Kedgley Sue: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I have two particular names I would like to suggest for this bill. The first one is the “Rogernomics Part 2 Bill” and the second one is the “Business Roundtable Implementation Bill” or the “Roger Kerr Implementation Bill”. 
It is the “Rogernomics Part 2 Bill” because it implements the agenda of ACT and the Business Roundtable of corporatising as much of local government as possible and allowing the councils to sell off their strategic assets without having to go through the inconvenience of informing their residents or even bothering to consult them. That is what this bill does. Mr Hide and the Business Roundtable are having to sit on their hands for 3 frustrating years because the privatisation of State-owned assets has been ruled out by this Government this term. That is for what it hopes will be its next term of Government. While they have to sit on their hands in frustration unable to sell off State-owned assets they have bided their time by focusing on local government. Nobody is surprised that Mr Hide got his prize of being the Minister of Local Government and immediately set about making radical far-reaching changes to local government. He has not just got rid of Environment Canterbury and obliterated eight democratically elected councils in Auckland; he has worked on the prize of this bill which through a series of provisions will encourage the councils to corporatise as many of their assets as possible. It will allow them to sell off their assets without having to consult—even their water assets. 
The second possible title for this bill is the “Business Roundtable Implementation Bill” or the “Roger Kerr Implementation Bill” because Roger Kerr has been lobbying for the provisions of this bill for two decades. I have here a series of his papers and I will read from them. This bill is what he has been lobbying for through two decades. It is the prize of opening up local government to the multinational corporations that he represents. He will be listening with mounting satisfaction to this debate. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: That’s just awful—just outrageous. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: I say to Dr Smith that this is exactly what is happening. He may pretend otherwise but this bill will allow Veolia Water the largest multinational water corporation in the world to own our water assets for up to 35 years and if Dr Smith thinks that is not water privatisation I say dream on. 
Roger Kerr has been lobbying for this outcome and one can only imagine the amount of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Veolia Water the Business Roundtable Roger Kerr and Suez to get this bill. Vested interests have been lobbying in secret to get this prize which is what this bill is for them. Mr Kerr has been pointing out since the 1990s that owning water is a $300 billion business and he asks why we cannot open up our water supplies in New Zealand to water privatisation and water companies. He acknowledges in this series of papers that it is controversial but he says water is not a human right not a precious resource not one of the life-support systems of our planet; he says it is an economic commodity it should be treated as an economic commodity and it should be run by the market run by multinational corporations. Then he talks about the opposition to water privatisation which he is increasingly frustrated by. His strategy is to say we should go for partial water privatisation not complete outright privatisation. We should pretend that the councils will still retain ownership of water supplies. We should come up with what he calls partial privatisation which is allow the councils to hand over the water supplies for 35 years to private corporations.