I didn’t intend to post three times in a row about the Government’s privatisation agenda for local government. But hey, they keep giving me new material.

The latest is a Cabinet decision in just-released papers to set the new $5 billion Auckland water company up for privatisation in 2015.

All year the Government has been denying they have any privatisation plans for local government. National and ACT MPs voted down my private member’s bill to protect Auckland’s assets from privatisation under the super city. Hide said the issue was a distraction and a ‘pretend debate’.

But Aucklanders have been deeply uneasy all year that Rodney Hide, the Nats and their surrogate Cits and Rats local body organisation is lining up the super city’s assets to be sold off, and council services contracted out.

Well, here is why those fears were well grounded:

1. Two weeks ago Hide announced the Government would amend the Local Government Act to encourage public-private partnerships and allow private ownership of our water infrastructure for periods of up to 35 years.

2. At the same time Cabinet decided to repeal s 88 of the Local Government Act which requires Councils to consult the public before privatising or contracting out council services. And then, drum roll…

3. On 19 October Cabinet decided to over-ride the provisions of the Local Government Act restricting private involvement in the water system, and allow the new Auckland Council from 2015 to “determine the governance arrangements and asset ownership for the delivery of water services, rather than fixing Watercare’s form in legislation”.

If it looks, smells and sounds like a privatisation agenda, I reckon it is one.

Stranger still though, the Minister is now apparently saying that the 26 October Cabinet decision to amend the Local Government Act to loosen up the restrictions on public-private partnerships in  water services overrides the 19 October decision to allow full privatisation of the Auckland water company. Which is very bizarre.

Rodney Hide has been going around the country slagging his ministerial colleagues as distracted and inattentive. But if the report is true he cannot manage his own portfolio to avoid the Cabinet making inconsistent decisions in consecutive weeks. What a shambles.

More to the point, the 19 October decision to open the door to full privatisation of the Auckland water company is clear evidence once and for all that this Government has a privatisation agenda when it comes to local government and the super city in particular. Mr Key has some explaining to do.

For more see Bernard Orsman and Brian Rudman in the Herald.