due credit

#F7F8FA; padding-left:4px;padding-right:4px; padding-top:6px;padding-bottom:6px;">Decades overdue, but, nevertheless, welcome, the Greens are to introduce into the Senate a motion calling for the establishment of an independent National Inquiry into Australia's Population to 2050.

Set population at infrastructure, environment capacity through national inquiry

Media release of 14 March 2010

On Monday the Greens will move a motion calling on the Government to establish an independent National Inquiry into Australia's Population to 2050.

“Australia’s population should be determined by the capacity of our environment and our infrastructure,” said Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown.

“Australia cannot support an increase in population to 35 million by 2050.

“Immigration should not be stopped.

"In fact Australia should increase its humanitarian immigration program, but we need to reduce our skilled migration program and balance that reduction by investing in skills training for Australians.

“National population policy is the responsibility of government; it should be responsive to national and global factors.

“Global population is expected to grow from 6.8 billion people now to 9.2 billion by 2050 and Australia should be taking a lead in finding global solutions.

“That should include increasing Australia's overseas aid budget to 0.7% GDP now with more funding for literacy and reproduction health programs for women and girls.”

Media contact: Erin Farley 0438 376 082

Erin Farley
Media Adviser
Senator Bob Brown | Leader of the Australian Greens
Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT
P: 02 6277 3577 | M: 0438 376 082| F: 02 6277 3185

Editorial comment: If this represents a final departure by the Greens from years of avoidance of this most critical of issues, occasionally interspersed with seemingly tokenistic short-lived pronouncements against population growth, then we welcome it, but we will believe it when we see it.

What you can do: contact your Senators (Qld, NSW, ACT, Vic, Tas, SA, WA, NT) and ask that they support this motion. Please let us know of any responses or lack of. Join, campaign and vote for, a party opposed to population growth (see below). Put pro-growth parties last on your ballot form.

See also: "Greens call for population inquiry" of 14 Mar 10 on ABC news Online, Greens' Senate media page, "Are the Greens a real alternative?" of 9 Mar 10, the Stable Population Party of Australia, the New Australia Party and the Animal Justice Party.

The Australian group Citizens Electoral Council who promote the political program of Lyndon La Rouche is certainly a group with which candobetter has serious differences. They could fairly be described as extreme techonologically optimistic_#main-fn1">1 cornucupians. Examples of media releases which illustrate this include: Populate or Perish: Australia needs 50 million people plus! and "Lies, damned lies, and 'global warming' statistics" of 6 Jan 10.

Nevertheless, we aim to give credit where credit is due. If we can put aside the CEC's environmental myopia, it does have some ideas of merit. These include proposals for radical reform of our monetary system. Of Lyndon Larouche, Ellen Brown wrote in  "Web of Debt":

[Lyndon La Rouche proposes] to make cheap national credit available for putting the unemployed to work developing national infrastructure. La Rouche has launched an appeal for a new Bretton Woods Conference to reorganize the world's financial system, a plan he says is endorsed by many international leaders. It would call for:

1. A new system of fixed exchange rates,
2. A treaty between governments to ban speculation in deriviatives,
3. The cancellation or reorganisation of international debt, and
4. The issuance of "credit" by national governments in sufficient quantites to bring their economies up to full employment, to be used for technical innovation and to develop critical infrastructure.

La Rouche's proposed system of exchange rates would be based on an international unit of currency pegged against the price of an agreed basket of hard commodities. With such a system, he says, it would be the currencies, not the commodities, [which are] given implicitly adjusted vaues, as based upon the basket of commodities used to define the unit._#main-fn2">2

In accord with La Rouche's fourth point, the CEC's media release of 14 January calls for the re-establishment of a national bank as the (now privatised) Commonwealth Bank was prior to 1960, when Prime Minister Menzies took away its central banking powers that are now vested in the Reserve Bank which uses these powers secretively beyond any scrutiny by Parliament or the Australian public.

