The Hon Rodney Hide announced his package of changes to the Local Government Act today. The self-styled Minister of Ratepayers must have been disappointed. His long trumpeted and nutty agenda for local government has been well and truly sidelined.
But you have to hand it to Hide. He’s always entertaining. On the final page of his background briefing, and unmentioned in the press release was a sting in the tail that appears to have come out of nowhere – it certainly wasn’t mentioned in Hide’s cabinet paper back in April.
The Government plans to loosen up the restrictions on the privatisation of municipal water supply. They intend to more than double the maximum time period councils can contract with private sector water companies, from 15 to 35 years. They want to lift the prohibition on private companies owning water infrastructure during the contract period. And they want to repeal the requirement for councils to retain control over the management of water services that have been contracted out.
It is all designed to encourage contracting out, and public-private partnerships. It is the privatisation of our water supply. Something Hide and the National Party denied was on their agenda as recently as August 19 when they voted down my private member’s bill to protect Auckland’s assets from privatisation under the super city.
Remember, 89% of Aucklanders said they were opposed to any privatisation of our water supply.
Meanwhile Hide’s ambition to cap rates, impose compulsory referenda on councils for all significant decisions, and get rid of the requirement on councils to consult communities on things like privatisation, all appear to have been dropped. And given the overwhelmingly negative public reaction since his agenda was floated back in April I am not surprised.
All that is left is a watered down and muddled version of his core services idea that leaves more questions unanswered than answered:
Encourage councils to focus on core services by amending section 12 of the Local Government Act (the power of general competence) to require councils to have particular regard to the importance of:
- infrastructural services
- solid waste services
- hazard and disaster management
- libraries, recreation, culture and heritage services
- the performance of regulatory responsibilities and statutory duties.
Well, what about public transport? Water? Pensioner housing? Innovative social programmes like COMET in Manukau City that Hide was so impressed by? Cleaning up beaches and streams? Economic development like Waitakere’s New Lynn project? The Tamaki Transformation? The Auckland waterfront?
Oh no!
That’s disgraceful privatising the very thing that people need to live 
Well people asked for “change” didn’t they. 
careful what one wishes for
Not just public transport, transport in general..? Under infrastructural services..?
What does environmental protection fall under..? That is the core responsibility of regional councils (or should be)… I’m pretty sure Rodney Hide believes property rights will solve all our environmental worries but if property laws haven’t been made paramount and all council assets sold, then even under his crazy logic, not including environmental protection without the other caveats of libertarian ideology that go with it, is at minimum irresponsible and at worst outright negligence…
I can’t wait till Hide’s out on his (increasingly large it seems to me since becoming a minister) ass, parliament is no place for libertarians, it’s too important…
This has the hallmarks of a rapid reworking of another proposal, probably seen by National and understood to be potentially seriously damaging to the government. Mr Hide is, I expect,somewhat on the back foot here.
The shell game again.Promote the extreme, surrender it, then be seen to “compromise”, while advancing your real agenda.
This is the supercity boundary strategy all over again.
Water is a right, not a commodity.
If you need to make money from it, open a bottling plant.
[...] we had Rodney Hide announcing plans to loosen up the controls on privatisation of water services just two months after he and his [...]
“If you need to make money from it, open a bottling plant.” That reminds me of the post Clare put up a while back.
Water is not only essential for life, but if they screw it up then it could jeopardise our supply.
Scaremongering as usual, Phil
> Well, what about public transport?
That is infrastructural services
>Water?
That’s infrastructural services too
> Cleaning up beaches and streams?
Well that’s solid waste services, recreation services and the performance of regulatory responsibilities and statutory duties
All Rodney is saying councils should ensure the basics are covered before councils start getting involved in projects like pensioner housing (which is really the job of central government) or programmes like like COMET in Manukau City
Re water privatisation outrage: Well its been a long time in coming. I didn’t see/hear any objectons when they put the water meters all around city suburbs. Not only is this a concern re line charges and essential service, but also what the private companies put in our water. Rather than post verbatum my stuf on this see rofhessa.blogspot.com (I’m not meaning to promote my site etc) about it (only the last bloc there is on privatisation).
There are serious moral and health issues here
There is enough poison in this country as it is without us having to irrigate our bodies with it.
Let’s not forget fluosis from that damn poison that goes into our water. That is great for the elderly. Someone once told me that the kind of fluoride that they put into water supplies isn’t even the right kind for helping teeth anyway.
The TV screen says “Cracking down on organised crime” – for a minute I thought they were talking about Rodney Hide.
Sigh.