Matt McCarten: Power bill larceny a taste of things to come

The hot topic on Friday was surely the couple who emptied millions from their bank account after some Westpac bank employee mistakenly allowed a $10 million overdraft. The couple were reportedly in serious financial trouble and the swindle was spur of the moment. No doubt many people will be cheering them on.

But this crime is dwarfed by another reported the same day. That swindle was more than 400 times greater than the opportunistic heist.

The Commerce Commission revealed that $4.3 billion has been fleeced from New Zealanders. The bosses of four electricity companies (three that are publicly owned) have, over the past six years, deliberately overcharged and manipulated the meters in our homes to rob an amount equal to $3000 per household.

What is so outrageous is that there is a collective shrug of the shoulders by our masters to this grand larceny. While admitting it was effectively theft, the Government claims it is too administratively difficult to give it back to us. Instead they tell us they will "advise" these robber barons that they should watch their price rises.

Maybe when the $10 million couple are caught, police can say they find it too difficult to prosecute and advise them that while they don't have to give the money back it might not be a good idea to try again.

At the very least, these public entity monopolies should be instructed to set their prices so they make no profit from here on in. Utilities such as power, water and waste should always be in public hands and considered community services rather than entities to make a profit.

The current model is just a racket where overpaid bureaucrats pretend they are business entrepreneurs. Their so-called customers are captives with no choice but to buy their services. The founders of our modern state understood this.

That's why these amenities were built by public money. The crassness of these titans who now run these outfits to maximise profits - no doubt egged on by performance bonuses - should appal everyone.

This practice was possible because of the failed Rogernomics experiment. Remember when the New Zealand elites were enthralled with the inane idea that the privatisation of our public assets was the new economic nirvana?

One of the apostles of the Rogernomics religion was Max Bradford, then Energy Minister in the Bolger government. He sold us the idea that if we privatised electricity, this would create market-driven pricing that would result in efficiencies and reduce the price.

Bradford divided the state power monopoly into private competing entities and even sold one of them. His legacy is the huge power monopolies (effectively private companies) with no public accountability that exploit us.

This is the same model that neo-conservatives still believe in and want to extend to other utilities, such as water. They haven't given up. It has been rumoured for years that the agenda to divide our water into commercial entities is still alive among some of our elites.

Included in this group is WaterCare's Mark Ford. That was, I understand, why Cabinet was nervous on Monday: Ford's appointment as chair of Auckland's transitional authority was seen as a foregone conclusion, but his past support for privatisation made some nervous.

Laila Harre had to resign from the board of WaterCare to blow the whistle on their lobbying attempts on possible privatisation. Minister of Local Government and Act Leader, Rodney Hide, has reportedly said John Key's promise there would be no privatisation was restricted to national assets, not utilities owned by Auckland. There is increasing unease among many of Auckland's local politicians that the real agenda for the Supercity is to grab public assets and sell them. Hide is seen to be selecting people who might be open to this agenda.

Opponents of the Government's new model for dictatorial powers to a transitional committee and legislating for a top-down city model - starkly different from that proposed by the Royal Commission - are generating widespread opposition.

The hikoi at noon tomorrow outside Britomart was initially organised to support Maori representation on the new city council. But the latest concerns have morphed into a mass rally against the proposed Supercity model. It will include many community groups. Three of the region's mayors will headline it.

I have no doubt there is a privatisation agenda. They will go after the Ports of Auckland first, then water, and then anything else. It will be done on the basis that it will be more efficient and reduce rates.

That was the same argument on the need for electricity reform. All we got out of that was higher power bills and they've been scamming billions of dollars off us.

When will our ruling elites understand there is a difference between community service and private enterprise? It shouldn't be an opportunity for some to be paid "market" six-figure salaries plus bonuses at the expense of the people.

It is important Aucklanders turn up to let our masters know that while they may have robbed us over electricity we are paying more attention to their plans for the other assets we own.