Candobetter would certainly want to join in the CEC's "fight to re-establish a national bank," referred to in the media release below, but we could not recommend a vote for CEC candidates should they choose to stand in the Federal elections, because of their extreme anti-environmental stance.

However, we see no reason why such policies could not be adopted by other parties with stances less hostile to the environment, such as the Greens or the New Australia Party.

If such parties, seriously wish to be considered as serious alternatives to both of the two major pro-big-business parties, then their adopting such a proposal would almost certainly add enormously to their electoral appeal.

However, after two and a half decades of their existence, the Greens, for their part, have failed to adopt any policy which challenges the fundumental economic direction of this country, so we don't hold out any hope that that will change any time soon.

The full media release from the Citizens Electoral Council is included below.

Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release 14 January 2010

To defeat the Money Power and guarantee Australia's economic future:
Re-establish a true national bank

Fifty years ago today—14 January, 1960—Prime Minister Robert Menzies committed an act of treachery on behalf of his private banker friends, and neutered Australia's national bank, by removing the Commonwealth Bank's central banking powers, and reducing it to a mere trading and savings bank.

The powerful central banking function, by which the Commonwealth Bank had regulated and leashed the private banks, was renamed the Reserve Bank of Australia, and placed under the control of a private board of directors; its first Governor, H.C. "Nugget" Coombs, boasted that he was a member of "the international freemasonry of central bankers".

The City of London-directed private banker fraternity, including Menzies' best friend, financier Staniforth Ricketson of J.B. Were & Son, whom the patriots in the early Labor Party called the "Money Power", had finally achieved what they had strived for since the Commonwealth Bank's establishment in 1911—the end of sovereign government control over banking.

Today, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood called on Australians to rejoin "old" Labor's fight against the Money Power, and demand the re-establishment of a true national bank like the Commonwealth Bank.

"If Australia is to have a prosperous economic future, we must harness the nation's credit to build large-scale water, power and transport infrastructure, and foster essential agricultural and manufacturing industries, which means we need a true national bank, owned and run by the government for the common good," he said.

"The early Labor Party fought against the Money Power's private control of banking, because they understood that a government only had true sovereignty, if it exercised ultimate control over the monetary system through a national bank.

"Thanks to the influence of pro-American forces in the early Labor Party and among the writers of our Constitution, Australia is a unique country, in that we are the only nation outside of the U.S. to have had a true, Hamiltonian-style national bank, which was expatriate American and Commonwealth Bank architect King O'Malley's intention when he created it, going so far as to proclaim, 'I am the Hamilton of Australia...'" [Alexander Hamilton was the 1st U.S. Treasury Secretary under President George Washington, and the inventor of national banking.]

In the two periods when the Commonwealth Bank was able to function as a true national bank under government control and directing finance for the public good, 1912-1923_#main-fn3">3 (under the governorship of Sir Denison Miller) and 1941-1945 (under the Labor government during WWII), its achievements were stunning:

• The Trans-Australian railway;
• Financing the national wool clip in WWI;
• Stopping a run on the private banks during WWI;
• Financing Australia's miraculous war-time economic mobilisation in WWII;
• Zero war-time inflation during WWII.

In 2001, the CEC published its book, What Australia Must Do to Survive the Depression, which includes ready-to-enact legislation for a new national bank, the Commonwealth National Credit Bank Bill, and an explanation for how a new national bank would function to be as successful as its predecessor.

Mr Isherwood concluded with a challenge: "Next year, 2011, is the 100th anniversary of the 22nd of December, 1911 passage of the Commonwealth Bank Act, the single most important piece of legislation in our history," he said.

"Join the CEC's fight to re-establish a national bank, and let us set that anniversary as the deadline to achieve it.

"God knows we need it," he said.

