"10 area amalgamation came with the capacity to borrow and at lower cost. It also offered some of the advantages of the original 4 bodies in terms of greater scale and shared use of expertise." The final iteration of 3 Waters was better, but it still ...
"Then it might have been voluntary." Nothing about 3Waters was going to be voluntary. "What clearer motivation to include higher cost areas? Why would anyone do that voluntarily?" That's always an issue, whichever model is chosen. When Watercare was formed...
If that was really the case, 3Waters would have been an easy sell.
"Watercare does not want Northland for a reason. The same applied in all 10 areas." 3Waters was seen as undemocratic from the outset. There is now a much clearer motivation for councils to amalgamate water resourcing voluntarily. Whangarei DC have been ...
My view is the larger entities under the 3 waters model were far more attractive for privatisation.
"Separating councils from the water bodies allows them an asset they can sell to do other things/lower non water charge rate increases. In reality, Council's without separation can still sell off their water assets. It's just a process to work through.
"...seems designed to put small, local water-management entities into financial difficulty Thus making them ripe for privatisation and sale to asset-management companies..." In reality the opposite is true. Small entities have too low a revenue potential ...
You're confusing 'cancelling' the event and 'deplatforming' a speaker(s). The call was to deplatform participants that didn't reflect the beliefs of a select few. The targets were the FSU and Jonathan Ayling personally. It is an indictment on VicU that ...
"Ayling himself explicitly supported Julian Batchelor during his anti-co governance roadshow." Broadbent is not being truthful. Ayling did not 'support' anything Batchelor said, he supported Batchelor's right to say it. Free Speech Union lays complaint ...
"They are dreaming. Not comparable." Watercare is a successful product of amalgamation. It is a model that will work across the country, if done properly. McAnulty gave a nod to the value of local solutions when Labour tried to water down it's reforms(...
Watercare is an entirely different animal than it was at amalgamation. It changed dramatically when it absorbed Metrowater in 2010.
The figures in the One News link are present values, per year.
I'm not a lawyer, AFIK there is no specific hate speech law in NZ. The closest would be section 61 of the Human Rights Act (although that is a 'civil' provision). Othe legislation does deal with 'harmful' speech, including the Summary Offences Act 1981, ...
Which is why council's around the country will be looking at the deal the council have done with the government as a better way forward. District mayors welcome Auckland's new water deal with govt | RNZ News
Yes, really. Watercare (as an integrated entity) has only been operating since 2010. They inherited decades of under investment, and have improved Auckland's water infrastructure far beyond the legacy council's capabilities. Watercare outlines $18.5b ...
"Can you offer more than a counter claim?" Yes. Eight fold variation in water charges – depending on where you live : Water New Zealand (waternz.org.nz) "The NPR’s author, Water New Zealand’s insights and sustainability advisor, Lesley Smith says that the ...
I live in Auckland. Watercare is doing a very good job at both upgrading infrastructure and delivering water quality without the unnecessary weight of a centralised control structure.
The link (Three Waters reset: Mega-entities scrapped as new model proposed (1news.co.nz)) references the April 2023 rewrite of the 3 Waters proposals, which was a political response to Labour's slump in the polls. They new entities would not have been ...
According to the FSU (What happens if we don't defend free speech at universities? - Free Speech Union (fsu.nz)), the "draft principles for what discourse Victoria University intends to allow on campus" includes this: "We should not provide a platform for,...
"Two and a half years on from that ODT article, failure to launch 3Waters is coming back to bite ratepayers." Not really. Ratepayers were always going to pay for infrastructure investment, either though rates or taxes. The issue is what is the more ...
Do you think that tenants should pay property tax, as they do (or at least did in 2022) in France? https://wise.com/gb/blog/property-tax-in-france
Hostile takeovers? Sounds like 3 Waters. Troubled Three Waters | Otago Daily Times Online News (odt.co.nz)
My point more broadly is that it cannot be assumed that inflation will be higher or lower than wage movements. I had a recent discussion with Weka about this, I posted links and the following comments: https://thestandard.org.nz/mps-pay-increases/#comment-...
"...then this government's policy to lessen any benefit increases by returning to indexing to the CPI rather than inflation," How do you know this will lessen benefit increases? "Over 2021, 2022 and 2023, inflation averaged 5.6%, wage movement 3.67%. In ...
@ Drowsy 😀. I actually needed that giggle. Had a tough day. Enjoy your evening.
@Drowsy the denial I referred to was your representation of NZ’s problems as somehow aligned to everyone else’s. We have our own economic problems that are of own making. High domestic inflation, high interest rates, plummeting productivity are just three ...
@Drowsy We’re in a transition that should not have been necessary. But there it is. If you have other ideas for lowering inflation and interest rates, and reducing government expenditure and debt, then I all ears.
@Drowsy You seem to have an unhealthy preoccupation with landlords. This is about restoring some semblance of sensibility to government spending, reducing interest rates and inflation. These are things that will return the NZ economy to its 'former self'.
Matt Doocey is not the Minister of Transport, he is the Associate Minister. His comment in the house was nothing more than the sort of throwaway that is dished out every day. In the Hansard of the lead up to Genter losing her cool there were a series of ...
@ Drowsy So you're now not denying there's a problem, but you don't like the current remedy?
"What I know is NZ isn't alone in facing the challenges of unemployment, inflation and structural deficits. " Sure, but let's take inflation. Tradable inflation has been dropping since mid 2022, but our non-tradable inflation is around 5.8%. This is a ...
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