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Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard is backing down on higher water bills after mounting opposition to the policy of "price gouging" ratepayers.
Mr Hubbard yesterday said he would look at a "fairer way of pricing water" if he is re-elected for a second term at October's local body elections.
He was responding to calls from the Green Party to give Auckland households a cheap block of water so families on tight budgets can afford the "necessity of life".
Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons has asked the Government to study progressive pricing for electricity, and social services spokeswoman Sue Bradford wants the pricing system extended to water.
Mr Hubbard said he was interested in "this sort of idea" and promised to look at it in November when the council examined Metrowater's statement of intent, which lays the ground rules for management to run the company.
"We will investigate all options and see if there is a fairer way of pricing water and achieving water conservation," Mr Hubbard said.
He said the council must ensure that the most vulnerable, such as large families, were protected.
This follows comments two weeks ago that he would promise voter's higher water bills to make bigger profits from the council-owned water company, Metrowater.
He reiterated his support for the policy in an opinion piece in yesterday's Herald.
The backdown comes after the council consulted ratepayers on "small" price increases and then hit them with 9.6 per cent and 9.1 per cent rises in consecutive years, secret meetings and secret votes, revelations that the council ordered Metrowater to delay a harbour sewage clean-up programme to meet profit goals, and a surge in water wastage by Metrowater.
Mr Hubbard has left City Vision leader Bruce Hucker in a political quandary just a day out from a selection meeting in the deputy mayor's Western Bays ward tomorrow.
Dr Hucker, who has championed higher water bills, has been slammed by one City Vision colleague, Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee, for "trashing City Vision's election policies".
Green Party councillor Neil Abel said he no longer regarded Dr Hucker as City Vision's leader.
Sue Bradford said she was astonished that Dr Hucker "is supporting this rabid increase in water costs to gouge ratepayers".
"No one should be making a profit out of water. The price of water shouldn't be a way of hitting up ratepayers for higher rates. Let them be honest and if they want higher rates say so and tell us what it is for."
Ms Bradford said: "Water is just as much, if not more, a necessity of life.
"If we are going to charge for water it should be by the same principle that there should be a basic allocation at a very low rate and the price doesn't go up until it starts to become a luxury."
Former deputy mayor and Citizens & Ratepayers Now politician David Hay has called on his centre-right colleagues to dump the policy of using Metrowater as a "cash cow" and go back to the original policy of providing water at the "minimum price".
