Point number five calls for:
An immediate halt to the privatisation of Commonwealth and State assets and regulatory bodies, and the reversal of those privatisations where necessary for the public good.
For the past fifteen years, Australia has tripped over itself to sell off its valuable state assets. We are second in the world, in the volume of privatisations in dollar figures, after the United Kingdom, and second in the world in the per capita value of privatisations, after New Zealand. An example of a privatisation that should be reversed for the public good, is the power system in Victoria, which at $20 billion was the biggest single item in the Kennett government's selling spree after it won election in 1992. That privatisation turned a power service that had taken tens of billions of dollars over decades to establish, into separate generating and grid businesses that have collectively slashed more than 14,000 staff; stopped conducting ongoing maintenance like replacing old power poles, instead waiting for break downs; generated a dramatic increase in black outs and brown outs and power spikes; and which were overall incapable of providing Victoria's power needs for a week during a heat wave this last summer, while still selling power on to interstate buyers via the national grid.
Using the criteria of the public good, many other privatisations would be reversed as well. The purpose of privatisation, which, like the union-busting agenda, has been run by the Mont Pelerin Society, is looting pure and simple, and we will stop it.