Craig Isherwood, National Secretary

PO Box 376 Coburg VIC 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
E mail: cec [ AT ] cecaust.com.au
Website: www.cecaust.com.au

See also: Cut Wall Street out! How states can finance their own economic recovery of 3 Nov 09 by Ellen Brown, How a state-owned bank could make Queensland asset fire sale unnecessary based on original article by Ellen Brown of 29 May 09 by Ellen Brown, Call for the re-establishment of a true national bank of 17 Jan 2010

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ The CEC does have some worthwhile ideas about technology. An example is their media Isherwood: Australia & India should cooperate on thorium nuclear power of 11 Jan 10. However, we regard their apparent belief that such technologies can fix all possible ecological, social and economic problems is reckless in the extreme.

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ The Web of Debt(2008 edition) is a towering work which blows apart the mystique of the worldwide monetary system. Its core thesis is that money has no intrinsic value and is no more than a means to exchange goods and services. As such, all money should be created as a service by the Government, whether as coins, paper, or electronically and not by private banks. The book shows how the undemocratic usurping of this function by private banks in most countries, principly the United States, has been the cause of almost every major economic crisis for the last 300 years. (This somewhat casts doubt on the Marxist thesis, that I had previously accepted, that capitalism, in and of itself, has an inbuilt dynamic that inevitably leads to economic crises.) The book does have flaws, including its implicit argument that monetary reform alone can fix nearly all the world's problems. As an example, it fails to acknowledge that China, which does have essentially the kind of monetary system that Brown (rightly) advocates, faces serious ecological crisis and may well be the casue of global ecological collapse. Also precisely because China's own economy works so well, other economies largely crippled by private banking system, such as Australia's face the threat of colonisation by China.

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. The achievements of the Commonwealth Bank during this period, including enabling Australia's participation at a cost considerably less than would have been otherwise possible has to be somewhat tempered by the ongoing controversy about our participation in that war at the cost of 60,000 Australian lives. Another cost, not widely acknowledged, is the Armenian genocide, largely triggered as a consequence of Australia's participation in the attempted invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli. The Armenian genocide was swept under the carpet during rapproachment between Australia and Turkey following the war. The outcome of the First World, in paricular the Treaty of Versailles, was unjust and laid the basis for almost continuous conflict since then including the Second World War.

See also: Call for the re-establishment of a true national bank of 17 Jan 2010.

To his credit, NSW Premier, Nathan Rees in the days preceding the 4th December 2009 (his ousting as Premier) announced the creation of a massive new red gum national park along the Murray River near Deniliquin to protect much of the state's remaining river red gum forests from logging.

Loggers have complained because all the 300 year old trees they chainsawed have gone but won't magically grow back, so they want more old red gums trees to chainsaw 'to feed their families' and to 'keep their jobs' and to preserve their 'tight-knit communities' which depend on logging... just like in the 1800s when similar 'tight-knit communities' in Hobart and Albany depended on whaling.

Someone enlightened should play them a DVD on Easter Island's history.

Peter Garrett's decision to stop the building of the Traveston dam is to be heartily applauded. However, he did no more than what should be expected of a Federal Minister for the Environment when faced with such an environmentally reckless proposal.

This is the second significant occasion, that I can recall, on which Garrett has acted in favour of the environment, that is, in other words, treated his statutory obbligations seriously. The other occasion was when he blocked the Bligh Government's similarly environmentally reckless plan to build a coal loader in Shoalwater Bay..

Garrett's overall dismal environmental record

On every other significant issue that I can recall, he has acted against the environment.--- Uranium mining, the Dredging of Port Philip Bay the Tasmanian Pulp Mill, the Car Rally in the environmentally sensitive Tweed and Kyogle Shires, failure to act to protect the Murray Darling system, the building of a massive deslanation plant on Victoria's Bass Coast, the North South pipleline, the overall massive expansion of Australia's coal exports, not to mention his failure to take a visible stance against the Federal Governent's reckless plans to grow our populaiton, etc., etc.

