Labour’s finance spokesman Grant Robertson and local government spokesman Kieran McAnulty will front media on Parliament’s black and white tiles this afternoon.

Robertson is stepping up as his leader, Chris Hipkins isolates with Covid-19. As of this morning, neither the Labour nor National campaigns had any detail what would happen to tomorrow’s Press debate, with both stressing that it would be difficult to reschedule.

National’s Chris Bishop told RNZ’s Morning Report one idea would be to have the two deputies, Labour’s Kelvin Davis and National’s Nicola Willis, debate.

McAnulty has been prosecuting an attack on National over the weekend about a lack of funding for three waters reform in the party’s fiscal plan.

National promises to repeal Labour’s three waters reforms, handing control of water service delivery back to councils, which would fund new investment themselves, in the form of higher rates or Auckland-style water charges.

Councils would be forced to maintain minimum levels of investment through a new regulator.

Grant Robertson is stepping up as his leader, Chris Hipkins isolates with Covid-19. Photo / Mark Mitchell

National did not promise that the Crown would fund water service delivery, but it did say that it would make available “limited one-off funding” to help councils transition to the new regime.

The party’s policy document, released earlier this year, said, “Where the Government concludes that a council cannot achieve financial sustainability by, for example, gaining access to long-term borrowing, it will provide limited one-off funding to bridge the gap. Support will be determined on a case-by-case basis”

 “Crown funding will not be used for the day-to-day delivery of water services, but only for projects needed to transition to a sustainable footing. National believes that restoring local control also means restoring local long-term investment responsibility”.

McAnulty has pointed the finger just as National promised to repeal Labour’s three waters legislation within its first hundred days.

McAnulty said that without funding in the fiscal plan, higher council rates would be inevitable.

“The National Party said they’ll repeal Affordable Water legislation in their first 100 days and step in financially if councils can’t cover the costs of water infrastructure upgrades. But Friday’s fiscal plan allocated no money to do that,” McAnulty said.

“National has made no provision of funding for their promised ‘step-ins’ when a council can’t meet the investment by themselves.

“With no support from Government and no economies of scale from Labour’s affordable water reforms, big rates increase are inevitable.”