Why all New Zealanders should support Maori claims to water

Imagine you are a homeowner with a few spare rooms in your house. One day you come home from work, and a couple of people have moved into these rooms without your knowledge or consent. After trying to assert your rights to the house, you call the police. The police won’t help; they’re too busy to come to your place and flog you off to the courts to file a lawsuit. You can’t afford a lawyer so you decide the people who have moved in can stay as long as they take care of the place and pay a bit for the upkeep and maintenance. Not only do they refuse, but they push you out of the house to live in a tent on the yard. After a while, the house is in terrible shape, so they decide to sell the house and keep the profits. They do all of this without your knowledge or consent.

We live in a world of property rights; they form one of the central pillars of our legal system. If something belongs to you, anyone who takes it from you is committing theft. Anyone who attempts to sell it without your consent is committing fraud, and anyone receiving that property is guilty of receiving stolen goods. While this may seem a simplistic way of looking at the issue of asset sales, it perfectly encapsulates what is happening. The government is attempting to sell something it doesn’t own and keep the profits.

Three of the four companies slated for sale, Mighty River Power, Meridian and Genesis (the fourth is Solid Energy that operates coal mines) make power in full or in part through hydroelectricity or thermal heat (the steam coming through the rocks in places like Rotorua and Taupo). The primary ingredient in the operation of these power plants is water. Without the water to turn the turbines, there is no power; there are no assets.

The position of this government and previous ones is that ‘no one owns the water.’ This position ascribes a zero dollar value to water. It means that power companies pay nothing – not a cent – for the water that flows through their turbines. Water of course can be used and re-used. But altering the course of a river, building large dams and creating reservoirs does significantly change and in some respects limit the availability of that water for other purposes. It also impacts significantly on the wider eco-system of which the river is a part.

The issue of freshwater ‘ownership’ is really about the ability to control how that water is used, and for whose benefit it is used. For a long time prior to 1840, Maori had exclusive control over waterways; in other words, they had the ability to decide how water was used, and for whose benefit. Since 1840, the Crown has largely acted as if they are the only ones with the right to decide how the water is used, and for whose benefit. Water for the nation’s electricity needs, for example, has priority, and other commercial and non-commercial uses are secondary. The Crown has decided this unilaterally; and for the most part, Maori have been forced to accept that arrangement while continuing to assert their rights.

The current plan to sell-off state assets, however, changes all of that and makes action urgent. Maori are not happy to allow control of water to be sold to multinational corporations for private profit. Maori are not the ones interested in profiting; they are not the ones who are interested in turning water into a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder:

The claimants do not seek to benefit from non-commercial uses of the water bodies in which they have these proprietary rights. Nor do they seek a commercial benefit from uses that do not generate an income stream. What they do seek is recognition of their property rights, payment for the commercial use of water in which they have property rights (particularly its use for electricity generation), and enhanced authority and control in how their taonga are used.”
From the Letter of transmittal to the Government from the Waitangi Tribunal, 21 August 2012

The term ‘ownership’ has unfortunately allowed misconceptions and fear-mongering to flourish. Yet it is patently clear that the drive to privatise the control of water lies at the heart of the Crown’s agenda, not that of Maoridom. In essence, Maori are fighting the Crown to stop them selling off of the control of water. In acting in their own interests, they are actually acting for the good of ordinary New Zealanders against the State that seeks to put water under the control of international investors, capitalists and the ‘free-market’.

The sell-off of state assets is actually a sell-off of the control of water. In other places in the world, when water rights have been handed over to multinational corporations, the damaging consequences have become obvious almost immediately. Take for example the privatisation of water supplies in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. There, water services were contracted out to Bechtel, a US-based multinational with links to Dick Cheney and Iraq war profiteering. Bechtel got the contract as a result of the World Bank’s aggressive pressure campaign on Bolivia to privatise state enterprises. Within the first month of service, prices rose up to 90%: this in a country where over 60% of the population lives on less than $2/day. Bechtel sued Bolivia for $25 million for canceling the contract after widespread protests erupted.

If no one owns the water, then no one can sell it. The Crown’s own agency, the Waitangi Tribunal, has said that Maori do ‘own’ some part of the water. If the Crown presses ahead and sells the power companies without Maori consent, they have committed theft and fraud. There is no way around it. If you support the legal concept of private property, then you must support the Maori case.

As importantly, the commodification of water on the scale engendered by the sell-off of power companies has profound implications for the country as a whole. Water is essential for life. If we want to ensure that we continue to have the water we need for life, then supporting Maori ownership of freshwater is not only a matter of justice, it is a no-brainer.

ENDS

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