Hate speech Proposals 3 to 6: are you likely to be causing incitement to discrimination? Who says

Having gone through Proposals 1 and 2, I have looked at 3 to 6 and there is more to be concerned about.

Proposal Three is simply an increase in penalties to fines of up to $50,000 and up to three years’ imprisonment, up from $7,000 and three months.  For threats these new penalties are reasonable, but given I reject elements of the proposals themselves, this becomes moot. It's notable that this penalty is higher than the following actual crimes of violence:

Assault on a child (S.194 Crimes Act)

Assault on a person in a family relationship (S.195 Crimes Act) (domestic violence)

Common assault (S.196 Crimes Act)

It is the same as assault with intent to injure or aggravated assault. So the Government thinks intentionally injuring someone's body is no more serious than injuring their feelings. 

Proposal Four would see the S.61 civil offence wording similar to that of the Proposal Two criminal wording, but also retain the existing provision of bringing a group into contempt would be retained. If you have issues with Proposal Two then they parallel Proposal Four.  

Proposal Five would see the Human Rights Act prohibit “incitement of others to discriminate” simply to align it with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Abiding by an international treaty is not an argument in and of itself for reform, as it should be advanced on its actual merits.  The proposal chillingly says: 

Under this proposal, section 61 would also make speech that is likely to cause incitement to discrimination unlawful

So the law would mean Police would have to decide if speech is “likely to cause incitement to discrimination”, and of course it applies to the long list of groups, including political and ethical belief. 

Imagine that, the state deciding not if you intended to incite discrimination but that you are likely to cause incitement to discrimination. Frankly, much of what the Maori Party says lately may do just that, but so might columns written about race, gender and identity. So-called “TERFs” will be deemed as likely to cause incitement to discrimination (if Proposal Six continues), but so will strict Catholics. Of course there are those who think that not being 100% compliant with UN treaties is somehow an act of turpitude, but given the UN accepts membership from a jurisdiction that incarcerates small children as political parents for the crimes of their parents, none should be churlish about simply laughing at claims of moral superiority.  

It is not the role of the state to punish people for making speech based on some probability that it will incite someone to discriminate against another, particularly on grounds of political belief.  To hell with such an illiberal attitude to what people say or write.

Finally Proposal Six, which seeks to expand “sex” to include “gender, gender expression and gender identity” to S.21 of the Human Rights Act.  Given that some trans-activists regard any challenge to be an act of hatred, the scope for this to be abused is considerable. There is a case to say that people should not be legally required to accept a purely self-identified change of gender, or that birth certificates should not be altered to remove any reference to biological sex at birth.  Some women are uncomfortable with biological men who identify as women being allowed into spaces declared for women, and they should not be regarded as inciting hate for expressing their concerns.  Nobody should threaten or incite threats against people regardless of gender identity or expression, but adding this category to any laws constraining speech beyond that is not the role of the state - the state does not exist to protect people from being insulted. 

Overall the proposals by the Ardern Government are chilling in their breadth and depth.  If the intention is to better protect people from threats or incitement to violence, then the scope of the proposals should be much much tighter, but that is clearly not the intention.  The intention is to prohibit "hatred" and promoting "hatred" against groups, some of which are defined by immutable characteristics, some reflect personal choices (marital, employment, family status), some reflect matters of conscience (religion, politics or ethics). Yet it goes further than that, it seeks to prohibit communications that Police (for it is they who enforce these laws) will interpret as being likely to cause incitement to discrimination.

At a bare minimum if these changes proceeded excluding political belief and ethical belief, they would be notably less dangerous, but there is a much more fundamental question at stake here. Beyond threats of violence or inciting threats, what rights should the state be protecting people from being violated?  Do you want the Police to arrest people for insulting others, particularly insulting them online?  Do you want films, novels, letters, conversations to get you criminalised because someone thinks you are likely to cause someone to be encouraged to discriminate against a group?  

If you are an activist for Palestine (I am not), are you happy that your incessant opposition to Israel could be likely to incite hatred of Jews?  If you are an activist for Maori sovereignty, are you happy that your constant portrayal of Pakeha as colonisers, privileged and racist is likely to incite hatred against them? If you are an activist for Hong Kong democracy, are you happy that your portrayal of the Chinese Communist Party could be likely to incite hatred against Chinese people? If you are an activist against honour killings are you happy that your concern over Salafist teachings could mean you incite hatred against Muslims generally? In all cases because Police think so?

