ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta ushered through the Water Services Entities Bill into law.
ANALYSIS: The first bill may have passed into law, but the political storm created by Labour’s Three Waters legislation will take much longer for the Government to pass through, if it can at all.
What started as a pretty straightforward – and many would argue overdue – solution to an infrastructure problem has turned into a massive political issue that has somehow become entangled in local democracy, co-governance and, in the past fortnight, a constitutional issue.
The storm that has been created by the now popular narrative that Labour has stripped local councils of their ratepayers assets to give it to unelected authorities and Iwi will outlast the legislation.
There were several key things the Government got wrong in its political management. It over-consulted, used a convoluted governance structure, and it used Three Waters as an issue on which to put a marker in the sand on some level of co-governance.
READ MORE:
* If Labour fears a co-governance debate will damage them, it’s too late
* How did the Government stuff up the politics of Three Waters so badly?
* Government accepts Three Waters recommendations, councils to have shareholding, aspects of co-governance to remain
If you strip the issue back to the bones it is remarkable: who really cares where there water comes from or who fixes the pipes provided it doesn’t cost the earth, and it is well-administered. Just as District Health Boards proved that ‘democracy’ had little positive effect on the health system, so the same question could be asked of utilities.
All of these things needed never become issues with more adept handling of the issue. And although Nanaia Mahuta has become the face of that failure, sheeting all of that home to her is unfair.
Merits of the policy and legitimate questions around co-governance aside, there has also been more than a patina of racism across this issue.
It should also be remembered that it was not National leader Christopher Luxon, but his predecessor Judith Collins who identified and prosecuted this as an issue – the only bit of serious noise Collins created as opposition leader – although he has gladly picked it up.
The entrenchment debate over the past couple of weeks – which has been very well traversed but involved needing a 60% majority proposed by the Greens to repeal an anti-privatisation provision in the bill – made Labour look shifty and not playing by the rules.
Unless it’s a rules-of-the-game issue – how elections are conducted and constitutional matters for example – if you pass a law there’s every chance that another Government might come in and get rid of stuff you think is important.
That’s politics, tough luck. Trying to rig the rules so your thing stays in just looks crook.
In the end only Labour voted in favour of the bill.
The precise design of what Three Waters will now become aside, the general proposition is one that it is difficult to argue against: Most water authorities are underfunded, there are too many of them and they don’t have capacity to borrow to properly finance long-term projects for infrastructure. And there should be some iwi representation somewhere in the governance of such entities – that concept is hardly new. But turning it into a marker stick for a broader political project was clearly a mistake.
Ngāi Tahu CEO Lisa Tumahai summed it up best on Thursday in a statement put out by the South Island iwi:
“The journey of this legislation has been long and sometimes contentious,” she said.
“Fundamentally we all want the same things, however, which is safe, sustainable water services delivered fairly, while protecting the environment and allowing for development. Now is the time to move forward together and put those values into practice.”
Not an awful lot anyone could object to there.
And prior to the entrenchment issue, although it was clearly a good party-base building mechanism for both National and ACT, there was little evidence it was going to sway votes: a lot of light and no heat.
But now, even though the law is passed, the issue will bubble along and become a byword for Labour inflexibility, centralisation and arrogance.
And to think, it could be arcane constitutional faux-pas over ‘entrenchment’ that might hurt Labour well into the new year.
