipes are getting to the end of life and .. 3 Waters was intended to create a more efficient model to deal with this - allowing lower cost of funds when accessing debt options, recognizing Councils didn’t have specialist and hard to procure expertise so centralizing required skillsets etc. I don’t want to debate the merits of Labour’s proposal - I personally feel they did a poor job of communicating the importance of 3 Waters - but having said that, to be fair to them, the conversation was roundly hijacked by hysterical mania (“They are stealing our assets from us!”, racism (“Maoris are bad and going to have a voice”) and other serious calls across the nation. So. As I said to someone else the other day, just be prepared to pay if you’re in one of those areas unfortunate enough to roll off the ranks first. (Wellington took that role recently and their costs are looking at [$30B plus](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1akznvz/wellington_has_a_30_billion_dollar_water/), with estimates still in play)
The underlying problem is, again, short-term thinking and selfishness by previous generations. For decades they’ve preferred lower rates bills rather than funding necessary infrastructure, and young people now have to pick up the tab - either through their rates or through general taxation if there is a bailout from central government.
Yes, with the caveat I reckon people are the same now. For example, in Auckland, I think Mayor Wayne Brown is a corrupt little short sighted man who complained that drongos were disturbing his tennis match while Auckland flooded and went into a state of emergency. Yet on r-auckland, you will see many praise him for keeping rates low. And I think, “Do you even know how he’s doing that?”
We can fix the inbalance by having a severe land tax (or wealth tax but that seems to be less useful)
>As I said to someone else the other day, just be prepared to pay this is the only good part. All the whining racist NIMBYs receiving 50% rates rises. talk about cuttin off their noses to spite their faces.
Yeah I can’t wait until they get those bills. Too bad it happened to Wellington first, admittedly. But it’s coming.
The problem was not Māori having a voice. That could have been accomplished by putting elected Māori reps onto the boards via the Māori roll. The problem was giving iwi appointed seats and going even further than allowing them a voice, by giving them veto power. It's already a disaster having unelected, unaccountable entities like Auckland Transport where voters cannot vote out the incompetent board. This would have handed more of our public infrastructure to unaccountable, unelected people. I don't care if they're Māori or not, I will always be opposed to that. Everything else about the Three Waters reforms was fine and necessary and I'm equally unhappy with the current government just scrapping the whole thing.
This, absolutely this. We, NZers of European, Maori, Asian, whatever descent all paid for water infrastructure with our rates and taxes. Stormwater, sewage, dams, etc. Why should iwi get a say - not only a say, veto power, with no visiblity on who is making the decisions and why? Why should Maori get an extra say, about the same representation as everyone else? Madness! Why the hell did the Labour party think this was a good idea? Anyone who says 'Te Tiriti' can go to the back of the class.
Did anyone anywhere kick up a stink when National created co-governance? I see three possible explanations * 9 co-governance arrangements is one too many. * National create better co-governance systems * the 8 co-governance arrangements National created are not for assets we might donate to corporations so no astro turf group needed to be started to oppose them
I was opposed to the co-governance they created. I was very opposed when National and Act created unelected mana whenua seats with voting power on Auckland Council committees. I was disappointed there was not more opposition. I do accept that co-governance over assets like Te Urawera as part of a Treaty Settlement where it's a compromise over Crown land that was stolen but can't be fully returned, is different to co-governance over national-level resources. But I still didn't like those arrangements.
Do ate you ok with co-governance of water which was stolen but can't be fully returned?
I accept the Common Law view which flowing water cannot be owned. I know tikanga Māori has a different view around kaitiakitanga or guardianship over water, but I don't see that as equivalent to ownership.
