Nicola Grigg - Opinion Piece

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I write in the vain hope democracy may still exist in this country, and there may be an opportunity the Government will respond to the enormous public response to the Three Waters proposal. I won’t hold my breath. The submissions on the Water Services Entities Bill have now closed - the Select Committee received over 88,000 submissions. The message from this is clear. Kiwis overwhelmingly reject Three Waters. It appears though that Labour doesn’t care what the public has to say though and will rush through Three Waters despite this intense opposition. My colleague Simon Watts moved that the Select Committee should take extra time in light of the huge number of submissions received on the Bill, but despite all other political parties on the committee agreeing, Labour used its absolute majority to block it. Labour also used its majority to SERVICING  WOF'S TYRES  DIAGNOSTICS BRAKES & SUSPENSION

prevent most of the people and organisations who asked to make an oral submission via the 16,000 submissions collected by National from doing so. So, anti-democratic and horrendously expensive. More than $26 million has been spent on consultants alone. These costs are increasing by more than $1 million a month. At the end of February, the amount spent was $21 million. At the end of May, it was $26 million, and every month Labour burns more cash trying to figure out and sell these reforms that won’t work. While all this money is being paid out to consultants in Wellington, not a single metre of pipe has been delivered to communities in need. On top of consultant costs, it has spent $2.5 billion in bribes to councils to try to convince them to support Three Waters. Meanwhile, it appears that they don’t know how much the IST transition to their new entities will cost but that it could be over $500 million. National has committed to repealing this reform and will return any seized assets. But we do acknowledge there is a case for change in some parts of New Zealand. Our model would be set in a few fundamental principles - the key being by partnering with Local Government to solve the real issues around Three Waters. Fundamentally it will maintain local ownership of water assets and respect local property rights, provide tools for asset owners to achieve sustainable financing and revenue adequacy, provide a regulatory backstop for incentive management and water quality within an efficient and effective regulatory environment, safeguard against privatisation, respect the role of mana whenua, but not introduce co-governance of water assets, provide a financial assistance regime for districts that need it and assistance with transitions to sustainable models. The fight against Three Waters has just begun, and National will fight the Government every step of the way to stop these broken reforms from going through.

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15 South Terrace, Darfield

Nicola Grigg, MP for Selwyn.