Asset stripping
The Government has stated councils will have shares in their Three Waters services entity allocated on a population basis and the shareholdings will be "non-financial".
How then will the non-financial shareholdings be described in the water services entities' annual reports and financial statements?
The Water Services Entities Bill goes a
lot further. The shares cannot, for any reason, be sold or transferred.
Clause 166 of the Bill says each owner cannot receive any dividend, give any water services entity any support, capital, loans or credit and the owners cannot give guarantees, securities or indemnities.
Thus the councils will lose assets with book values in the billions of dollars and will end up with a replacement "shareholding" in a water services entity that cannot have any financial value attached and cannot be sold or used in any way.
The so-called shares cannot carry voting rights in proportion to the councils' respective shareholdings. In the new constitutions, it looks very much like one vote per Council.
The "shares" will simply be a couple of meaningless lines on a piece of paper. How is that "ownership"?
J C Aubrey, Hamilton.
Red herring
I see from your editorial (NZ Herald, July 27) that the Government claims that "councils will own the new water entities on behalf of their communities".
But the test is: who owns the water assets? If you own assets you can borrow against them. Councils will no longer be able to borrow against their water assets.
That's because the Water Services Entities bill will have stripped them of their water assets, forcing councils to hand them over to the new "water entities" so the new owners can borrow the estimated $185 billion to fund their work.
It's all about owning the pipes and water infrastructure. The endless wrangling about co-governance of the new entities is a deliberate red herring.
Pauline Doyle, Napier.
Skill set
Oh dear. One's worst fears about Three Waters are realised when one reads the advertisements for the chief executives (NZ Herald, July 27).
There are seven skills listed and not one says anything at all about hydraulic engineering.
Surely if Three Waters is going to achieve anything, the head needs to be a highly qualified and experienced engineer who actually knows something about water?
Denys Oldham, Devonport.
House keeping
We need an emergency backstop loan scheme for recent borrowers who will suddenly find themselves underwater as their interest rates double. This is not only to avoid the heartbreak of them losing what they have spent years saving for, but also to prevent a collapse in property prices caused by a glut of mortgagee sales.
Banks were helpful during the lockdowns, allowing borrowers to pay interest-only, or to stop payments altogether, for a few months while things settled down. Banks will need to step up to that plate again. That might need to be combined with a government-backed scheme that does not leave banks unfairly out of pocket.
To those who would wail that a taxpayer-funded support scheme would be a waste of "their" tax money, I would say that I would gladly see that risk spread among all of us at minimal cost if it means that people can stay in their homes, and property prices remain more stable.
Jeremy Hall, Hauraki.
Sounds familiar
I have just been talking to a cousin in British Columbia, Canada.
Things are not good there: inflation is sky high, the cost of food is through the roof, likewise, the cost of petrol.
Doctors and nurses are at breaking point and crime is rampant. Businesses are closing because of lack of staff.
The population is baying for government blood.
I just thought you might want to know.
Julie Pearce, Matamata.
