privatisation

In the Australian Federal elections to be held on 18 May, the choice of candidates should include candidates who are resolved, should they win, to do their utmost to rectify the serious threats to the very survival of Australia and the rest of humanity. The most critical of these threats is the threat of nuclear war. Regardless of who is held to be most at fault - Russia, China or the United States - any parliamentarian, worthy of holding office, would use his/her influence to try to remove this threat. Neither the Liberal/National government nor the Labor 'opposition' are doing so, nor, as far as we can tell, are the Greens, One Nation nor any other sitting member of Parliament.

Senior law lecturer at UNSW, Bassina Farbenblum says, "Our study confirms that Australia has a large, silent underclass of underpaid migrant workers,” commenting on a report entitled, "Migrant Worker Justice Initiative." The authors do not question the impact on Australians of this corrupt industrial and academic underbelly, but observe complacently, that if Australia is to "position itself as the destination of choice for international students and backpackers, reforms must be urgently implemented to prevent wage theft and enable migrant workers to report and recover unpaid wages." This report would benefit from wider and more historical context: When most wages in Australia were regulated by state awards, and strong unions defended Federal awards, there was very little illegal labour, hence little motivation to import cheap labour. It was easy to enforce written awards that covered entire industries and occupations, and were regulated by dedicated entities. This changed when Kennett abolished Victorian State Awards in 1993, setting the scene for Howard's Workchoices, and going on to widen the use of the corporations clause in the Australian constitution, which exempted corporations from many employer obligations. (See https://candobetter.net/node/4612.) The privatised for-profit university system gave up on real research in favour of importing students like cash-cows, to pay large fees and rent university owned apartments. Many of these students had to work any conditions in order to survive and pay their fees, fearing that if they failed to retain student status, they would be deported. A win-win situation for exploiters all round, as it drove down wages for everyone. In fact, if 'reforms' were successfully implemented to prevent wage theft from migrant workers' we would soon see a huge reduction in the numbers of migrant workers. It's all slave labour under other names. (Candobetter.net Editor.)

Send your submisision to landusevic@parliament.vic.gov.au
Environment and Planning Committee’s Inquiry into the proposed long term lease of the land titles and registry functions of Land Use Victoria.
The Committee has resolved to extend the closing date for submission to Friday 6 July 2018.

This is a notice about a very important attempt to privatise a fundamental public institution and resource. Inside we have published a press release from the Environment and Planning Committee about the parameters of the inquiry, plus the extension of submissions dates.

[Article by Sally Pepper.] The Communications Ombudsman, Judi Jones, said today that nearly one in two Australians have problems with their phone or internet service and that one in four issues were not resolved after four months. For small business, the situation is even worse. I can relate to this, and I bet you can too.

The Electrical Trades Union has slammed a recent report by the Grattan Institute as little more than an opportunistic call to sell-off Australia’s essential electricity assets to its corporate mates. ETU National Secretary Allen Hicks described the report as lacking integrity and avoiding the real cost drivers in Australia’s energy system. He also drew attention to the numerous fires started by electrical infrastructure faults. This is a matter that preoccupies us at candobetter.net as we see more and more bush cleared, wildlife lose habitat, and all the while most fires are started by humans and electrical faults. The Victorian Bushfire Commission has institutionalised this cruel absurdity.

Privatisation on the backfoot as new book shows that the growing wave of cities putting water back under public control has now spread to 37 countries impacting 100 million people.

This article gives a 'good cop bad cop' analysis of Australia's two party history since the fall of the Whitlam Government. It looks at the evolution of economic theory and foreign involvement in wars over this period.

Media release from Northen Greens, 17 Oct 14
See also: Issues that should be decided at the 29 November Victorian State elections (14/10/14) on candobetter.net.

Federal and NT Greens have come out in opposition to the CLP's agenda of selling public assets like Power and Water Corporation, the Darwin Port Authority and the Territory Insurance Office. "Let's call a spade a spade. This plan is all about balancing the books today by selling assets which belong to the people and which make it possible for us to manage costs in the future," said NT Greens candidate for Casuarina Dr Michael Connard. "This is a short-sighted move. What happens when the NT has no public assets left to sell?"

Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Land Victoria will be the speaker at a meeting of concerned citizens "Protecting Heritage and Public Interest in Banyule," Sunday July 6th, 2.00pm for 2.30pm, Seddon St. Community Centre, Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe Civic Precinct Master Plan includes demolition of the current library and privatisation of three lots of civic land. You can attend the meeting and be listed to speak at the start of the meeting.

Ivanhoe’s much loved Chelsworth Park, on the Yarra flood plain near the southern entrance to Banyule, is currently being considered for a 20 +10 year Commercial Lease between Banyule City Council (BCC) Ivanhoe Grammar School (IGS) - A commercial entity.

A Commercial Lease threatens the ability of our Community to decide how the park will be used, over a period of expected high population increase in Melbourne and Ivanhoe and a growing reduction in private residential space - as the number of multi-unit dwellings increase due to Government policy.

Inside a short video on privatisation of electricity. In 1994, the Kennett government disaggregated the SECV into five distribution and retail companies (absorbing the MEUs in the process), five generation companies, and a transmission company. Along with other state-owned utilities (such as the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria), these businesses were all corporatised, then privatised between 1995 and 1999.

