iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

"I want to use high quality infrastructure but do not want to pay for it" is the biggest ideological entrenchment that needs to be removed from our political discourse.

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sometimes the algorithm is good, it's thrown Rina Sawayama at me today and XS sounds like a classic Britney track and I fucking love that

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Labour don't want to rark the waters thing up because it was a major pain point in 23 and National are hoping they can put it on councils and the companies when the spatter starts landing

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it almost feels like we're all building three waters again in the stupidest most difficult and expensive manner imaginable while pissing off everyone at the same time

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Ms Hooper @mshooper.bsky.social · 7h

It's very funny for a tribunal to go "yeah double dumbass, we can't do more here" publicly.

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Reposted by CEO Johnny Cans

“The picture Hager’s trilogy paints of the last 20 years is not of democracy corrupted by a few bad apples, but of the brutal conflict between the interests of ordinary people and those of the rich and powerful.” #nzpol

stuff.co.nz

How New Zealand’s right turned culture war into political strategy

Nicky Hager’s latest book argues the tactics of New Zealand’s organised right have changed, but the interests behind them have not.

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Which makes the National policy of going after the lines companies even more ridiculous because it just means we end up doing the water thing with power in a decade or so.

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You might say that, I could not possibly comment etc etc

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almost as if the actual consequences of the reforms have quite deliberately not been spoken about by those implementing them because they'd be radically unpopular so "cheaper than three waters" has been the line, can't imagine why that's been the call

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There's no choice with the model anyway, and the separate balance sheet stuff is designed to keep water away from other services. It's a mess but it's a designed mess.

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Nup, rates caps don't include water charges. Very deliberate move because the govt knows the majority of rates increases recently have been water related and they know charges have to go up by lots still.

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It is, but this seems fairly unequivocal on "no and here's why"

Why we do not intend to price-regulate Tiaki Wai in the near term
• There has been considerable public discussion about whether price-quality regulation should
be applied to Tiaki Wai.
• We’ve been examining that question closely.
• The short answer is that price-quality regulation would not reduce prices for Wellingtonians over
the next three to five years.
• That may sound surprising, so let me explain.
• Our modelling does not start with the approximately $9 billion asset value assigned to Tiaki Wai’s
assets.
• One approach would be to start with that asset value and build prices from there by adding
returns, debt servicing and operational requirements.
• But that’s not how we approached the analysis.
• Instead, we started with a practical question:
• How much revenue does the organisation actually need to service debt, meet operating costs
and invest efficiently?
• Working backwards from those requirements, the answer is that prices would need to be higher,
not lower.
• Tiaki Wai is under significant financial pressure. It has deferred substantial cost recovery into the
future and relies on highly accommodating funding arrangements.
• That’s why we do not intend to apply price-quality regulation to Tiaki Wai in the near term.
• What we can do is continue applying pressure through our existing tools, including Information
disclosure and performance requirements.

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Amazing this didn't get a lot of media coverage as it reveals that LWDW is going to cost ratepayers a lot more in the next five years before the Comm Comm start price regulation because the gap between revenue and infrastructure is massively. Oops.

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Delivering better outcomes for water consumers: the role of economic regulation | Commerce Commission

I've put it into the reply to Ben but the chair of the Commerce Commission stated last week that they won't price regulate Wellington until they've got revenues up to do the infrastructure work. This is going to happen everywhere soon. www.comcom.govt.nz/news-and-med...

comcom.govt.nz

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I mean even the CommComm chair is going "yeah we're not regulating prices until revenues get up" which feels like something people should know about eh.

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