In the past decade or more the prevailing culture has shifted to one of ever growing intolerance of people having opinions that some disagree with. It has been predominantly driven by a far left almost Leninist approach to disagreement.  Those who challenge Maori seats in local government are called "racist" as a kneejerk pejorative, those who question trans-women engaging in womens' sports are "transphobic".  Those advancing these changes are almost certainly of the philosophical perspective that supports these perspectives, that regards classical liberal positions on individual freedom and rights to be at best archaic, or at worst somehow white supremacist and misogynist.  

There are crumbs of sense in these proposals. There should be clarity around laws that prohibit threats or incitement to threaten people on any grounds, but there is neither a need for the other changes, nor are they compatible with an open, vibrant, liberal democracy. Whether you are libertarian, conservative or a left wing radical, or a believer in any religion, or none, or if you hold an ethical position that many find outrageous, you should fear these changes, and you should oppose them.

You have until 6 August to oppose these changes, you need to tell the Minister of Justice and the Government what you think.  

New laws on hate speech: Proposal Two, a consolidation of law against threats or another step too far?

 So Proposal One will prohibit publishing, broadcasting or using words in a public place that are threatening, abusive, or insulting to anyone on the grounds of a wide range of factors. It would also prohibit expressions with intent to excite hostility or ill-will against or bring into contempt or ridicule on a wide range of grounds. These grounds include political opinion, ethical opinion and religious belief, all of which should send chills down the spines of anyone who even claims to be remotely liberal.  

Threats and abuse are actions that give rise for concern, but the state does not exist to protect people from being insulted because of what they think.  Likewise, exciting hostility (which is threatening) also gives rise for concern, but ill-will, contempt and ridicule are entirely legitimate emotions against political ideologies, ethical positions and religious dogmatism. Christians should not be protected from Monty Python, which intends to ridicule their religion, but neither should Muslims be protected from Charlie Hebdo. I shouldn’t even have to explain why political and ethical positions shouldn’t be protected.

So what about Proposal Two?

This is where it gets a little complicated, because it proposes to amend one of the Sections discussed in Proposal One by replacing it altogether.

It proposes to replace the criminal provision in the Human Rights Act (S.131) with a provision in the Crimes Act and replace the words “excite hostility, ill will, bring into contempt or ridicule” with “incite” or “stir up” “hatred.  

It would be a crime to:

1. intentionally incite/stir up, maintain or normalise hatred

2. against any group protected from discrimination by section 21 of the Human Rights Act

3. through threatening, abusive or insulting communications, including inciting violence

4. made by any means.

This has a kernel of merit. There should be clear provisions on inciting violence, but it should not be confined to groups listed in S.21 of the Human Rights Act, it should apply to ANYONE. Similar threatening communications should be illegal as it is threatening an initiation of force. 

However, it once again wants to criminalise abuse and insults if the intention is to incite hatred. However, once again, why should there be protection on the grounds of political belief or ethical belief? Why shouldn’t people hate communists, advocates of sex with children or ISIS? What is morally wrong with inciting hatred against groups that advocate violence against others? The obvious question is what about all other groups? Should the law make it a crime to stir up hatred against groups based on immutable characteristics? Most importantly, where does religion fit into this?  Religion is sometimes an identity equivalent to ethnic identity. After all, the divisions in Northern Ireland aren’t really about the source of interpretation of scripture, but a form of tribalism – and such hatred is utterly toxic and irrational. Yet religion itself is a source of power, and ethical and political belief, and so should not be protected from those who hate those beliefs. Dr. Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens both regarded all religions will contempt and even hatred, so why should that be at risk of prohibition? Indeed why should similar beliefs by the religious against atheists also be prohibited?

However there is more to this.  How will inciting hatred be interpreted? Is challenging Maori ethno-nationalism going to be seen as inciting hatred against Maori? Is challenging trans-gender activism going to seen as stirring up hatred against trans-gender people?  How much of an incentive is there for protected groups to claim this is exactly what critics are seeking to do?  If the answers to this are unclear, then this proposal should be rejected as well.

