It was dubbed The Fight of the Century – though to be fair it was another century entirely. When Timaru’s Fighting Blacksmith Bob Fitzsimmons stepped into the boxing ring in Nevada to challenge for the undisputed world heavyweight title of the world, he weighed just 75.7kg.
The year was 1897, and Fitzsimmons was a middleweight who had never before challenged for the heavyweight title. The New Zealander was knocked to the canvas in the middle rounds, but got back to his feet and put up his fists again.
And slowly, as the fight went on, the scrawny smithy began landing more and more punches on the much bigger champion, Gentleman Jim Corbett. Until finally, in the 14th round he delivered the killer blow to Corbett’s solar plexus. The feted Corbett didn’t get up.
This is the stuff of Timaru legend, nay of New Zealand legend. The plucky little Kiwi punching up. (To provide some perspective on size, when Tyson Fury defends his WBC heavyweight title against Deontay Wilder next week, he is expected to weigh in at 120 to 130kg).
No doubt, that’s how Timaru District Council members see themselves, with their surprise unanimous vote this week to secede from New Zealand’s grouping of 67 city and district councils and go it alone in their Three Waters battle against the Government. Certainly, south Cantabrians will be looking for a champion and a new upset.
Unlike Fitzsimmons, Timaru mayor Nigel Bowen and his council will have hometown advantage. All the indications are that locals back their council’s opposition to the Government’s water reforms: the council surveyed locals this month, and 96 percent of the 1500-plus respondents opposed the changes.
The fact that Local Government NZ has done the reforms deal with the Government has angered some smaller councils like Timaru – hence the unanimous motion on Tuesday to withdraw from the grouping of New Zealand’s district, city, regional councils.
So, let’s get ready to rumble. And as an added prize purse for ratepayers, Bowen will this week demand Local Government NZ return the $55,000 in membership fees that his district has paid the association – enough to pay the salary for a water-worker, if the council manages to hold onto its drinking water, wastewater and stormwater networks.
That is, Bowen admits, looking increasingly unlikely. He and other Canterbury mayors met Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta on Monday and he says her every indication was that the reforms would be made mandatory by Christmas.
“Every year, around 34,000 people across New Zealand become ill from their drinking water and many thousands of households in different regions must boil their water to drink it safely.”
– Nanaia Mahuta, Local Government Minister
The decision to take most of the country’s hundreds of public water supplies and thousands of private supplies and amalgamate them in four big regional water authorities would sit with the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mahuta told them.
The minister’s office says she had always been clear that the Cabinet would make decisions on the next steps after the engagement process that finishes this week.
Whether or not those decisions are the final word, they will be contentious – and ahead of next year’s local government elections, they will make untenable the political positions of some pro-reform mayors. Timaru’s vote comes at a pivotal moment.
First, the news takes a little of the gloss off the passage of the one preliminary part of the water reforms with which, seemingly, every council agrees. On Tuesday, Parliament passed a law to make new regulator Taumata Arowai responsible for water quality, after an inquiry singled out the Ministry of Health’s poor monitoring performance as a cause of Havelock North’s fatal campylobacteriosis outbreak in 2016.
“Every year, around 34,000 people across New Zealand become ill from their drinking water and many thousands of households in different regions must boil their water to drink it safely,” Mahuta said. “The next step in the response is to look at the operation, management and service delivery of our water systems, to ensure all communities are able to meet the costs of compliance.”
She told Parliament that she had hoped for a partnership with local councils, but indicated that had now broken down. Asked whether councils would still be allowed to opt out of the reforms, she would say only that the status quo was no longer an option.
Officials had shared a great deal of information about how best to fix the problem of failing water infrastructure, but councils hadn’t informed their communities, she said. “Sadly, while councils have received this information, the community has not. And we were going to work together to ensure they did. I’m mindful that a partnership works both ways.”
“We’re of course disappointed to learn of Timaru’s decision. We know it has been extremely challenging for councils as they grapple with the complexity of the Three Waters reform proposal.”
– Stuart Crosby, Local Government NZ
Secondly, Tuesday’s vote coincides with ratepayer pressure on councillors nationwide orchestrated by a privately-funded lobby group, the Taxpayers’ Union. The same day, the organisation launched an internet site that allows ratepayers to bulk email all their councillors with standard form letters expressing their opposition to the reforms.
By last night, more than 9000 emails had been sent, each one of them duplicated to up to 20 councillors. For instance, the lobby group says 3528 emails were sent to Auckland councillors, each of them copies to all 20 elected members – so that’s more than 70,000 emails landing in Auckland councillors inboxes alone. Some councils, like Marlborough, were forced to ask their IT teams to put a stop on the bulk emails.
Even though the names and email addresses are unauthenticated, it puts pressure on councillors in a week when more than half of all local authorities are voting on their feedback on the water reforms.
In the first two days, Christchurch, Timaru and Wairoa all voted to pursue alternative paths, and other councils like Southland expressed their unhappiness with the Government proposal while admitting, at the same time, that the status quo was not viable. On Wednesday, the Grey District mayor says her council will "opt out"; on Thursday, Westland is expected to follow.
So thirdly, the news is also a concern for Local Government NZ, lest other disgruntled councils be tempted to follow Timaru's lead. Bowen says the organisation went behind their backs to sign a heads of agreement with the Government, pushing forward the Three Waters reforms in exchange for a $2.5 billion cash support package.
Local Government NZ president Stuart Crosby stood alongside Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to announce that agreement and compensation package, at the organisation's national conference in Blenheim in July.
"We’re of course disappointed to learn of Timaru’s decision," Crosby told Newsroom last night.
"We know it has been extremely challenging for councils as they grapple with the complexity of the Three Waters reform proposal in front of them, and the implications for their operations," he added.
"We have supported our members with extensive expert and technical advice and to create direct channels for feedback to central government on the reforms. We’ll be reaching out in short order to get a better understanding of the reasons behind this decision."
"Minister Mahuta says it's a decision now for Cabinet, which is a clear signal that the opt in/opt out is no longer on the table. She's really, to my mind, passing the buck now to the Prime Minister. So in my view the Prime Minister needs to start fronting this."
– Nigel Bowen, Timaru mayor
Bowen called Crosby to break the news of Timaru's secession. "Because it's such a complicated environment, we'd like to be in a place where we can best represent our own views," Bowen told Newsroom afterwards.
"We're concerned that there has been a bias towards the Government reform process, that reared its head at the Local Government conference with the heads of the agreement signed without consultation."
He said Local Government NZ had lost its commitment to localism and to a bottom-up approach. "At the heart of these reforms, local democracy is being changed, without consultation with the community.
"Minister Mahuta says it's a decision now for Cabinet, which is a clear signal that the opt in/opt out is no longer on the table. She's really, to my mind, passing the buck now to the Prime Minister. So in my view the Prime Minister needs to start fronting this."
