Watercare Services

What's that?

Yeah, well, S&P, you know, made the comment last time, which was actually – when they visited recently, which was actually the proposed mergers could actually undo some of these – off balance sheet moves we've been making with water authorities because effectively by merging the councils and if those councils then own a water entity and they own all of it, then they face the same issue that Watercare faced with Auckland Council which is effectively the ratings agencies will kind of consider their balance sheets sort of merged because the owner is only one council party.

That was, you know, that had to be fixed by legislation.

But, you know, I guess S&P, what S&P was signaling was it wasn't actually made clear to them what exactly is happening around that.

And supporting these data centers will require roughly about $2.5 billion in additional generation and transmission infrastructure.

While that brings commercial opportunities for grid operators like Transpower and Watercare, Simplicity, Cheap Economist, Shamobile, Equip, noted large-scale industry projects like this can deliver narrow corporate benefits alongside broader energy costs for everyday consumers if not managed carefully.

you know the end of the day i think all of this is going to create jobs all of this is going to create builders to build these things it's it's a it is a good thing yes it takes a lot of power but i think it's a good thing for people that need to run these things as well

Beyond energy, Moody's delivered a very direct warning regarding local government infrastructure funding, specifically addressing the central government's proposal to cap annual property rate increases within a 2% to 4% target range.

And that's where I guess I started to discover the nexus between people and water and the way they think about it and the way you need to communicate with them in order to get change.

And so I ended up staying at Watercare all the way through to 2010 in lots of different roles.

And then fast forward to 2013, I got introduced to the weird and wonderful world of stormwater.

And I came into stormwater when, to be honest, the department hadn't fully got into its new mode.

I intend to, if I get the chance to serve as an MP, make sure that everybody feels well canvassed and ensure that people feel comfortable with the intensification, the infrastructure work that's about to carry on.

There's some really exciting stuff happening from Watercare.

There's multiple projects, as I mentioned, $15.2 billion.

There's Newmarket Gully that's going to get kicked off, which will address a lot of the water infrastructure issues.

A really interesting thing happened at Auckland Council earlier this month where they voted unanimously to consider withholding infrastructure services for new housing projects that were out of sequence.

Out of sequence means that Watercare and Auckland Transport and the council itself have a programme of work that stretches ahead decades.

And it is revised and updated and kept under review, but it is a programme of work that And they say, these are the places where we want more housing to come next.

And so they do the infrastructure to support that.

I rang the local council.

And I rang Watercare.

Really?

They said ring them.

And no

action? Property part, no action.

They'll say damn, and then they says at the end, they got an email the other day from Watercare.

Just hold the

I'm very uncomfortable with where things are.

And I think we should have got exactly what Watercare got, which is to say Commerce Commission regulation of investment and pricing.

So why isn't Tauke Wai regulated by the Commerce Commission in exactly the same way that water care

is? Would you be prepared, and I'll ask this on an open forum, to come in and have a show with you and Will Peat?

So it's a broad range of about 1,300 beating hearts looking after many things that power, what I like to say, power Auckland Council to do business with Aucklanders.

You're also supplying those services to Watercare and to Auckland Transport? Yes,

we're growing our reach into Watercare and to Transport and Tātaki.

It's a dynamic world because we're a big entity with lots of subsidiaries, or CCOs as they're called, but a lot of opportunity to do things better for Aucklanders, or as the mayor would say, better, faster, cheaper.

economies of scale and not reinventing the wheel for each separate organisation.

They found us more through technical routes rather than sort of media routes through various consultants who were aware of the work we were doing.

We had done some work with Watercare at that time, and so I think that was also a credibility check for them that we were working with someone who had an interest in the technology.

Yeah, because it's quite hard to find a little company in New Zealand.

Extremely