[Marxism] Political issues in the campaign against privatisation of electricity in NSW

[Ozleft <Ozleft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

By Bob Gould

Despite the usual tendency of Australian politics to go into recess in 
January, the developing struggle over electricity privatisation is 
shaping up as the first major political collision of the Rudd era.

All polls taken by media organisations show that electricity 
privatisation is overwhelmingly on the nose with the population, by 
margins of about four to one – even polls conducted by the reactionary 
News Limited publication the Daily Telegraph.

This campaign to privatise electricity is an ideological obsession of 
the ex-socialist NSW treasurer, Mick Costa. It's also quite clear that 
large capitalist investors such as Macquarie Bank are in the process 
somewhere. One of the major advisers to Macquarie Bank, on a large 
stipend, is former Labor premier Bob Carr, who tried to privatise 
electricity 10 years ago and was resoundingly defeated at a NSW Labor 
Party conference.

A curious aspect of the proposed privatisation that has just emerged is 
that one of the major bidders is the government of one of the southern 
provinces of China. So you have the curious proposal to sell state-owned 
NSW electricity infrastructure to the government of a Chinese province.

When the leader of the NSW trade unions, John Robertson, raised this 
question fairly sharply because of the lamentable record of Chinese 
government bodies on workers' and trade union rights, he was accused by 
Costa of adopting the xenophobic position of Pauline Hansen. Robertson 
quite properly tossed this off as ridiculous.

It's clear that enormous pressure is being brought to bear for 
electricity privatisation from the most conservative elements in the new 
federal Labor government. Wayne Swan, the treasurer, made a public 
statement in support of privatising electricity in NSW, federal energy 
minister Martin Ferguson, who is ostensibly part of the left, induced 
the energy ministers of the states to endorse the privatisation.

The major problem facing this push for privatisation of electricity (the 
same smart alecs of the entrepreneurial classes will also eventually try 
to privatise water) is the strong opposition of ordinary people, 
consumers, which is supplemented by the so-far almost unanimous 
opposition of the trade union movement, led by electrical trades unions 
leader Bernie Riordan (who is also NSW Labor Party president), Ben Kruse 
from the United Services Union, and John Robertson, secretary of Unions NSW.

The push for privatisation has been devious and ruthless. The stated 
policy of the Labor Party in NSW, coming from the conference that 
defeated privatisation in 1997, is against privatisation of electricity. 
The trade union and Labor Party opponents of the move point out that to 
try to push privartisation through without a state conference is 
political bastardry of the highest order.

Full: http://www.gouldsbooks.com.au/ozleft/electricity



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