If Garrett's decision is truly a sign of him changing heart back to become the environmentailst he once claimed to be, then we would explect to see him, from now on to act consistently in favour of the environment and to find ways to reverse previous decisions harmful to the environment.

I hope to be proven wrong, but I am not expecting that to occur.

If I am right, then it would be more accurate to conclude that Garrett's decision against the Traveston Dam was the result of a political calculation concerning how much he needs to do for the environment in order to retain any political credibility.

The Save the Mary River Group had no plan B

One alarming aspect of this controversy is that the Save the Mary River Group had no strategy for dealing with an adverse decision from Peter Garrett.

Environmentalists should never put themselves in a position where they have to virtually beg of our political representatives to do the right thing. If the Minister for the Environment does not fear environmental groups such as the Save the Mary Group and does not go out of his way to meet their reasonable demands, then they are not doing their job properly.

Prior to that Save the Mary River Group's principle strategy was to campaign for the Liberal National Party (LNP) and against the Labor Government at the 2009 state elections, thereby alienating many environmentalists who had good reason to be concerned about some of the LNP's poor environmental policies.

The Save the Mary Group explicitly damned the Greens in their election literature for their reluctance to give their preferences to the LNP when the Greens were (for all their considerable faults) at least as consistently agains the dam as the LNP.

With the re-election of the Bligh Government, and a cross-bench not holding the balance of power, that strategy got them nowhere.

In the 2008 local Government elections they failed to back the Integrity Gympie team, which was committed to fully utilising the resources of the Gympie council to fight the dam, and, instead allowed candidates who were prepared only to pay lip service to the fight against the dam, to win.

Astonishingly, in a referendum held in Toowoomba in 2006, anti-dam campaigners, together with the Queensland Greens, campaigned, ultimately unsuccessfully against community activists for the imposition of recycled water by the City Council. As a result, relations between them and a group of people in South East Queensland, who would naturally have been sympathetic towards them have been poisoned ever since, including during the critical 2009 Queensland State elections._#main-fn1">1

At the moment, the Save the Mary River Group can count themselves very lucky that, this time, Peter Garrett's political calculations came down on the side of the environment.

James Sinnamon

Brisbane Independent candidate for
truth, democracy and economic justice,
Australian Federal elections, 2010

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ For their part, anti-water-recycling and anti-fluoridation campaigners largely reciprocated the Save the Mary Group's counterproductive stance, and this appears to have also harmed, rather than helped them at the ballot box.

Andrew Bolt, who works for the right-wing Murdoch-owned Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper, has political views, which, in many, ways conform well to those of his employer. He is anti-union. He supports US foreign policy including the so-called "war on terror" and he illogically holds environmentalists responsible for many of our problems. However, in contrast to the stridently pro-population-growth pro-high-immigration stance of his employer, he rightly condemns the ongoing idiocy of the policies of the federal and state governments to encourage population growth when, during the heat wave of the previous days, the infrastructure of Melbourne failed abysmally to meet the needs of Melbourne's current residents. By speaking the truth about population growth and immigration he may well be serving the public far better than many of his 'politically correct' detractors who still won't openly question population growth.

Andrew Bolt's article "Melbourne is wrecked and full" of 30 Jan 09 put the finger squarely on numbers and especially immigration numbers, in a robustly rhetorical way that will connect and generate emotion with readership. Without emotion the reader has little basis for memory let alone action.

Most writers fail to address the former. Those few who do most often fail at the latter.

Bolt has made indulgent and stupid statements about rivers and dams, as much to bash the Government as to exert his sense of macho human dominance over all things natural:

"Victoria is now paying the price for being too green, blind and thick to build basic stuff for a population we let grow far too fast."

"So incompetent are our politicians - so blinded by green ideology - that they even managed, in this vast continent, to run out of land for housing."

"It would break your heart to see where this lot scattered your money instead. On releases of precious drinking water into our rivers for 'environmental flows'. ..."

