Three Waters backdown: Government pulls entrenchment clause

The entrenchment clause in the Three Waters legislation that sparked outcry has been labelled a mistake by Leader of the House Chris Hipkins and will be removed.

Hipkins announced the backdown today after lawyers labelled the provision undemocratic last week.

Last month, politicians debated under urgency various stages and amendments to the Water Services Entities Bill - the first in a suite of laws to enact the Three Waters reforms.

Among those was a provision, proposed by Green MP Eugenie Sage, to ensure there was an obligation to maintain public ownership and control of water services and significant assets, something the public has been concerned about.

A threshold of 60 per cent to overturn such a provision in future was settled upon.

In response, a group of the country’s top public law academics urged the Government to change the provision, saying it could set a “dangerous precedent”.

Law Society president Frazer Barton penned a strongly-worded letter to Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta last week.

“The entrenchment clause is undemocratic: it proposes to bind the hands of future governments on a contestable policy position,” Barton said.

Today, Hipkins called the clause a mistake.

Leader of the House Chris Hipkins says the entrenchment clause in the Three Waters legislation was a mistake. Photo / Mark Mitchell

“It was a mistake to put the entrenchment clause in and the Government will fix the issue as soon as the House resumes on Tuesday.

“The intention to protect assets from being sold was right, but entrenchment usually requires a super majority or 75 per cent of the parliament to vote for it.

“The approach in this amendment allowed an entrenchment provision to pass in a way that is not typical for Parliament. That has wider ramifications that we are not comfortable with. That’s why we will fix the issue.

“It’s also important Parliament strengthens the rules around entrenchment generally to avoid this in the future.”

The Water Services Entities Bill will be sent back to the Committee of the Whole House to remove the entrenchment provision.

Hipkins also said the wider matter around entrenchment will be sent to the Standing Orders Committee, where all parties are represented, in order to strengthen the protections for entrenchment provisions.

“We will ask the Committee to look at where entrenchment provisions are appropriate and what majority should be required for them,” Hipkins said.

“It is important to note the entrenchment clause only applied to maintaining public ownership of water assets. In order to protect against privatisation of these assets we will also be seeking political assurances from the National and ACT parties via letters that ask them to commit to public ownership.

“We hope they commit to keeping water assets in public ownership, especially given their previous track record of selling public assets.”