Tova podcast: Will water really be cheaper in a post-Three Waters world?

Thursday, 9 May 2024

Tova O’Brien is Stuff’s Chief Political Correspondent and host of the weekly political podcast, Tova. Listen to the latest episode, ‘Not Three Waters’, here.

This week on the Tova podcast, a deep dive into water.

We all need it - clean drinking water, working sewerage systems and somewhere for stormwater to go.

It’s fundamental to a functioning society and yet, here in New Zealand we’ve been getting it all woefully wrong for far too long.

Our pipes are buggered, they’re cracked and leaky - Wellington’s losing more than 40% of its drinking water, many of Auckland’s beaches are unswimmable, particularly after rain, because they’re polluted by sewage including human faeces, and nationwide, we’re facing eye-watering hikes to water bills.

It’s disgusting and it’s dire.

There’s at least consensus across the parliament, councils and community that something urgently needs to be done.

But as we know from Labour’s ‘Three Waters’ debacle and subsequent fix-up job, the ‘Affordable Water Reforms’, then their eventual repeal by National, replaced by ‘Local Water Done Well’, there’s far from consensus on how we get it done.

And remember all that work done and repealed cost you, the taxpayer, $1.2 billion dollars in sunk cost, down the drain.

Separate organisations or entities need to be created so that they can borrow more money - off councils’ already debt-laden books - to fix the pipes.

To achieve that balance sheet separation Labour wanted to create 10 entities that bundled geographically grouped councils together - starting with entity A covering Auckland and Northland.

Labour’s plans were killed off by National almost as soon as it was elected and replaced by a model which gave councils control to decide who they would bundle together with. These will be called Council Controlled Organisations, CCOs, and the first was announced last weekend with Auckland Council and Watercare achieving that separation.

There’s much debate over whether the government should guarantee the debt these organisations incur because a government guarantee basically gives lenders the ultimate reassurance they’ll be paid back and are therefore more likely to provide lower interest rates - a bill that ratepayers will ultimately be responsible for paying for.

So on the Tova podcast this week: the man leading the government’s water reforms, Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and the man who had been leading reforms under Labour, Local Government Spokesman, Kieran McAnulty.

Also, Whanganui Mayor Andrew Tripe, who ran for the role on an anti-Three Waters platform. His is one of the many council perspectives - each of them very different - but all universal in their desire to keep rates down for their residents.