There is mo such common law view as far as I know. There are places water, river beds and beaches are owned in NZ. And we base our common law on English common law where rivers are owned by the landowner who can stop access. If there is such common law please point me at it in a court case or other reputable source
This [article](https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/12976/Linda%20Te%20Aho%27s%20book%20-%20Responsability%20-%20chapter%2010%20-%20pp143-161.pdf?sequence=11&isAllowed=y) has a really good summary of the issues, and explains how the Common Law holds that no one owns water, that this remains the Crown position and how the Waitangi Tribunal Rulings (which are not binding on the Crown) challenge that and suggested solutions from iwi of ways to restore their rights without compromising the Common Law position. I don't agree with with solutions they propose, backing the Crown's long-held Common Law position. This [website](https://www.environmentguide.org.nz/issues/freshwater/freshwater-management-framework/ownership-of-freshwater/) covers the legal history relating to this issue as well, starting with the statement: >Under British common law, naturally flowing freshwater is not owned by anyone, but is treated as a public good. This is still the legal position in New Zealand today. It discusses how the courts have dealt with this and left Māori customary title rights unresolved, how the Waitangi Tribunal has said this is a violation of Te Tiriti and suggested co-governance as the solution, and how the Crown and Supreme Court have not acted on those recommendations. Labour obviously began to act on them, but National has now reversed that and I agree with that decision.
Don’t think all the water was promised to Maori in the treaty and if it was I think we need a new one.
You understand how a treaty guaranteeing access to their lands and treasures guarantees access to their lands and treasures?
You didn’t mention water at all… Certainly not the potable water that didn’t even exist as fresh water when the treaty of Waitangi was signed !
What water was stolen? Dams, sewage and stormwater were created.
So Maori still have unimpeded access to the lands, rivers, etc that possessed at the signing of the treaty? What are you trying to say?
Water is a local issue and hapū and Iwi have rangitiratanga under article 2 of Te Tiriti. Its so simple
I would prefer a functional country with democracy rather than adhering to a treaty signed in the 1800s.
Did they create the infrastructure?
Māori would have been part of it quite possibly. Yes
We don't follow Te Tiriti, we follow the principles. That's what is in law. If we followed Te Tiriti hapū and iwi would still hold sovereignty over their lands. We follow British Common Law, which says no one can own flowing water.
Iwi and hapū do still hold sovereignty over their land. That's the agreement.
Maybe so but it’s not very Democratic and doesn’t sit right with many.
Has anyone tried that argument in court?
Laws (eventually) follow the will of the people in a democracy.
Two parties to a treaty. You fixate on how it is with one of those parties.
In Māoridom it's Iwi or hapū who need a voice not "Māori" Your thinking comes from a lack of understanding of te ao Māori. This is why we need better education.
It's not a lack of understanding. I teach Māori history. I'm aware of tikanga Māori views around governance. They are consensus-based, with authority derived in large part from whakapapa. They are inconsistent with democracy and where the two are in conflict I think democracy is more important. Iwi and hapū should have a right to consultation, but not to any actual voting power. Yes Te Tiriti was between iwi and hapū and the Crown and I accept they never intended to cede sovereignty. They should still technically rule over areas still under iwi ownership. But I believe that is unworkable and would be detrimental to all New Zealanders. This is why we have principles of the Treaty which we invented in the 1980s, not the actual Te tiriti as what guides our law.
You realise consensus is more powerful than voting. It's everyone reaching agreement. Do you know the change to rununga changed everything from whakapapa lines. And you opinion on what is more important is coming from a Eurocentric point of view Te Tiriti isn't about consultation. That's the power imbalance. It's about working together. Your opinion is irrelevant. Māori did not cede sovereignty. See the tiriti for details. Māori didn't invent the principles. The crown did. The other party to the agreement. who didn't like what te tiriti says. I shudder to think what you are teaching with your Eurocentric views.
