By Jordan Williams
New Zealanders have said Stop Three Waters, with 68,661 submissions lodged at www.StopThreeWaters.nz by 65,091 unique users on the Government’s Water Services Entities Bill by midnight last Friday. Of those 8,634 people indicated they’d like to make an oral submission.
Late Friday afternoon, staff from the Taxpayers’ Union hand-delivered the first 62,872 hard-copy Three Waters submissions to Parliament, with the balance sent by email before the midnight deadline, and now also delivered.
“The Government made the decision to block email submissions for the Water Services Entities Bill (Three Waters reforms) presumably to make it harder for people to have their say on this controversial piece of legislation. That is why the Union had to waste trees and print each and every one in order for it to count,” says Executive Director of the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, Jordan Williams.
“The submissions represent the voices of more than 65,000 New Zealand taxpayers who are worried about Three Waters’ inevitable higher water costs and the proposed loss of local democratic control. The clear message from Kiwis is ‘Stop Three Waters’.”
“The Finance and Expenditure Select Committee now have the mammoth task of going through all of the submissions and listening to the thousands of people who have stated they want to speak to their submission in person. The Government must listen to them; a box-ticking exercise is not enough on an issue as important as who controls local community water assets we’ve paid for over generations.”
“It’s sad to see the Minister’s sock puppet Stuart Crosby running a ridiculous argument in the media today that a ‘two waters’ would fix bugs in ‘three waters’.”
“Whatever job Crosby’s been offered by Nanaia Mahuta is surely not worth the public ridicule of claiming this is a fix.”
“As we’ve said all along, stormwater was always going to be cast away – the idea of having storm water run by someone in the city, while rural councils are still responsible for the roads connected to it, was always bananas.”
“It was gracious of the Minister of Local Government to allow her little helper to fire a popgun at the Government calling for this obvious change. Mr Crosby is doing the Minister proud.”
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is an independent and membership-driven activist group, dedicated to being the voice for Kiwi taxpayers in the corridors of power. Its mission, lower taxes, less waste, more transparency, is supported by 40,000 subscribed members and supporters.
