This clearly raised questions of Cabinet competence and just who is running the show. Given the denials by Ardern and Hipkins, it appeared that Mahuta, who is promoting the legislation as Local Government Minister, and, the Greens’ Eugenie Sage who promoted the change through a supplementary order paper, had cooked up a backroom strategy to slip the offending clause into the colloquially known “Three Waters” bill.
With the aforementioned Cabinet leaders: Ardern, Hipkins — and other relevant ministers who have been keeping their heads down and playing dumb such as Finance Minister Grant Robertson, Justice Minister Kiri Allan and Attorney-General David Parker — this left Mahuta on the outer.
Murmurs were growing that she should be sacked for allowing the supplementary order paper (SOP) to be sneaked in while Parliament was sitting under urgency without having the requisite Cabinet backing. That was always fatuous given the majority vote for the new clause by the Labour and Greens MPs.
Slowly, the press gallery has been unpicking what lies behind the blame-shifting over this constitutional travesty.
Mahuta has now made it clear to journalists that the issue was discussed at a prior Labour Party caucus meeting.
And it now appears that Ardern was present when the entrenchment clause was discussed — although she has previously said it was not necessarily something she would be aware of.
Mahuta can hold on to that particular ministerial warrant for now.
But it is concerning that it has taken parliamentary over-reach by Ardern’s majority Labour Government to get major legal attention on the Water Services Entities Bill.
This is a consequential piece of work. Not only does it entrench what many councils see as the legislative “theft” of water infrastructure assets built over many years through ratepayer levies, but — and this is another egregious aspect — it hands considerable power to Māori iwi regulators to make what are essentially proprietorial calls over the use of that water.
None of this has been appropriately debated, let alone discussed through a national conversation which probes the real extent of co-governance and indeed the engineering which exposes those four new regional water entities to financial risk.
The Government has simply resorted to its legislative might to push these reforms through — buying off council resistance with a $2 billion support package called Better Off funding which is a sweetener for the effective loss of their assets.
In conversations I have had with two ministers recently it is clear that there are differing stances within Cabinet.
Robertson is adamant that if a co-governance role for Māori was not found in the Three Waters reforms it would “end up in the courts immediately”.
Robertson says the Government will press ahead saying: “It’s the right thing to do.”
His view is that it is naive to believe you can resolve water issues in New Zealand without a role for Māori.
That said that Government’s position is that nobody owns the water.
Parker has trod carefully on Three Waters but his own view is “we’re all supposed to move together as one country”.
In respect of planning law reforms, he said, “We decided with all of these things in balance that we would pursue a system where we had co-operation brought about by participation rather than a 50:50 co-governance model.”
The issue is far from settled.
It is not as if the water reforms have emerged out of nowhere.
Mahuta is not alone in believing the case for reforming New Zealand’s water services is compelling.
It is a topic that was in front of previous National ministers.
Cabinet ministers in successive Governments including former National Prime Minister Sir Bill English, the late Labour Deputy Prime Minister Sir Michael Cullen and former National Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett have all said New Zealand faced a major legacy of under-investment in water services.
Mahuta was right when she said that the case for changing New Zealand’s water services was compelling.
The problem lies with the architecture of the reforms which deliver considerable power to iwi without first building public support for the measure.
