We all benefit from having clean drinking water, control of stormwater, and of course safe and efficient removal of sewage, and the infrastructure to provide this has been paid for by ratepayers over generations. We all benefit, but ratepayers are the ones who pay.

In the past, central government has offered grants to help local government fund this, as it did with a multi-million dollar grant when Western BOP improved the sewage infrastructure in Maketu. So why is this Government not helping in the same way?

They have wasted so much money on misleading and insulting ads, created working parties, and endless involvement with bureaucrats, and proposed four huge bumbling entities which will be so remote that no single council will have any influence at all.

Moreover these four entities, drawn around tribal boundaries, will be completely undemocratic, with half the board members being tribal appointees. Minister Mahuta refuses to rule out the payment of royalties of some kind to iwi.

Auckland mayor Phil Goff is right: the model is awful, and not in the interests of New Zealand. We should all oppose it strongly.

M Murray-Benge, Bethlehem.