Originally Posted by
PhantomWolf
From the information I was given, unless he has a irrigation scheme or a direct take from rivers, which he's had to get council approval for, his bill would be $0.00, and even those that are using irrigators won't be facing the bills that National and others claimed. I have direct from David Parker that the royalty will be 1-2 cents per meter cubed (i.e. 1,000 litres.) I worked out some time back that to be getting the massive bills of $60,000+ a year that was being claimed, farmers would have to be using the equivalent of 25 fire trucks at full pump 24/7 for the entire year, and if I recall right, I was working that at 10c not 1-2c.
That's what you get when an announcement like that is handled so badly. Announcing that farmers were gong to pay a water tax, without giving any figures or details, and then insulting their intelligence by saying they would sort out the details after the election, was a very stupid thing to do. Politicians were asking for trust when they had done nothing to deserve it. Politicians have a really bad record in this country of *********** over New Zealand's primary producers.
PW, I don't know how old you are but do you remember when the Electricity industry was reformed? The government of the day (National IIRC because it was Max Bradford who did all the damage) guaranteed the New Zealand public that they would never sell the infrastructure. This guarantee came in the form of a deal they called
"A Contract Carved in Stone". We'll it was actually written on dunny paper and was flushed down the bog pretty quickly. We ended up with dozens of line companies, some of whom extort their customers ruthlessly....
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/8464...-challenge-tlc