I'm all for a clear criminal provision on inciting violence and expressing threats to anyone (of any form of initiated force or fraud), but the idea there should be a law against promoting hatred against groups defined by what members of those groups think, or that it can be used to shut down criticism of what people think because it is claimed to be about their protected status is fundamentally illiberal and unacceptable in a free society.

New laws on hate speech: An honest attempt to protect people or a sinister effort to erode free speech?

As a libertarian my instincts are for the highest levels of freedom of speech. However as with all freedoms its limits lie where they infringe on the rights of others. Libertarians aren’t anarchists, you can’t “do what you want” when it initiates force or fraud against another. As your rights are to be free from violence against you or your property (and your property includes intellectual property and your reputation), then the appropriate limits on freedom of speech are those that violate the rights of another. There are laws on these violations already.

That includes threats of violence, it includes inciting others to inflict violence (including property damage) and includes recording a crime as an accessory to that crime (this covers child pornography and filming rape or someone being assaulted “for fun”). One claim is that the law doesn’t cover threats of violence against groups, but a group is a collection of individuals, and if this is true then a simple amendment of the Crimes Act can be made, with S.174 adding to “person” the words “or group of persons”. S.306-308 also contain provisions around threats that are relevant, so they idea that somehow there is some yawning gap in the law that allows people to threaten others with violence is simply false. 

Is expressing hatred of someone a violation of that person’s rights, or more generally is expressing hatred for a group or class of people a violation of their rights? In and of itself no it isn’t. Hatred has come to be an emotion that the “kindness” state of Jacinda Ardern wants banned, but it is not an emotion without merit. In the right context, it is not only appropriate, but almost a moral imperative. Why would any decent person not hate Fred and Rosemary West, or “Dr” Mengele, or Saddam Hussein? If a defined class of people are waging violence against you or your loved ones, or even complete strangers why should you not hate them? Actual Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Stasi, Japan’s wartime Imperial Army, a mafia family, a criminal gang.  

You don’t have a right to be protected from someone hating you as an individual or a member of a group. Indeed, this is a position held by many people across the political spectrum. Religious zealots hate non-believers, communists hate the bourgeoisie, trans-activists hate those they call TERFs, socialists hate “neo-liberals”, environmentalists hate fossil fuel producers and buyers of large utes, crime victims hate criminals, etc etc. You see hatred of others is a normal reaction to a passionate set of beliefs or a passionate belief in injustice. The issue is when such hatred is expressed as a threat, whether it be a direct threat to imminent violence or an implicit threat of violence or other action to prevent someone going about their lives peacefully. The fear generated by those expressing such threats, and by those touting bigoted views is palpable and contrary to the values of a rational, moral and liberal society.  The question is how to address such threats. Criminal law should protect people from threats of violence, but I’m very cautious about how far to take that. 

So there is hate speech law now, but the Ardern Government wants to go further. The stated purpose is to help prevent a repeat of the Christchurch Mosque Attack, but this hypothesis is questionable at best. Let’s look at the direct purpose of the proposed changes from the discussion document:

The proposals target the types of communication that seek to spread and entrench feelings of intolerance, prejudice, and hatred against groups in our society. All people are equal, and our society is made up of people with many different aspects to their identities. The incitement of hatred against a group based on a shared characteristic, such as ethnicity, religion, or sexuality, is an attack on our values of inclusiveness and diversity. Such incitement is intolerable and has no place in our society.

The idea that inciting hatred against a group based on a shared characteristic that is inherent to those people is certainly an attack on the values of a free liberal society and should have no place in a free society. However, if a shared characteristic is simply sharing an opinion, there that is a whole different situation. You can’t help race, sex or sexuality, but you can help what you think, and what some people think does not entitle them to be immune from hatred.

So the proposal is not about threats of violence, but about communications that are intended (intent matters after all) to spread and entrench (i.e., sustain) “feelings of tolerance, prejudice and hatred”. Now it’s easy to work out what these might be, the problem is what some might think these are. 

Is the column by Karl Du Fresne in the Spectator that talks of “Maorification” one that “entrenches” feelings of prejudice, or is it legitimate political commentary?

