Keeping it simple

I like things to be simple. Even when something is complex, I believe that the building blocks that make it up should be able to be expressed in simple terms.

A big one for me is having clarity over roles and responsibilities. If you don’t have that, fundamentally, how can anyone or any organisation know what is the right thing to do day to day, week to week and over generations.

Three waters reform has given me plenty of examples of this in action – both good and not so good. Here are a few

Regulatory regime – The Water Services Bill provides us with a clear direction about standards, regulation and the regulatory regime. It covers environmental, public health and cultural dimensions. These will be supported by a new regulatory structure comprising building blocks of ?Taumata Arowai, regional councils and the proposed economic regulator. Each with a clear mandate and responsibility. Despite the size of the task ahead of them, there is broad acceptance of these changes.

Governance – The proposal included a governance structure based on a new concept of public ownership. It gave councils the role of ownership but without any of the decision-making responsibility, rights or duties that you’d expect to come with that. The result – confusion and as we have now seen a rejection of that aspect of the model.

Eight week pause – Irrespective of the merits of the proposal, roles and responsibilities during this 8 weeks were not clear.

• Who was engaging with the community, iwi/Māori?
• What were councils supposed to do when they were told not to make a decision?

Without a clear role in the process we have had councils doing all sorts of activities over August & September in valiant efforts to represent their communities best interests. Some have been incredibly helpful to the process and I’ve observed genuinely thoughtful and intelligent suggestions that would improve the model, some however have not. I think part of this was difficulty in understanding what the role of council was.

Perhaps, if we settled what each stakeholder was responsible for in three waters service delivery; Government, local government, proposed water services entities, iwi/Māori, communities and customers (as a distinct group), these could be our building blocks.