It is one of the biggest components of our 10-year budget and has a material impact on our debt levels by 2034 if we follow the current trajectory with the rules in place today.
One of the questions I have been asked many times is “I thought we stopped Three Waters?”.
It is important to recognise what was stopped for Three Waters was the reform programme initiated by the last government. What hasn’t stopped is the work required for councils to provide services for drinking, waste and stormwater. In fact, the standards have actually increased, which has had an even bigger impact on the driver for the reforms which was affordability.
It has been said the spend on the Three Waters reform under the previous government totalled $1.2billion. Imagine what could that have bought New Zealand? There are 193 wastewater plants and 339 water treatment plants across the country. That kind of spend could have contributed $2.2million to every single one of them for infrastructure upgrades.
With this approach, Southland would have received over $63m for our portion. This would have gone a long way to minimising the impact of the Three Waters spend you see in our LTP.
Our country is too small to over-complicate and politicise important things like infrastructure. The closer to the source the money gets spent, the more value it will add and the further it will go.
It saddens me that so often money gets poured into bureaucracy which never reaches an outcome. Or, by the time it gets to the outcome, the funds are so watered down the intended outcome is no longer affordable. I think of the more than $51m failed project for the Auckland Harbour Cycling and Walking Bridge project in 2021 – an incredible amount of money that didn’t result in a single stone being turned but could have covered about a third of our entire bridge programme for the 10-year plan.
I am feeling like a stuck record but we have a nationwide affordability issue. This is very clear in local government where we have very few options other than rates to pay for your infrastructure.
It is time to come up with a better way of funding — centrally funded but locally delivered — and the money needs to reach the outcome on the ground!