How about when Debbie Ngarewa-Packer describes in the NZ Herald NZers as either being tangata whenua, recovering racists and racists? Does that seek to spread feelings of intolerance against non-Maori?

Clearly there is no point asking Kris Faafoi, who doesn’t have a clue as the least qualified Minister of Justice for 13 years. The man's an idiot. Furthermore,  Jacinda Ardern thinks she shouldn’t be responsible for explaining what Cabinet’s decisions on new laws should mean in practice.  The nodding dogs of the Labour left and the Greens are all filing in behind her, so it is better to just read the proposals.  So in this post, I'll look at just one.

Proposal One: Change the language in the incitement provisions in the Human Rights Act 1993 so that they protect more groups that are targeted by hateful speech. Under this proposal, more groups would be protected by the law if hatred was incited against them due to a characteristic that they have.

This is about Sections 61 and 131 of the Human Rights Act. Section 61 prohibits publishing or distributing written matter, or using words in a public place that are “threatening, abusive, or insulting” on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic and national origins. Section 131 prohibits “with intent to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule, any group of persons in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins”. 

The Government wants to expand the groups this law “protects” from “insults” or from “contempt or ridicule” far beyond race and nationality. Consider the categories it wants to include:

• Sex (so no jokes about men, or women)

• Gender (no jokes about men who self-identify as women and look absurd)

• Marital status

• Religious belief (so yes that IS Life of Brian. Don’t intend to ridicule religion)

• Ethical belief (so don’t be ridiculing people who think abortion is murder, or who think pornography is good or evil, or that smacking is good practice, or etc etc)

• Disability (including carrying an infection)

• Age (don’t ridicule stupid young or old people)

• Political opinion (don’t bring communists or libertarians into contempt or else)

• Employment status (don’t bring into contempt people who are receiving taxpayers money)

• Family status (which includes “being a relative of a particular person” so you can’t ridicule a husband/wife/partner of a psychopath?)

• Sexual orientation.

Some of these are less objectionable than others, but the idea that there should be a prohibition on bringing into contempt or ridicule people because of their opinions is entirely outrageous.

Intending to bring into contempt any group of people on the grounds of their religious belief will be banned. That’s frankly outrageous. Fundamentalists of any religion should not be immune from insults or being brought into contempt because their beliefs are worthy of contempt.  This is blasphemy law through the back door. It goes further, you can’t ridicule entire groups because of their ethical belief (i.e., blood transfusions are evil, or vaccinating children is evil), nor can you ridicule people for their political beliefs.

This is frankly extraordinary. 

Given the Christchurch shooting was entirely motivated by religious hatred, if the law were to be about change to cover this, it would be simple enough to only prohibit threatening language regardless of the basis because nobody should be threatened.

This proposal alone should cause anyone who believes in liberal democracy and freedom of expression to go cold and simply reject this nonsense. 

To add insult to this, the discussion document assumes that there isn’t a legitimate point of view that outright opposes this proposal. It’s proposed questions are:

Do you agree that broadening the incitement provisions in this way will better protect these groups?

o Why or why not?

- In your opinion, which groups should be protected by this change?

- Do you think that there are any groups that experience hateful speech that would not be protected by this change?

The first question begs the question “protection from what”? From being ridiculed? Is the question ever asked why some groups should be protected from ridicule?

The second question is just “what groups” should this apply to.

The third question is “who else can we protect from being laughed at”?  I can see some saying “fat people, thin people, redheads, blondes, short people, people wearing revealing clothing, people wearing hats, types of occupation, types of recreational activity”.  I mean the list of groups is ENDLESS.

To hell with this Orwellian social-engineering philosophy to “protecting” people based on their opinions. There is a shred of value in asking why sex, disability and sexual orientation are not included in the current law, because those are characteristics that are essentially immutable, but almost every other element listed is a conscious characteristic.  At the very least this proposal will have a chilling effect on humour, but at worst it will make it illegal for me to say communists are either morons or psychopaths, or that Salafist Muslims are stone-age cretins, or that the Green Party are a bunch of loony leftie authoritarian control freaks.

And that’s just Proposal One….

It alone should cause you to make a submission before 6 August (see here for details).

