Aaron Smale (Newsroom) argues that water in NZ has been allocated as a private property right

Aaron Smale (Editor, Māori Issues, Newsroom)

Aaron Smale (Editor, Māori Issues, Newsroom) explores ACT party leader David Seymour’s claim that Labour are attempting to give Maori preferential treatment on water.

Smale’s well-researched article concludes that the neoliberal experiment of the last 30 years has handed vast amounts of water for free to a minority of largely corporate dairy interests, who hold it as a property right.

This property right is used to borrow against in order to intensify dairy operations for private profit, while the costs of arising pollution and ecological damage are nationalised – this in keeping with the neoliberal orthodoxy of privatising profit and externalising costs.

Smale concludes by observing that if there is going to be an honest political discussion about water – who owns it, what rights Māori have, what rights the public has – it needs to start by acknowledging that a minority has already taken ownership of a huge volume of the water in aquifers and rivers for its own private gain. This has happened to their profit and everyone else’s expense.