Here we go again! Selling off more of our primary utilities and public assets that are key drivers of keeping a lid on this nation’s cost of business. The transfer of state owned assets built by taxpayers into the grasp of private investors, where shareholder value will displace decisions of national economic benefit or public security.
The Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric scheme built with Commonwealth investment is an important contributor to reasonable cost electricity for Australia. Its ownership is sleighted to be shifted from government ownership across to private hands. This is more of the idiotic privatisation mentality that holds little future in long term national planning in considering the best infrastructure strategy. When the Snowy was visualised it would have developed inside a mission of the nation's common good. When the Snowy was built do you think its fundamental consideration was how many dollars can be extracted from this huge project? No! I would bet the driver was how to build a practical solution of affordable electricity in a growing country that needed reliable, abundant electricity.
Now the obviously corporate owned NSW premier, his Victorian State government counterpart and the Federal government intend a transfer of Australia’s biggest engineering marvel, a national asset that facilitates affordable electricity. A mamoth sell-out of a successful public asset into private interests. This transfer will produce negative repercussions as shareholder value will displace the common interests of Australia's growth. Since when has a private corporate owned for-profit entity considered national good ahead of the shareholder demand for maximum dollars per megawatt of electricity?
You can place as many wonderful pieces of controling legislation as you wish to supposedly regulate and protect the electorate’s interest in the switch to privatisation. But the truth of the matter is sneaky manipulative hands of influencial big money power always locate the path of least resistance to support screwing the customer for more bucks. Turning politician’s heads from the national interest to instead bolster bottom line big corporate power is an easy job. It would be the pinacle of ignorance to think a sell off of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electricity isn’t about lining pockets. The transfer of power generation and influence over significant water resources from the public domain is a mamoth disgrace, its a kick in the face telling the electorate, “We do not give a stuff about you people and your future” – the electorate is something to be ignored and not respected.
There is no reason to sell off the Snowy Mountains HydroElectric scheme. If capital investment is required, then government can plan this. The contribution from state owned electricity generation is more than the sum of generating electricity and selling so many Mega Watts. Nations able to build basic untility services and operate them with the benefit to that nation uppermost stand an excellent chance of succeeding… for the downstream communtiy and broad society, the industries that use the electricity will compete with an ace up their sleeve. If basic infrastructure is sold off and water and power certainly qualify as essential services, shift these out of public ownership where concentration on a different corporate mission emerges, it sees the bottom line as the driver.
My experience of living in the United States where electricity costs are very high, driven by corporate shareholder value means customers pay through the nose, the higher mega watt rates are greater than necessary if the common interest existed. The city I lived in had built its own a public power company to service the city, believing the common good of public power beneficial as the ahead of shareholder value. Within the region we paid on average 25% to 30% less for electricity compared to neighboring communities who had to buy electricity direct from corporate owned power companies.
The governments of NSW, Victoria and the Federal government are once more selling out the citizens of Australia. These politicians are nothing less than cheap bastards with little right to continue to represent their constituents. When their policy is to sell of key utility and public assets you know these representatives represent corporate pockets not the nation of Australia and its future infrastructure interests.
I oppose the ongoing destruction of the primary assets of what contributes to make this nation a great country. We are establishing in the absence of public support an American style of cutthroat economy in this country. We are destroying our valuable state built and operated assets under the false policy that competitiveness, dismantling the sense of cooperation and cohesiveness for a singular driver of dollars is healthy? This is the same policy that drives most USA State and business decisions. I can say from first hand experience, the USA is not a cohesive society, it is a cutthroat nation where the common good is unheard of and draining the pocket of the taxpayer is standard operating procedure. Our politicians and their big corporate and banking associatesl are setting us up for the same cut throat idiocy and nation destroying policy in selling off the Snowy.
With 48 states of the USA bankrupt, the US current account and trade deficits reach to the moon and back, US manufacturing has evaporated… why should Australia adopt the identical privatisation policy. A policy that turns affordable state owned assets into rip off corporatised merchants - for an outdated share holder value policy based on unjust social shallowness and national impracticality?
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