By the way, good on both David Seymour and Judith Collins for taking this on, and also on the left, for Martyn Bradbury, who I scarcely agree with on anything, but he's right on this one.

Te Huia - a nice idea, but a lot of money to achieve very little

The launch of the Te Huia commuter train from Hamilton to Papakura has obtained a lot of publicity today, showing how journalists love an excuse for a train ride, and the lack of any high profile easy to understand positive news in New Zealand.

It is easy to see why some would be convinced this might be a good idea.  After all, there has been a daily commuter train from Palmerston North to Wellington (the Capital Connection) since 1991, running until very recently, as a commercial (unsubsidised) service, although it carries more people from intermediate stations like Levin and Otaki especially, than from Palmerston North.  However, experience for passenger rail travel from the Waikato to Auckland has been not so good.  The last time this was attempted was in 2000, commercially, by the then private TranzRail with a train called the Waikato Connection.  It ran once daily from Hamilton to Auckland, but had most of its passengers boarding at Pukekohe (which then had no service) and Papakura (because it basically offered a faster/non-stop more luxurious option than the basic diesel commuter trains), so that at the end less than a seated bus load of passengers used it from Hamilton. 

The latest attempt is not even a train from Hamilton to Auckland, it is from Hamilton to Papakura, to connect with the electric commuter train to Auckland, so it actually takes 2.5 hours from Hamilton to downtown Auckland.  This isn't exactly competitive with driving, which is around 1hr 40-50 minutes from station to station (and realistically almost everyone isn't starting or finishing their trips at either) although congestion can worsen that towards 2hrs.  The train has two stations in Hamilton and one in Huntly, with no other stops, so it offers nothing for any commuters in Ngaruawahia, Taupiri, Mercer or Pokeno for example, although those in Ngaruawahia or Taupiri might drive to Huntly to leave their cars.

The cost is eye-watering, at $67.6m in capital spending, $58.5m from road users' taxes and $9.1m from local authorities. Another $29.3m in being spent over 4.5 years in subsidies, mostly $22.1m from road users' taxes.  Over $1m has been spent to make Huntly Station operational in itself.  Given $55.1m is being spent on public transport subsidies for all other Waikato services in 2018-2021, this is a lot of money to take from road users and ratepayers for one service, operating two times a day weekdays.

The media reports indicate it could remove 73,000 cars off the road... a year.  The train has capacity for 150 people (not much at all bearing in mind that the Capital Connection has 448 seats).  Now given there are 262 working days a year, this means it should take 279 cars off the road each weekday return. Page 16 of the last Household Travel Survey 2015 indicated mean NZ car occupancy per trip is 1.51 so if we optimistically assume this is car occupancy for potential users of the train, that means that the train need to carry 421 people per day (which is significantly above its capacity of 300) to remove 73,000 car trips a year.

Media reports today variously indicated 90 people arriving or 70, but even if 90 all drove a car each, for each service (and don't now) it would still only be around 47,000 car trips a year removed from the road.  However, it is highly unlikely 90 all drove or would drive separate vehicles, so it all seems a bit far-fetched.

Even if it DID do this, at what cost? is it worth nearly $100m to take 279 cars off the road a day? In emissions terms it is meaningless, because the ETS means that the emissions from cars simply get consumed by someone else (and if the cars still drove someone else wouldn't be using those emissions).  In congestion reduction terms it might make a small difference to travel times, but it isn't worth $100m

Water - the last utility of the Soviet era

You could hardly not notice the growing list of scandals seen in local authority supplied water, sewer or stormwater services in recent times and wonder what has gone wrong.  From lead in water supplied by Dunedin City Council in a number of small towns, to the Havelock North water supply contamination and the breakdown of multiple parts of Wellington's water networks.  Imagine if a private water bottler had been caught with the contamination of supply seen by some local authority systems, the howls of outrage from politicians would be palpable, but it isn't quite that way - you see water in New Zealand is perhaps the last bastion of what socialists call the "democratic control of the means of production, distribution and exchange" of the key utility networks.

Unlike electricity, gas, telecommunications, ports, airports, railways and even roads, water (outside Auckland) in New Zealand was shielded from any serious economic reform during the 1980s and the 1990s. That was a time, which seems so long ago now, when there was widespread commercialisation and in some cases privatisation of utility networks, and either liberalisation of market entry or the application of independent oversight and regulation of the management and supply of the services concerned.