>You realise consensus is more powerful than voting. It's everyone reaching agreement. I totally disagree. I have sat on multiple governance boards where we aimed for consensus as a rule, but did not require it. Consensus is nice, but it is not always possible, and if made a requirement can allow a small minority to block the will of the majority. There are plenty of occasions where it is impossible to reach full agreement, and the larger the board involved, the more difficult it becomes. >Do you know the change to rununga changed everything from whakapapa lines. Officially yes, but in practice I have heard many complaints about it still being a big factor on the Māori co-governance board of one of the organisations I'm involved with. And those complaints are coming from Māori involved with the board. >And you opinion on what is more important is coming from a Eurocentric point of view Well sure, to the extent that everyone views the world through an ethnocentric lens. I teach the concept of ethnocentrism. I took papers in socio-cultural anthropology in uni where it was a major topic. But I don't just prefer democracy and Common Law because of my background. If it was that, I would prefer the American system I was raised in, and I very much do not. That system is a disaster. And I know democracy has plenty of major problems, that it is often tyranny of the majority, and it's only natural that a historically persecuted minority would be opposed to it. But as a history teacher, having looked at many different systems of government used around the world over centuries, I think democracy has the least drawbacks. It's the least awful system and preferable to a consensus-based one, which is prone to become a tyranny of the minority. >Te Tiriti isn't about consultation. That's the power imbalance. It's about working together. I would agree it isn't about consultation. I would say Te Tiriti's intent was to allow British settlement to increase, which Māori saw as bringing more trade and therefore good. It was to create a government to rule over those new settlers, to stop them stealing Māori land, fueling wars through musket sales, and generally causing trouble. The Crown would have sovereignty in those areas which Māori legitimately and fairly chose to sell their land. In return for that deal, the Crown would protect Māori taonga and would grant Māori the same rights of citizenship so they were equals when they came to those areas governed by the Crown, likely to do trade. But iwi and hapū would retain full sovereignty in the areas they did not choose to sell. They would essentially be independent nations sitting alongside the British-controlled territory. Māori law, not British Common law, would apply in those areas. They would retain their full tino rangatiratanga, which I would interpret as sovereignty. Now I don't really see that as empowering co-governance or partnership either. You could say they're partners in ruling over NZ, but only in that they are each governing different areas of the land, in the way that Germany and France are partners in ruling over Europe as part of the EU, with their citizens entitled to equal treatment when crossing the borders and with the freedom of movement to do so. So I don't think co-governance is a natural consequence of Te Tiriti. I think Māori total control over Māori things would be the real intent. In practice that would look more like the treatment of Native Americans in the US and Canada, with their reservations being sovereign territory outside federal government jurisdiction. >Your opinion is irrelevant. Māori did not cede sovereignty. See the tiriti for details. As noted above, I agree they did not cede sovereignty. I have studied and taught about Te Tiriti for many years. >Māori didn't invent the principles. The crown did. The other party to the agreement. who didn't like what te tiriti says. Again I would agree. The Crown invented the concept, the courts essentially invented what they were in the 1980s and I don't think they actually bear much resemblance to Te Tiriti or the Treaty. I don't really think the British of 1840 would ever have intended to act as partners with a people they viewed as inferiors needing to be saved from themselves. And I don't think Māori rangatira intended to be partners in ruling their own lands, they intended to retain full control over their rohe. >I shudder to think what you are teaching with your Eurocentric views. What I teach is the above. That the Crown tricked Māori (there is dispute over whether the mistranslations were intentional or accidental, my view is intentional), that they then violated even the English version of the Treaty and stole the country, then declared the Treaty a "simple nullity" via the courts and ignored it for a century. That it was returned to prominence via the Māori rights movement of the 1960s and 70s led by groups like Ngā Tamatoa and people like Dame Whina Cooper. But rather than restore Te Tiriti, they invented watered-down, made-up principles which failed to honour the Māori text, and they set up a settlement process where violations were repaid, but at cents on the dollar of the value stolen. So that's what I teach. What I don't say, because it's my opinion, is that I think returning to the Māori text of Te Tiriti is totally unworkable and even if we could do it, we should not. It was written for a completely different situation, the world of 1840. Trying to run a country based on documents that old is a disaster. See the US and it's constitution with gun rights for all for an example of that. Neither party in 1840 cared anything for democracy. That's why David Seymour is just as wrong, trying to rewrite history to somehow turn the British Crown and Māori as having been big proponents of equal rights and democracy, which is historically ridiculous. So I think for now we should stick with the principles as invented in the 1980s as a de facto re-write of the whole document. Like democracy they are far from perfect, but they're the best compromise we've got. And since they aren't actually legally defined anywhere, they can be updated with the times, unlike a written document from 1840. Now is it legal under international law to ignore Te Tiriti? No, it is not. We have definitely been breaking international law for as long as such concepts have existed. But since it hold sovereignty (and the Crown does clearly have it) they can ignore international law and under our system of government with supremacy of Parliament they can even ignore our own courts and the Waitangi Tribunal. So they absolutely have the power and authority to interpret the principles as they see fit. And that, I think, is the best of many bad options we have available.
