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John -- Thank you for your support in the fight against Labour’s Three Waters reforms. I’m writing with a quick update on the campaign. I’ll be doing these regularly from now on – I hope you enjoy them! It’s been a busy couple of weeks with the submissions on the Water Services Entities Bill now closed. I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to submit through the National Party website; we collected and delivered over 16,000 submissions, and the Select Committee received over 88,000 submissions. The message from this is clear. Kiwis overwhelmingly reject Three Waters. 88,324 submissions, and Labour still isn’t listeningLabour doesn’t care what the public has to say and will rush through Three Waters despite intense opposition. I moved that the Select Committee should take extra time in light of the huge number of submissions received on the Bill, but despite all other political parties on the committee agreeing with me, Labour used its absolute majority to block it. Labour also used its majority to prevent most of the people and organisations who asked to make an oral submission via submissions collected by National from doing so. Over 1000 of you asked to speak to your submission in person, and you should be able to. It is clear that thousands of Kiwis oppose this reform but Labour has doubled down by pushing it through Parliament as quickly as possible. Labour cares more about getting the Three Waters reforms out of the public eye than listening to the legitimate concerns of New Zealanders and hearing what you have to say about it. Questioning Nanaia Mahuta in ParliamentWhen the Prime Minister spoke at the Local Government New Zealand conference, she promised councils that under her watch, there would be no more reforms unless they were sought and their direction was agreed on. However, it seems her Minister for Local Government didn’t get the memo and made Three Waters compulsory, giving councils no option but to hand over their water assets to unaccountable mega entities. Labour has piled Local Government with reforms they haven’t asked for, Nanaia Mahuta should listen to the Prime Minister and stop the reforms councils oppose. Watch here:
Three Waters spending is through the roofKiwi taxpayers are paying the price for these reforms with more than $26m spent on consultants alone. These costs are increasing by more than $1 million a month. At the end of February, the amount spent was $21 million. At the end of May, it was $26 million, and every month Labour burns more cash trying to figure out and sell these reforms that won’t work. While all this money is being paid out to consultants in Wellington, not a single meter of pipe has been delivered to communities in need. Labour simply can’t deliver. Instead, Labour is addicted to spending and burning through cash on Three Waters like there’s no tomorrow. On top of consultant costs, it has spent $2.5 in bribes to councils to try to convince them to support Three Waters. Meanwhile, I uncovered that they don’t know how much the IST transition to their new entities will cost but that it could be over $500 million. Speaking at LGNZI spoke at at this year’s LGNZ conference where I set out the fundamental principles that will guide National’s Three Waters reforms. Labour doesn’t care what local councils think and is more than happy to lay the blame for problems at their feet, but National knows the solutions to all our problems can’t be found in Wellington. Only by partnering with Local Government can we solve the real issues around Three Waters. Our model will:
The fight against Three Waters has just begun, and National will fight the government every step of the way to stop these broken reforms from going through. If you haven’t already, please sign our petition to stop Three Waters Regards,
https://www.facebook.com/simonwattsmp |
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