Before then, local electricity distribution was led by local authorities, which managed them much like water and the results were underinvestment in power line networks in some places, gold plating in others, and frequent power cuts as parts of the networks failed.  Now these networks are either privatised or run by local trusts, but all subject to regulatory oversight around capital spending and how much they can charge consumers for maintenance and renewal of their assets. 

You see local authority issues with infrastructure don't mean all infrastructure, because they actually have little struggle at all with the infrastructure they are not responsible for owning, managing or funding.  Electricity, gas and telecommunications networks all grow, expand and get maintained with little recourse to ratepayers or indeed the "democratic control" that the left is so keen on.  Now that isn't to mean that there isn't some government intervention, such as the vast spending on fibre optic networks funded by central government but undertaken by private enterprise, but this is not the model by which water networks are funded or managed in New Zealand - you see water remains the last bastion of the Soviet style era of socialist management of a utility.

If you want to take a nostalgic trip back to the era of Rob Muldoon, the era that the late Jim Anderton and his Alliance Party, and indeed at one point Winston Peters, pined for, you need only look at how the "three waters" (supply, waste and stormwater) are supplied and managed in New Zealand today.  Indeed, it is a case study in exactly how the principles of democratic socialist economics work in practice.  You can see the vestiges of this thinking in Green Party policy today, which says "Ensure Council Controlled Organisations are only used where this has benefits over direct service provision by local authorities".  

Leftwing opposition to reform of water is long standing.  It is almost laughable today to recall when former Green MP (and still Wellington Regional Councillor) Sue Kedgley regarded reforms to the Local Government Act allowing local authorities to choose to contract private companies to provide water infrastructure for contract periods of longer than 15 years as  "the potential to be hugely harmful to the public".   She much prefers a democratically controlled water supply that sees lead enter it, with the ultimate penalty being... you might not get re-elected as a city councillor.

However, it is the late (conspiratorially minded) Penny Bright, who founded the wittily named "Water Pressure Group" in Auckland that for many many years was the squealer that regarded any private sector involvement in the water sector as beyond the pale.  She regarded water as "a basic human right", albeit one that she thought was best delivered by a bunch of politicians re-elected every three years directing a bureaucracy.  She was passionate about her beliefs, but wrong.

The problem with water is the problem that was seen with telecommunications when it was run by the Post Office, or electricity when it was run by the Municipal Electricity Department of Wellington City Council (or whatever council) et al, which is that political control of the funding and of the taxation needed to maintain and renew a complex utility was extremely poor at being accountable to those who "own" the infrastructure and consume its services, because there is little link between what you pay, where that money is spent and how much is spent on the water networks.  The NZ Post Office once thought it was a great idea to install "triple twisted copper cable" for telephone lines in the Wellington suburb of Khandallah, despite it not being the international standard for phone lines, because some engineers thought it would improve its robustness - at the same time upwards of 50% of coin operated public phone boxes did not work (there were no mobile phones then).  Bureaucratic service delivery agencies don't get driven by customer needs, but their own internal imperatives and those of their political masters, which understandably are pulled in many different directions - but customer service (being a monopoly, funded from taxes) isn't upper most (unless of course, in a few cases, it is to help a Councillor or his mates out).

Local politicians almost never campaign for election on issues like renewing water infrastructure, but they sure like big shiny showoff things like convention centres, sports stadiums and "visions".  After all, why campaign on something that involves digging streets up and nobody really notices, when you can get your name put on a park or a building instead?  Imagine if the issue of installing more mobile phone capacity were up to local government and it were paid for by rates, would it ever get done?  Water supply pipes, wastewater pipes, stormwater pipes, none of them matter much to most people most of the time, until their service stops or their property is flooded - so they are easy for politicians to defer spending on. 

