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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  14th of August 2012

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Isherwood: Re-nationalise electricity and jail the criminal privatisers

Australia must reverse the Enron-isation of the national electricity system that is gouging and killing people, and the bankers and politicians who schemed up the National Electricity Market (NEM) should be held criminally liable, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood demanded today.

“Like the con-artists in ‘The Sting’, Gillard has teamed up with the Liberals in a phoney argument over who’s to blame for electricity price rises,” he said.

“All the while both sides are conspiring to fully privatise and deregulate all electricity infrastructure across Australia.”

Isherwood cited the federal government’s December 2011 Draft Energy White Paper, in which Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson trumpets “the era of cheap energy is over”. The White Paper demands:

  • full privatisation of all electricity assets, on the grounds that governments—which, for a century before free market economics, developed the infrastructure and delivered power at the cheapest prices in the world—“are impeding greater competition and efficiency”;
  • full deregulation of retail prices, so that “smart-metered” consumers are exposed to spot market price spikes that can hit $12,500 per megawatt hour (MWh) (still partially regulated consumer prices have skyrocketed in a decade from 4 cents per kilowatt hour [kWh] to more than 20 cents kWh, or $200 per MWh—full deregulation will expose consumers to $12,500 MWh, or $12.50 kWh, spikes in power prices);
  • measures to force less consumption, such as smart meters and schemes to allow power companies to turn off power to homes in peak periods such as heatwaves—when it is most needed.

Isherwood said, “Gillard’s White Paper is the fulfilment of the scheme that Labor traitor Paul Keating and Liberal thug Jeff Kennett kicked off in 1995, when they established the National Electricity Market and started mass-privatising electricity infrastructure.

“They transformed electricity from an essential utility into an Enron-style system for gouging and even killing consumers to profit financial speculators. For example, in the week before the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, 374 mostly elderly Melbournians, and many elderly Adelaide residents, perished during heat waves when both cities were hit with rolling blackouts and brownouts.

“There was not enough power, because instead of its touted ‘market mechanisms’ and ‘price signals’ providing sufficient investment in new power stations to keep up with rising demand, Keating’s NEM enabled profiteering from power shortages through price spikes.

“After US energy giant Enron went bankrupt in 2001, it was discovered that its pious, politically-connected management had ‘gamed’ the deregulated market, even turning off California power stations during heat waves to ensure shortages that would drive up the spot price, knowing the blackouts caused chaos that killed and injured people. Deregulation hid Enron’s crimes until its bankruptcy—what crimes is deregulation hiding in Australia’s NEM?”

National banking for cheap abundant power

Isherwood declared that the solution to the electricity price crisis in Australia is to reverse all privatisations and deregulation, investigate all the financial wheeling and dealing between politicians and investment banks and jail the criminals, and create a national banking system for Australia that can direct long-term, low-interest loans to building new power stations, including nuclear power stations, for cheap, abundant power.

“A national bank can direct public credit at 1-2 per cent interest to fund new public electricity infrastructure,” he said. “Public infrastructure doesn’t need to make a profit, only cover costs, so by excluding the speculators and profiteers, national banking will return Australia to cheap electricity.

“What’s more, Australia has a wonderful opportunity to use its abundant reserves of uranium and thorium—the greatest in the world—to develop a nuclear power industry. Nuclear power has the highest energy flux-density of any currently in-use form of power, which not only makes it cheaper to use on a mass scale than coal or gas, but also allows for the development of entirely new forms of industrial and other processes not possible with oil and gas, such as water desalination, the production of essential medical and industrial isotopes, high-speed space travel, and an eventual transition to nuclear fusion power.”

Isherwood concluded, “The Australian people showed in the latest NSW and Queensland elections how much they hate privatisation, but it will only be stopped and reversed when the people break with both Labor and the Coalition, and join the CEC.”

Click here for a free literature pack documenting the CEC’s fight against electricity privatisation and deregulation going back to Jeff Kennett in 1996.

Click here to join the CEC as a member.

Click here to refer others to receive regular email updates from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia.



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