A con of the first water

The Neo-lib inspired management-governance split left local councils in New Zealand in the grip of central government by making party political divides in local governance opaque, by placing too much power in the hands of CEOs, and by imposing layers of regulation almost all of which have to funded out of rates, which residents pay out of their taxed income and on which they are then taxed again by central government via GST.

Back in the colonialist days of powerful provincial governance, some people longed for a strong central government to curb the untrammelled greed and rampant self-interest of those who controlled the provinces. 

We live in an era in which those venal, self-serving attributes are firmly in the driving seat at all levels of both the governance and the management of a socio-economic system that is rooted in exploitation in pursuit of private profit. Calls for more local power in that socio-economic landscape are a chimera.

As a case in point: I live in a district with a population of just under 14k in a land area of 8,600 square kilometres. Our rates have skyrocketed, not solely because of the abandonment of Three Waters but because of decades of poor management and governance.

We have water which meets WHO standards but due in part to a council strategy of mixing water from different sources (funded by the last government), our water is so heavy with minerals and chlorine it destroys water heaters and whiteware unless softened and filtered as most people are now forced to do at their own expense. 

The reticulated rural water supply is old in places, and leaks are frequent with untold amounts of potable water being wasted.

The bulk of the district’s roads are unsealed and poorly maintained, due largely to the inefficiencies and false economy of the Neo-lib contract culture in which local councils are firmly enmeshed. 

As a rural property we were forced to install a sewage system which, thanks to the regional government's subservience to the Neo-lib ethos, requires on-going maintenance, initially by the company which installed it, then by a large corporation which bought that company which now out-sources the job to a self-employed contractor. 

We have no rubbish collection, and the council effectively destroyed one of the country’s most advanced and innovative community-led recycling initiatives to pass a key contract onto a private sector provider. When questioned about what was widely perceived locally as a conflict of interest, the then mayor laughed and said, “This is XXX, there’s always a conflict of interest.”

All that aside, NZ’s total population is half that of Seoul. It is skewed, not just in relation to the numbers in the northern island, but in greater Auckland. 

The larger island (also the location of the great, state-funded hydro schemes which supply 60% of the nation’s now privatised electricity) is home to just 1.2 million people, half of them in one province. 

There is a pressing need for governance and management to be genuinely efficient and economic,  and to be responsive to local needs. We simply cannot afford to have deep layers of both national and local governance and management. 

The creation of the all-important buffer zone, the various strata of which have a financial and  status stake in the economic status quo, has resulted in layers of bureaucracy which are all-too often parasitic on essential front-line services. 

This is at its most obvious in the public sector, and at present it provides useful ideological cover for a crackpot coalition government to make swingeing cuts in the sector –  partly as a bone to divert some of its more rabid supporters, but mainly to fund the juicy steaks it intends to serve up to its main financial and political backers.  

They point to the layers of bureaucracy that their ilk created as a buffer zone, and to the struggling, front line service providers who have been starved of funding and ham strung by regulations, and they sacrifice some of the former, not to improve the latter, but to divert the “savings” into the pockets of the already-rich. 

Or, even more brazenly, to create new layers of bureaucracy to facilitate yet more asset stripping. 

It is a con of the first water; unparalleled in its callous impudence.