Simon Bridges, MP for Tauranga thinks David Round, Lecturer in Law at the University of Canterbury is ‘extreme and pretty silly' when the question of ‘who will own water?' is raised.

Simon considers it ‘scaremongering and another stunt' just like the festering sore of the Foreshore and Seabed Act which was overtaken by the Marine and Coastal Area Act driven by the Maori Party, Chris Finlayson (Solicitor General) their puppet John Key and radical corporate Iwi. This Act took the foreshore and seabed out of Crown (all New Zealanders) ownership.

Why has the Government, of which Simon is yet another puppet, been talking to elite Maori groups throughout NZ, behind closed doors? Why have these iwi groups been funded (by the taxpayer) to produce massive documents supporting their management and claims of ownership of water?

What do citizens know of the Government's underhand measure of moving the ‘water' ownership issue sideways to elected Regional Councillors along with the edict to have non-elected Maori representatives on boards that will decide these huge issues?

Neither the legal manipulating and misinterpretation of Te Tiriti O Waitangi masterminded in the 1970s, or the $3.2 billion paid to corporate iwi has shown any measurable benefits to Maori. At only 15 per cent of the population they are still hugely overrepresented in negative statistics within the Housing, Welfare, Justice, Health and Education ministries.

The question of ‘who will own water' is extremely pertinent.

Maureen J. Anderson, Pyes Pa.