A lot of fuss was made during the era of Stop Three Waters around the idea of iwi groups charging 'water royalties'.

Hager calls the campaign "the most successful and lucrative campaign in its history", driven by "angry old men mainly, in their 70s and 80s" who believed "they won't be allowed to go to the beach soon because Māori will take all the land". He calls this "a really vile, very lucrative area of scaring older people".

Who was it collecting royalties again?

Under the proposed reforms for Three Waters, the Taxpayers' Union (TPU) claimed that there would be four layers of bureaucracy separating ratepayers from new water entities.

Hager describes what amounts to three layers of their own.

British American Tobacco (BAT) paid the TPU, which paid TPU co-founder Jordan Williams' Campaign Company, which produced campaign messages informed by BAT's input.

That is madness.

Three Waters was all about local councils losing their rights of control.

Hager claims that TPU co-founder Jordan Williams saw himself as setting up "a whole constellation of little groups" that would each appear independent but all lead back to "a couple of people in an office in Auckland".

That doesn't sound very grassroots.

The Union took issue that Labour didn't campaign on the Three Waters reforms.

Speaking of campaigning during elections, Hager claims "the Taxpayers' Union raises millions of dollars to undermine National's political opponents. And in return, the National Party gives legitimacy to the Taxpayers' Union".

In 2024, when the Union asked Christopher Luxon how it could help him deliver his election promise, the response they received from Luxon was to "Be louder".

Finally, he says that the Union and its allies "raised over $2 million [before] the 2023 election to spend on activities moving New Zealand politics to the right" and that "it looks like they're doing the same thing in 2026".

For a group so politically involved, none of us have ever had the chance to vote against it.