Nonetheless he has made numbers and immigration the primary focus overall:

"But now consider this: at the rate we're being growing lately, Victoria will add at least another 1.5 million to its population over the next 20 years.

"In fact, it could well be more. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last year cranked up our immigration intake to a record high - more than 330,000 a year, if you include workers on temporary visas. And that's not yet counting new births.

"A year ago, even before Rudd opened our door even wider, the Australian Bureau of Statistics noted Australia's population was now growing by 1.6 per cent a year, which means that if we don't stop this madness, there will be half as many of us again by 2050.

"And, of course, most of these new people will be trying to squeeze into our cities. Like Melbourne.

"Imagine Melbourne growing 50 per cent bigger in your children's lifetime, if not your own. That's 50 per cent more people, cars, houses, gardens, air-conditioners and train travellers. Everywhere where's there's two, imagine three by 2050.

"Forget the social stresses of simply getting on with so many more immigrants, or of trying even to find a little elbow room.

"Consider this more basic problem: how on earth are we going to give all our new neighbours power, water, roads, land and trains when we don't have enough for the people here already?"

If, within that overall view, the case for rivers and against dams can be well-argued then the numbers have to be reduced even more.

Bolt is promoting an important but nearly invisible debate placing the core matter at its apex. I dislike the man but give credit where it is due and take opportunity where it arises. It's worth responding to re-inforce the importance and point of primacy within Bolt's position. Argue the natural resource issues secondarily as a function of social security. As an utterly vital input to society, water resource exploitation must afford soundly generous buffers for direct supply (water consumption) and ecological services (fisheries, biodiversity in general). The more security wanted the less people fit into the equation. We can fill the landscape horizon to horizon with a thickening clot of citizens, but supplies of water, energy, etc become russian roulette on any given day. How lucky does everyone feel? Can we have a vote on it perhaps?

Bolt even stabs the desalination fraud in the heart when he cites its energy demand in context to the energy supply that wasn't even available to meet existing demand. So we can have desalinated water but not on really hot days? How good is that? The real point here is the inherent incapacity of this or any Govt. to assure reliable provision of increasingly complex and expensive supply systems. The public need to realise this incapacity and be rightly afraid of it.

NSW Greens leader John Kaye defends Opposition leader Barry O'Farrell. O'Farrell and the NSW Opposition are now under concerted attack by the corporate sector and their newsmedia for having blocked Treasurer Costa's privatisation legislation in accord with the wishes of over 80% of the NSW public last Thursday.

See also: Iemma dodges his own $42 billion debt bomb (SMH, 1 Sep) by Barry O'Farrell, Mike Baird should make his move now - Online Opinion forum discussion about pro-privatisation state Liberal MP Mike Baird, now the darling of the corporate newsmedia.

What you can do: Join FaceBook site Support Clean Energy NOT Privatisation of NSW Electricity run by NSW Liberal MLA Peter Debnam. Peter Debnam's statement on privatisation can be found here and is also appended to this article.

O'Farrell pointing in right direction on sell-off while Baird losing plot

Media release: 31 August 2008

NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell's decision to stop the privatisation of the electricity generators is sound public policy, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Dr Kaye said: "Even from the standpoint of the Coalition's economic philosophy, passing NSW Treasurer Michael Costa's power sell-off legislation would not have been in the public interest.

"While Mr O'Farrell is being attacked by his friends in the business lobby, his focus on managing electricity demand would result in lower household energy costs and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

"Unfortunately the Opposition's Energy and Finance Spokesperson Mike Baird appears to have fallen for the myth that this state needs more baseload generation capacity.

"Even though Mr Baird is now lining up behind the Opposition's official stance opposing the sell-off, he has clearly failed to understand that the Iemma government has been badly misleading the people of NSW.

"He should cast a critical eye over Treasurer Michael Costa's arguments.

"Whether it is to balance the state's books or to attract private capital into baseload power, whatever today's rationale for the sell-off is, it does not stack up.