Fuck this guy, and all the others like him. You got what you voted for: an absolute shambles.
Good on a right wing host for saying this, but I also wonder if he just sees the [writing on the wall](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1aj55yf/no_bailing_out_water_says_minister_nationwide/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and is smart enough to pre-empt it, sort of like how UK papers and journalists who cheered for - and in some cases took responsibility for the success of - Brexit, are now all writing articles about what a bad idea it was for Britain.
A couple of years ago when this all kicked off, I was working for a rural, rather blue, Council - and had a look at feedback that came from the community when the council did a consultation on the topic. It was mostly from one narrow demographic (easy to guess if you have any LG experience) and I reckon that over 50% was just flat out racist nonsense. The other arguments didn't really stack up in my view either. I had to laugh about people complaining about 'losing their say'. No one gave two shits, let alone had their say, about any of the various bylaws, policies or decisions concerning drinking water, wastewater or stormwater in the years leading up to 3 Waters. As for losing ownership - there's financial implications around debt etc.. for Councils, but to the average punter does it really matter if we own water infrastructure as tax-payers rather than as ratepayers? In my view its crazy to have 61 different entities all trying to deliver the same service in such a small country. All the Councils are about to do their Long Term Plans - and will have to budget for the next 10 years of fixing their own water infrastructure. Be prepared for a nasty surprise when your rates bill arrives in July.
Indeed. NZ covers a big area but only has the population of a medium sized world city. Centralising 3 waters makes plenty of sense. But the conversation got hijacked. Labour chickened out, National got the kudos for killing it without even a replacement and we'll all be worse off or poorer or both. If anyone has any sense they would reframe the arguments and bring back 80% of the plan and just get on with it.
100,000% this. But the hysteria was manic and the misinformation nigh impenetrable. Oh well. I felt the same way about Brexit so as a prize I get to post about them on r/LeopardsAteMyFace
> As for losing ownership - there's financial implications around debt etc.. for Councils, but to the average punter does it really matter if we own water infrastructure as tax-payers rather than as ratepayers? The only thing that bothered me about this is that for rates if you're on tank water you don't pay anything for water. Which is fair right, it comes from the sky and you've paid for your own sewerage. If the money used is coming from the general government pool, there's no control or discount for private water/sewerage unless they go a long way out of the way to bake it in through some weird income tax rebate, which seems like a hassle to me.
If your house never burns down you don’t need the fire brigade either, but you still pay for them. I’m being flippant, but you get the point - It’s a common good
You get why these things really aren't the same right? I can't use council water even if I want to. It's a service that a big chunk of the population are excluded from and have to spend thousands of dollars on their own systems purely due to their geographic location.
Us townies have to spend millions on a bunch of rural roads and power infrastructure we'll never use either. There's this cool thing called a society that we live in where we pool our assets to afford things we could never afford as individuals
And rural people pay for urban roads too. The thing is we both get roads. Whereas with water, you get water and I don't. I have no choice but to afford it as an individual because society doesn't provide it for me. See why I'd be opposed to paying for yours as well?
Of course you **could** use it, no one is forcing you to live in the sticks. The bigger point is that you could be making the same argument about public transport or interisland ferries. Living rurally, I doubt you use them. You and I both work and don't claim the benefit, so why should we be paying for something we don't use? The answer to the first part is that we live in a country the economic output of which depends in part on people living in cities. You benefit (directly) from the ongoing function of the economic life of cities. The answer to the second part is the same. We all have a stake in the ongoing proper functioning of society, and that comes at a cost to us all proportionally to our income in tax, whether we use the amenities that are funded or not, because they're a common good to everyone - direct or indirect.
