ICC refuses to exclude public from water reform debate

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Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark: “For the community to be kept in the dark ... can’t be warranted.’’

Kavinda Herath/Stuff

Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark: “For the community to be kept in the dark … can’t be warranted.’’

Angry Invercargill city councillors rebelled against Department of Internal Affairs wishes that they exclude the public when they discussed freshly provided information on details of the latest three waters/affordable water legislation.

The council meeting began in private, as DIA indicated it expected when it provided the information just 12 hours earlier.

The late arrival of the information only added to the councillors’ reproach on Tuesday morning. Council staff had worked into the small hours of the morning to prepare a swift assessment and reaction to it.

The council was under a time crunch to consider and debate the information as the following morning – Wednesday – Mayor Nobby Clark was due to present the city’s submissions to the select committee considering the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill.

But when Tuesday’s in-committee meeting began, Clark led a revolt, insisting public interest demanded it.

The reform process had been under way for three years, he said, throughout which the constant message from the Government had been not to consult the public, under a promise that such a time would come – which it had not.

“For the community to be kept in the dark about this, especially given the (council’s) opposition . . . then us being told to hide it away in PE (public excluded) so nobody in the community knows what we’re agreeing, or disagreeing to . . . it can’t be warranted,’’ he said.

Crucial figures provided to the council had long been, and remained, flawed, he said.

Several councillors argued that they should discuss only the council’s own submission to the select committee in public, but take longer to consider the implications of breaching long-accepted expectations with the latest officially supplied information, including whether it had a right to release it, given that some information was specific to other councils.

By a narrow majority, on the votes of Clark and councillors Tom Campbell, Grant Dermody, Ian Pottinger, Allan Arnold and Peter Kett, – with Alex Crackett absent – the debate was switched to public status and was now recorded on the council’s website.

However, some parts of the DIA material were withheld from discussion, and removed from the released documentation, until more legal information on the consequences of releasing it was sought.

That followed cautions from infrastructure group manager Erin Moogan that if all the DIA information was made public on thje spot, without careful and expert scrutiny, the staff who had received the information from the department might be put in the firing line legally.

The councillors decided that the section that seemed most potentially problematic in that respect – which several said did not, in any case, strike to the heart of the issues – should be withdrawn from the officers’ reports and considered at a later meeting.

In the next day’s submission to the select committee, the council raised a raft of concerns, among them the loss of economies of scale as the original four water services entities proposed nationwide had been increased to 10.

Councillors hammered the message that the city’s water services ranked with the best, and most affordable, in the country and so Invercargill would be paying massively for improvements elsewhere.

Without reform the council’s own forecasting had revealed a future cost for water of $1850 per household for city residents, including estimated investment of $197 million across 30 years to meet higher environmental standards.

The recently released1 0-entity modelling, however, estimated averaged household costs at $4439.

Chief executive Michael Day said the numbers had been prepared before a significant rise in inflation and the council’s own figure was based on what it believed to be the actual situation, whereas the government figures averaged expectations for a population of this size.

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