"Mike Baird should also take a closer look at Mr Costa's declaration of war on the public sector.

"The power sell-off is only the opening gambit in a plan to devastate the delivery of public services and infrastructure in this state.

"Not only will this receive a deeply hostile reaction from the voters but it also makes no economic sense.

"Treasurer Costa is completely out of control and headed on a collision course with common sense.

"Mike Baird should do his duty as an Opposition spokesperson. He should join with the Greens, rebel Labor MPs, the union movement and the majority of his own party to block this potential disaster," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

See also: Iemma dodges his own $42 billion debt bomb (SMH, 1 Sep) by Barry O'Farrell.

What you can do: Join FaceBook site Support Clean Energy NOT Privatisation of NSW Electricity run by NSW Liberal MLA Peter Debnam who resigned from the Liberal Front bench because at the time he considered that the stance by Opposition Leader against privatisation was not sufficiently strong. Peter Debnam's statement on privatisation can be found here and is also appended to this article.

#PeterDebnam" id="PeterDebnam">Appendix: Electricity privatisation statement by Peter Debnam MP - 12th may 2008

Original statement published on www.peterdebnam.com.au

I have been opposed to Michael Costa’s Electricity Privatisation and despite lacking the numbers in Parliament to stop it, I’ve argued for the Coalition to take a strong stand against the privatisation and in favour of clean renewable energy. However, in my view, the conditional acceptance announced late last week by the Coalition effectively surrenders to Costa’s Privatisation.

Given my strong views, it is untenable for me to continue as the Shadow Minister for Energy and remain on the frontbench simply biting my tongue. As a result, on Friday I advised Barry O’Farrell that I will sit on the backbench when Parliament resumes this week and I understand Barry will today announce frontbench re-arrangements.

While stepping down from the frontbench, I will continue in Parliament until at least the 2011 state election and I will do everything I can over the next three years to aggressively hold this hopeless Government to account and get rid of them.

I will also work to expose the fraud of Costa’s Electricity Privatisation and, whether the Privatisation proceeds or not, I will promote the enormous opportunity for NSW to embrace and export the technology of Clean Renewable Energy – especially solar.

I describe the Privatisation as Costa’s because it is not a Labor Plan and the Premier is little more than an occasional mouthpiece for Michael Costa on this issue. Most of the grassroots Labor Party (not just the unions) oppose Costa’s Privatisation. They along with the community of New South Wales have been betrayed.

As I did, Morris Iemma went to last year’s state election, assuring the community that electricity would NOT be privatised. It was clear at that time there was no need for privatisation. It is only since the election, we have the seen the Premier and Treasurer’s increasingly hysterical claims that electricity must be privatised or the sky will fall in. The reality is that nothing has changed since the election other than the votes are in the ballot box for another term.

But less than a week AFTER the election, while I was still Opposition Leader, I was being lobbied by sections of the media to support Michael Costa’s electricity privatisation.

During the election campaign, I confirmed on several occasions that the NSW Coalition would NOT privatise electricity and noted there are more pressing issues other than ownership to be addressed - including the structure of the industry to attract private investment (not simply flog off current assets) and the need to transform the industry to clean renewable energy and to pursue energy efficiencies.

Indeed, we proposed significant changes in our 2007 Election Policy “For Future Generations – A Plan to protect the Environment and tackle Climate Change.” That policy included not only a 20% Renewable Energy Target by 2025, but also investment in solar water heaters for homes and schools and funds to support the development of Australia’s first large-scale solar generator in northern NSW. Those initiatives were well received.

I remain opposed to Costa’s fire-sale of assets which is simply to find more money for the Iemma Government to splash around in the next election campaign - with the added expense of handing over more than $100 million in fees to merchant banks participating in the Costa Privatisation.

