Alternative facts specialist Peter Dowden investigates Three Waters.
Conspiracy: The Government is confiscating the water pipes.
Disputed event: The Government’s Three Waters Reform Programme to set up "water service entities" with community, iwi and council oversight.
First allegations: Claims the reform was "to give Māori control of water" surfaced in early 2020.
And they would have gotten away with it too: Any dictionary of te reo Māori will tell you that the word for "fresh water" is waimāori.
The argument over whether drinking water, sewerage and stormwater drainage are best provided by 67 local councils or a handful of regional corporations is equally valid for anything else councils do.
The Government could propose that public libraries be taken over by library corporations, or playgrounds by some new "play equipment service entities".
District health boards disappeared recently without a whimper of opposition in a similar centralisation of power.
It is not a good idea to walk into a country cafe and ask for two cappuccinos, one latte and three waters: people in communities remote from water reticulation seem more opposed to the proposed restructuring.
The most amusing spectacle in the Three Waters debate is the clapped-out protest hikoi tractor clad in mildewed building materials daubed in "No 3 Waters" slogans and driven by a person whose house has a septic tank for sewage, whose driveway drains into the local wetland and who gets their drinking water (and possibly also their conspiracy theories) from a local bore.
