Three Waters Myth Busters number 12 from communities 4 local democracy.

Three Waters Myth Busters number 12 from communities 4 local democracy.

Good evening folks
I am Bruce smith the Westland district mayor
Westland is a member of Communities 4 Local Democracy
Who are Communities 4 Local Democracy?
We’re 24 councils strong and growing, representing more than a million people from North to South, East to West.
The group is chaired by Helen Worboys Mayor of the Manawatū and co chaired by Dan Gordon Mayor of Waimakariri.
Both are very smart people

We believe that we can do better than the ‘one size fits none’ proposals from the Government, and that we can deliver better services while still remaining affordable and locally responsive.

We are a group that is growing and we welcome other councils around the country to join us to preserve the sanctity of private property rights in a democracy where local ownership and control has been the backbone of the home we call New Zealand for generations

This series will fact check and then myth bust many of the statements made by government to try and justify the need for such a radical three waters reform and we hope will lead the way to a more open and transparent discussion around alternative models for the supply of clean drinking waters to New Zealanders while at the same time acknowledging we are constantly ranked in the top seven world wide for the supply of clean safe drinking water.

MYTH TWELVE.
Government says safeguards against future privatisation will be written into legislation to maintain local ownership.

A future Government will still be able to vote to remove any constraints before taking steps to privatise the water assets.

At best, the present Government’s proposals would only make transparent a future Government’s desire to privatise these assets by requiring it to remove these constraints before privatising. This would simply require 61 votes in Parliament (a majority in a 120 Parliament).

This opens to door to a future Government claiming it needs the money from full or partial privatisation (as occurred with our electricity sector).