Today the Australian Financial Review carried a surprising and uncharacteristic number of remarks about the high cost of privatisation and the benefits of public provision of vital services.

The report by past Federal Treasurer Peter Costello of his supposedly independent investigation into Queensland State finances on behalf of the Queensland Government Commission of Audit recommended the full privatisation of Queensland Government's electricity generators. Only last year, the Queensland public, outraged at the asset fire sale embarked upon by former Premier Anna Bligh without any electoral mandate whatsoever from the 2009 state elections, savagely punished Labor at the ballot box leaving only 7 sitting Labor members in a house of 89.

That, less than a year after, the new Government of Campbell Newman has contrived an excuse to continue with policies, that have been so resoundingly repudiated by Queenslanders, provoked outrage. An example of the outrage felt is a new opinion poll taken by news.com, which shows that Qld privatisation [is] opposed by 85%: poll.

Professor John Quiggin of the University of Queensland responded on 6 March with a post on his web site. That post included a link to a pdf report which, by examining the disastrous history of privatisation across Australia in recent decades, comprehensively demolishes the case for any privatisation.

How did stealing from the public to enrich the private sector become a norm in Australia and why do some religions give it moral credence? This is a reminder of the existence of an important, publicly available article about the rise of right-wing so-called 'think tanks' in Australia since the mid 1970s and their recent tendency to combine forces with the religious right. Here, from another source and angle, are arguments that reinforce candobetter's message about the problems Australia has with the growth lobby and its merchants.

On the ABC News radio this morning (9 Sept 2012) we heard that private coal companies are demanding compensation for carbon trading costs from the Victorian Government and apparently this is being taken seriously!

This article contains James Sinnamon's submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) which wants to pass new laws to make all your emails and other internet transactions up to two years back accessible to the Australian Government. "If Australian governments were serious about protecting Australians from terrorism, they would not have given transnational corporations with interests in every kind of industry including military total access to information about resources and infrastructure relating to location and operation of power, water supply and telecommunications, land-use planning, national statistics, scientific research institutions and banks. What is left, I ask, for terrorists?" (James Sinnamon)

Also published on Global Research.

The sale of Australian agricultural land and water resources to foreign interests that was noted with alarm in June by other contributors to candobetter is only part of a global trend. The IPCC document HS 15332 Climate Change Impacts: Securitization of Water, Food, Soil, Health, Energy and Migration explains how the UN plans to secure resources to use at their disposal. Through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under-developed countries are forced to sell their resources to the global Elite as "full cost recovery" to the global central bankers. Once those resources are under the complete control of the creditors, they become assets to be reallocated back to the enslaved nations for a price.

14 August 2012 by Susanne Posel of occupycorporatism.com. Republished from Global Research.

See also: Does Australia need a national policy to preserve agricultural land? of 1 June 2012, Writer sees Bob Hawke as guilty of treason and treachery of 1 June 2012, WA Independent opposes foreign buyout of Australian rural land of 4 June 2012 -- article and comments on the same page.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard was playing politics when she used a speech to the Energy Policy Institute of Australia on Tuesday to blame state governments for soaring power prices.
Queensland has had a 80 per cent hike in household electricity prices in the past five years. Mr Newman and every other Premier will seize every opportunity he can to blame his predecessors for financial and policy mismanagement. Editorial - shedding light on power prices. Victoria is a good example of soaring electricity prices due to privatization. (Republished from comment posted at http://candobetter.net/node/2834#comment-8672)

In her Quarterly Essay piece, "Great Expectations," Laura Tingle loads a gun with a big bullet that she never shoots - which I thought any writer knew was a no-no. She says that "constant mass migration" " more than anything else" pushed the Australian economy and the population through waves of rapid change. The whole time I was reading her essay I was waiting for the gun to go off and for Detective Tingle to say two obvious things ...

This is a review of Australian Financial Review's Chief Economics editor, Laura Tingle's sweeping condemnation but interesting analysis of Australians' perceived expectations of democracy, which should not go unanswered. Having googled and found no critical responses, I wrote my own. [Ed: On 8 Aug 2012, Notes 8 and 9 ammended to eliminate confusion re Khemlani loan minutes.]

It was maddening to hear a number of mainstream and lesser media organs come out observing that the Labor Party lost the recent Queensland election because of ex-Premier Anna Bligh's and ex-Treasurer, Andrew Fraser's counterintuitive and unpopular insistence on going ahead with privatisation and population growth policies, when you spent time recording the efforts of a man who continually tried to raise these issues and was preparing to run for election as an independent on these very matters in a major Brisbane seat. James Sinnamon was engaged in a long running campaign to raise the media profile of the Queensland public's right to choose on population and privatisation, when a terrible road accident removed him from active political life. Reviewing Laura Tingle's "Great Expectations in Quarterly Essay, June 2012, brings home the awful consequences of not having Australian political alternatives to canvass the selling off of institutions. See also ABC markets new privatisation grab of public assets

Back in 2002 the Australian Government owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) surprisingly placed itself in the forefront of efforts to steamroll the public into acceptance of the Howard Government's plans to privatise Telstra.