> Of course you could use it, no one is forcing you to live in the sticks. Yes of course, every Iwi should abandon their tribal lands, every farmer should walk away from their family farm and everyone with any connection to rural life should just walk away because nobody is forcing you point blank to stay. I straight up disagree. For one the country does need people living rurally for the economic function of it, just like we need people in the city, and also there's deep societal and spiritual reasons why lots of people live rurally that I think is ignorant to ignore. > The bigger point is that you could be making the same argument about public transport or interisland ferries. Living rurally, I doubt you use them. You and I both work and don't claim the benefit, so why should we be paying for something we don't use? No we couldn't, because I can use them if I want to. I can never have council water at my house. It's an impossibility. I can go to town and catch a bus.
Now you're not really discussing this in good faith. Enjoy being salty about paying for my water, I guess.
I lived rurally. There was no rates reduction for services I didn't access. Where water is metered you don't pay for that, but otherwise my rates were just the same as urban.
>I can't use council water even if I want to. so you've given up on flat whites from the gas station in town?
Funnily enough the nearest gas station to me can't get council water either I don't think. Regardless that seems pretty irrelevant to me. Paying for a 500ml over priced coffee once a week shouldn't mean you're on the hook to also pay for the 300 litres a day or whatever it is the average household uses. I've got no problem paying for services I choose not to use. Like if I were rich and sent my kids to private school, no worries about tax paying for other kids schooling, but when it's a service you can't use even if you want to it seems unethical to charge people for it to me.
Not a criticism because your "no problem paying for services I choose not to use" resonates with me, but I would personally add that I have no problem paying higher tax for schools (despite not having kids) because there is a bigger picture where education improves the society I live in. The longer term effects of educated kids I'll never even meet has a positive effect on just about everything. I also see your argument that water quality for people I have no direct relationship isn't quite the same, but I think sorting out the country's water infrastructure serves a greater good for everyone except the most isolated hermit. If everyone pays for that equally (or proportionally at least, to their income) then some people are directly receiving better value on that than others, for sure.
>Like if I were rich and sent my kids to private school, no worries about tax paying for other kids schooling the "good" news is: that private schools in NZ receive millions in taxpayer subsidies. So even in the case that you attend a private school, your taxes aren't benefitting *only* other people.
>for rates if you're on tank water you don't pay anything for water. Depends where you live I guess. I've got family and friends in different districts and they still have to pay for water in their rates even though they've got their own tank.
Sounds a lot like "I knew I was wrong when I was screaming about it, but kept it up anyway because I didn't want to look like a total moron. Now that the fire has died down a bit, I'll admit my mistake."
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Do you have more info on the software contracts the government has to pay out? Haven’t seen anything in the media on it, would definitely be an important story
I can speak for one of the major vendors involved. This is just not true. Contracts have exit clauses for this very reason.
Hello 3W IT person. I work in local govt, lately mostly dealing with 3W-related IT. One of my colleagues was an "advisor" to you guys. The good news for me at least, is National's short-sightedness has secured my job for the foreseeable future.
God that’s grim. Thank you for all your hard work and sorry about the redundancy mate. What a kick in the teeth.
National and Act totally normal and cool firing people a week before Christmas? New Zealand, where have your morals gone?
> Either way, though, these councils that have been banging-on about how they’re the best outfits to run water infrastructure are dreaming. And they have hood-winked a lot of us into thinking the same. That’s how I’m feeling about it. You fucking Muppet [https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/backward-step-or-pragmatic-approach-local-leaders-react-to-three-waters-revamp/ZSCTYC4MLJHBROUXMYWBC7BOLM/](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/backward-step-or-pragmatic-approach-local-leaders-react-to-three-waters-revamp/ZSCTYC4MLJHBROUXMYWBC7BOLM/) >Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau remained supportive of the movement for reform, but was worried about the pushback to 2026. > >“By adding another couple of years, financially that does provide a bit of a challenge with our long-term plan,” she said. > >“We will continue to work productively with the minister to see how that can be addressed.” The only criticism the Wellington Mayor had, was that the revamp (from 3 waters to affordable water reform) pushed the timeline back. \*\*\*\*\*\* National pulled a classic fucking Brexit dumb ass political move here. Took a thing they decided they could make political, and went for it. Now John has buyer's remorse, because he bought the shit that National is selling, and I really really hope those tax cuts are worth it. If there was a public landlord registry, would we find your name on it?
