The Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta today announced that they have listened to the community and they have made changes that will improve the Three Waters proposal.
Yeah Right!!!
One of the main changes announced on Friday was the introduction of co-governed sub-regional groups, which will allow smaller communities to feedback to their regional representative group.
The Government said these groups were about “ensuring community inclusion and voices are heard”.
Another change was giving councils a non-financial shareholding in their new entity – with the number of shares proportional to population (one share per 50,000 people).
So the ratepayers have their assets which they have paid for over many generations, seized and given over to the new Water Entities and they get another layer of bureaucracy that will add a huge extra cost onto the ratepayers; the councils will be given a non-financial shareholding in the new water entities that will be proportional to their population (one share per 50,000 people); and councils are prevented from gaining a return from the water entities even though this is specifically allowed for Mana Whenua Groups.
Iwi (who make up approximately 17% of the population) will have their own consultation process for the legislation, separate from the transparent select committee process available to the general public (who make up the other 83% of the population). This is simply unbelievable. For the first time, New Zealand’s Parliamentary process is going to have ‘priority access’ based on race.
The Government is telling us that this is Co-Governance at work but in fact all it is no more than theft of ratepayer’s assets using a race based justification that is APARTHEID by another name.