A knife in the throat of Democracy
So the government and in particular the Maori Caucus are adamant that we need to implement the Three Waters Reforms.
Personally I have no idea why anyone would want to call it a reform as in my opinion it is a giant backwards step for the ratepayers of New Zealand and in no way benefits all of them. A reform is supposed to improve or enhance something not make it worse.
When it became clear last year that the Three Waters project was facing huge opposition from both ratepayers and local bodies, the government changed from a situation where they had promised to make it voluntary to join the scheme, to declaring that it would be compulsory to join.
Since they made that announcement the opposition has become much more vocal and entrenched in their position against the project so the government sought to try to eliminate the opposition by setting up an “independent working group” to review the proposed governance arrangements.
The working group’s report has been finalised and it has been condemned for not addressing the core issues and just fiddling around the edges of it. This result is no more than was expected given that the members of the so-called “Independent Working Group” were either members of the IWI or people that were sympathetic to the government’s view.
A classic example of this is where one of the working group members claimed that the report addressed local government’s concerns yet her own council has joined with 29 other councils in opposing the project. The level of opposition can be rightly judged by the fact that the Mayor of Auckland City (the largest local body in New Zealand) a long time Labour member and former Labour party Cabinet Member has declared he is opposing the project yet he was a member of the working group.
So why is there such a determination on the part of the government, to force this project onto the ratepayers?
The current government is justifying their actions by claiming that they are only giving effect to the Partnership requirements in the Treaty of Waitangi but in fact there is no such partnership agreement within the Treaty of Waitangi.
The so-called treaty partnership comes from a 1987 decision in the Appeal Court related to the Maori Lands case. This concept of a partnership between Maori and the Crown has been used by governments since, even though it is an erroneous interpretation of the court’s decision.
Retired Judge and former Canterbury University Law Lecturer Anthony Willy has given the following explanation:
“On any careful reading of the Maori Council case the Court did not decide as has become commonly supposed that Maori and the Crown were in partnership with each other, a partnership created by the Treaty, merely that the Crown and Maori owe each other duties which are akin to those owed by partners to a commercial transaction. In the result Maori and the Crown are not partners in any sense of the word. Indeed, it is constitutionally impossible for the Crown to enter into a partnership with any of its subjects. The true position is that the Crown is sovereign but owes duties of justice and good faith to the Maori descendants of those who signed the treaty.”
In other words, “There is not, and never has been a constitutional partnership between the Crown and Maori people. The judgment in the Maori Council case has been misinterpreted. The point which all of their Honours were making in that case was that the Crown has ongoing duties to act justly and in good faith towards Maori people…”
This so-called partnership (50-50 between Iwi and others) is at the core of the Three Waters project and if the project was to be enacted as it is currently written it would facilitate a huge transfer of power and control to unelected and unaccountable iwi interests.
Given that Iwi represent 12.3% of the voting aged population (and only 15.6% of the total population) it raises profound constitutional implications around our democratic principles.
The Three Waters project could be seen as a test run for implementing a 50/50 co-governance structure based on the erroneous re-interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.
We have already seen as a result of the He Puapua report, a change in the governance of Health, Education, Local Governance, Broadcasting Spectrum, Land Rating and now Three
Waters, to something that is race based and nothing short of the destruction of our fundamental democratic principles and a jettisoning of the notion that all citizens enjoy equal rights.
Media coverage of the working group’s report into the Three Waters project has to date been almost non-existent and what has been reported has failed to mention the crucial issue of the Maori Caucus’s influence in the Three Waters project.
There has been an ongoing lack of transparency at every step in this whole process from the beginning when the government hid the existence of the He Puapua report prior to the last election right through to the current time. It seems that the government has been determined to implement the Three Waters project at all costs.
This lack of transparency from both government and the media is seen as further evidence of the government’s influence over the media via the Public Interest Journalism Fund – and who can blame them? That’s the type of suspicion media outlets inevitably invite when they line up to take the taxpayers’ money on terms dictated by the government, central among which is the insistence on recognition of arbitrarily defined Treaty rights.
In place of transparency, the government has tried hyperbole, disinformation and scaremongering, with a classic example of this being the infantile and dishonest “public information and education campaign” put together by advertising agency FCB New Zealand at a cost to the taxpayer of $4 million.
The sole aim seemed to be to frighten New Zealanders into thinking our water infrastructure is in a terrible state likely to result in failure of supply or widespread illness and thus soften us up for the hijacking of council-owned assets and the removal of democratic accountability mechanisms.
In actual fact most council manage their water infrastructure efficiently and safely. In the OECD New Zealand’s water quality is highly rated.
If the government is truly trying only to ensure a quality water supply now and into the future then they could take a huge amount of the heat out of the opposition to the Three Waters project by preventing the privatisation of our water assets now or at any time in the future and also absolutely removing any right for the payment of any type of water royalty to any persons or groups.
New Zealanders should be given the right to decide what type of government they want: one that serves all citizens equally, or one that recognises a minority racial group as having rights that trump those of the majority and this can only be fairly done by a binding referendum.
This doesn’t mean sweeping aside Maori rights. But it’s one thing to treat Maori fairly and respectfully, as is their due, and quite another to undermine the fundamental democratic principles from which all New Zealanders – Maori, Pakeha and everyone else – benefit.
People of Maori descent enjoy the same rights as the rest of us. These include the right to stand for councils and to get elected, as many have done. That would provide the opportunity to be represented in the running of a legitimately constituted Three Waters governance structure. But the powerful iwi interests that influence the government (and in particular Labour’s Maori caucus, which is a power centre in its own right) want to bypass that process and enjoy a seat at the table as of right.
To put it another way, the Three Waters project, as it stands, involves replacing democracy with a form of race based government.