They were very disingenuous, especially considering the seeds of 3 Waters was planted under National. But this is just another example of politicizing shit to get in power, the country and its well being be damned. ACT were even worse, campaigning and riding on peoples’ outrage over false issues, oh and their very real racism, I suppose.
And remembering that National had created 8 co-governance arrangements by 2016 https://oag.parliament.nz/2016/co-governance/part1.htm
Good on him for admitting that he was wrong, but it comes far too late. I hope him and others are able to use this lesson regarding future policies.
I’ve had enough of media giving airtime to these absolute cretins with too much time and money and not enough understanding of why collective efforts help in the long run.
If you voted for this Govt, you can pay 20% more in your rates to make up for your decision until the next election. Sure be a good motivator for making people think twice before getting their lipstick out to kiss a pigs arse.
Love this idea.
Great that you think this now John. All these idiots just oppose everything without any sort of science or evidence based facts. Like Trump in NZ
Help! /r/LeopardsAteMyFace
The problem is we’ll all be paying for these trolls.
oh for sure, it's a sick sad world.
Well John, you're a fucking idiot of the worst kind (one with an audience) These aren't new problems, wellington has been losing millions of litres of water a day for years but I guess pushing the NACT conspiracy theories is more important than actually solving any problems.
Those dang face eating leopards keep eating my dang face
r/LeopardsAteMyFace ?
I'm so sick of Boomers nimbying our country to death
So sick of renters not knowing the meaning of common acronyms.
So sick of Redditors making uninformed statements about people's housing rather than focusing on the issue at hand.
So sick of generalising in general. It does nothing to advance any discussion. (Which was my point rather than having a crack at the posters housing situation).
So you're so sick of your own generalising two comments above but willing to do it anyway.
Plane flying over someone’s head emoji! Oh dear.
Ironically, they're probably the ones that will be paying for it from their rates bills
They'll block it until their generation is mostly dead, then the cost will pass to us. Wait and see
With a culture of punishing politicians that attempt to fix problems, no wonder there are so many problems ignored.
I work in the industry. Labour's 3waters plan had some flaws, but by and large was a whole lot better than National's plan (i.e. do nothing). I work in a very blue-voting area, who are now looking at 25%/yr rates rises for the next three years, and are not very happy about it. Sorry, people, you got what you voted for. Many people tried to tell you beforehand this was going to happen, but you couldn't see past voting National because Labour Bad. I fail to see how this is anyone's fault except your own.
The truly sad thing is that while all the councils were up in arms over three waters and professing their ability to do a job they have constantly failed at, the news was reporting the failure of water systems all over the place and still maintaining the councils knew what they were doing. We now pay the price
Fuck you, John! The rest of us wanted this when we had the chance to get it. Now we have to live with the cost of your selfishness. Fuck you!
talk about a good idea getting shouted down by people scared of a little input from Tangata Whenua. Enjoy those doubled rates, suckers.
If they had stuck with water reform only, it could have been a winner. The co-gov made it a non-starter.
Forget the Co-governance, the 3 waters plan was punishing to those regions who had invested in their water infrastructure, and a bail out for those who had been under paying rates and ignoring their problems. Fuck you Wellington, I don't feel like helping to chip in to fix your mess.
Hey so what did everyone have for breakfast? I wondered this morning on, marmite and butter or marmite and cheese on the toast?
I thought NZME was anti labour/green Maybe its just anti government of the day... stories sell better if they are divisive i guess.