There is one exception in New Zealand, which is Auckland.  Watercare Services was set up in 1991 as an example of how to commercialise water delivery (albeit not stormwater), and it is from this that the leftwing backlash against water reform arose.  Opposition to commercialisation, opposition to people paying for the water they use was central to this.  The idea that it is somehow fairer for the single pensioner who uses barely enough water for a few cups of tea and a shower a day to cross subsidise the water used by a family of four was not an argument worth having with the organised, almost hysterical, opposition to reform.  So Watercare Services was not replicated elsewhere, albeit that local government reforms did allow local authorities to do so if they wished - but rare is the local politician willing to relinquish control.  It's notable that Auckland doesn't seem to have the issues with supply or wastewater of other cities, although stormwater remains a major issue (and is outside Watercare's remit).

So water, as it remains, has all of the symptoms of a centrally planned, "democratically accountable", bureaucratically delivered service.  It's funding for capital is entirely dependent on local politicians choosing to allocate rates money to it or to borrow to pay for large investment, and so it has to plan from year to year based on how councillors manage their priorities - whether it be convention centres, minimising rates increases or getting elected.  It is only when water infrastructure gets critical (i.e. pipes bursting, supply running out or being poisoned) that political attention is given, and that is frankly too late. Water in New Zealand is socialism in action, and it demonstrates that it is profoundly difficult to get politicians to focus on long-term priorities that are not seen as trendy (note that some are extremely eager to make interventions under the auspices of trying to stop climate change, even though the impact of those interventions is infinitesimal, it's much more about being seen to do the right thing).

Ironically, the recently elected Labour Government has decided to reform water in a way that a previous Labour Government refused to do so for roads - by encouraging local government to take water out of its control altogether and putting it into a handful of centrally government controlled organisations.  Yes it is arguably nationalisation, but it is a transfer from barely capable local control to something else.   It is almost admitting that local democratic control of a critical utility has failed as a delivery model, and that having arms-length professional organisations (let's call them State Owned Enterprises maybe?) that charge consumers for the services they provide, recover capital costs from consumers over the lifetime of those assets and seek to optimise costs and service delivery (with regulatory oversight) is a much better model - i.e. the model that many politicians on the left would have called "neo-liberal" and a precursor to that nastiest of words "privatisation".

However, NZ has had decades of water being supplied "not for profit" and with "democratic control", maybe it's about time it was left to professionals, with the political role being to set up the legal framework to ensure that water is run as a business like other utilities.  The Government's proposals are encouraging, although I would be much more draconian and just take it off of councils and legally require them to cease charging water rates or cut general rates that fund water, and then establish a mix of metered or uniform charges for water consumers.

Of course the UK privatised water many years ago, and hasn't looked back. Some stats on that experience (source: Statement of Professor Chris Binnie, former President of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (not uncritical of the water privatisation process):

• Drinking water quality measured at tap increased from a 99% pass rate to 99.96%
• Properties at risk of low water pressure reduced from 2% to 0.001%
• Properties subject to unplanned water supply interruptions of 12 or more hours reduced from 0.4% to 0.003%
• Leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d by 2000, but is still too high (3,183ml/d) in 2018
• Residential water meter use raised from zero to 55%, with a target of 80% by 2040.
• Per capita water consumption dropped from 155 l/h/d to 141 l/h/d (with more households, each household using less water)
• Household properties at risk of internal sewer flooding reduced from 32,000 to 3,000.
• Non-compliance with the EU Bathing Water Directive (regarding dumping of wastewater at sea) reduced from 16% to 1%
• Failures to respond within 10 working days to complaints dropped from nearly one third to 0.4% failure within five working days.
  

Sure there is plenty to criticise (e.g. Thames Water remains slow in addressing leaks, but it has reasonable incentives to address it, because it can't charge consumers for water leaking from its system and it is generally more costly to provide more capacity for storage than to fix leaks), but it is notable that the water problems are as much about an ideological resistance to reform as they are due to the failings of a system that is not well set up to incentivise investment, supply of services to consumers and deliver long term outcomes.

It looks like New Zealand (except Auckland) is coming to an end of its Soviet-style/Muldoonist era in water management, thanks to a left-wing Labour Government acting to implement reforms that are not far removed from what the Lange/Palmer/Moore Labour Government or the Bolger/Shipley National Governments might have done. It's also telling that the much vaunted "power of general competence" that the first term of the Clark Government granted local government has proven to not be competent in managing the three waters in so many cases.  

Perhaps there are other compentences that local government should be freed from as well?