#speech" id="speech">Upper House Liberal leader Michael Gallacher's speech against electricity privatisation

See also: comment #EditorsComment">below and #speech2">Duncan Gay's speech

The following speech has been copied from the NSW Legislative Council Hansard of 27 August 2007.

The Hon. MICHAEL GALLACHER (Leader of the Opposition) [12.44 p.m.]: The Government has had 13 years to get the important issue of this State's future power generation right and, as members will shortly hear, it has got it wrong. The New South Wales Liberal-Nationals Coalition will not support the Iemma Government's Electricity Industry Restructuring (Response to Auditor-General Report) Bill and the associated cognate bill. The Liberal-Nationals Coalition does not take this decision likely. There are three key reasons for our dissatisfaction with this proposed electricity industry restructuring: the continued uncertainty surrounding the Commonwealth Government's emission trading scheme; the current state of capital markets is not conducive for the sale of such a valuable asset; and the Iemma Government's history of financial and infrastructure delivery mismanagement and incompetence. Underpinning all three reasons is the fundamental issue of trust. The community does not believe that the Government can be trusted to get this privatisation right. The community does not believe that the Iemma Government can be trusted to spend the proceeds of the sale in a transparent and honest manner. The community also does not believe that the Iemma Government can be trusted to put public interest ahead of the Labor Party's re-election plans.

The community's concerns are well founded. The 2007 State election did not deliver the Iemma Government a mandate to embark upon the sale of this State's electricity assets. In fact, the Iemma Government issued emphatic denials that any such sale would take place. The arrogant dismissal of concerns held by the Government's own members and its party, whilst contemptible, is not surprising. The Government's failure to put the question to the people of New South Wales demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is a Government out of control, out of step and out of options. Mr Iemma betrayed the trust when he refused to reveal his true plan about the future of electricity prior to the 2007 State election. By opposing this legislation the New South Wales Liberal-Nationals Coalition will ensure that the people of the State are not betrayed.

The Treasurer's ever-shifting position on the privatisation of electricity portrays him as a political opportunist. As an executive member of the Labor Council he opposed the privatisation of electricity. On 12 February 1998 as Acting Secretary of the council he moved the following executive recommendation:

That …the Labor Council reaffirms its opposition to the Egan Electricity Privatisation Proposal.

At a Labor Council meeting on 21 October 1999, in his position as Secretary of that council, he moved the following executive recommendation:

That …the Labor Council continue its campaign against contracting out of Government employees' work and jobs.

As well as opposing electricity privatisation the Treasurer has also spoken of the need to put social concerns above market fundamentalism. In his inaugural speech to this House in September 2001 he spoke of what he imagined as a better world:

While it is true that I respect the power of the market mechanism, I reject market fundamentalism, which places all market outcomes above social concerns … Societies structured on markets that do not deliver social outcomes supported by the majority of the community are doomed to failure.

Perhaps the Treasurer should have considered his own advice before bringing this legislation to the Parliament. In addition to those sentiments in his inaugural speech, he said:

Barrie Unsworth advised me that this inaugural speech was an important speech because it provides a public benchmark to judge one's contribution to public life. I hope that at the end of my time in this House I will be judged as having contributed to prosperity, opportunity and fairness.

As I said earlier, the Treasurer is a recent public convert to the "privatisation at all costs" agenda. As late as before the last State election—in this House on 23 November 2006—the Treasurer said:

There is no energy crisis in New South Wales … In fact, New South Wales has surplus energy.

A month out from the State election, on 20 February 2007, he was reported in the Australian Financial Review as saying:

There are no plans to sell our retail electricity businesses.

Yet here we are in an extraordinary sitting of this Parliament, having been recalled at great expense to the taxpayer, to pass legislation to privatise the electricity assets.

That I stand shoulder to shoulder with my Coalition colleagues, the Nationals, and accuse the Government of betrayal is not political rhetoric. The Government's Ministers pledged that they would not sell our State's power in any restructure, but not 12 months later, in a backflip, they and announced that they would. That is a betrayal. The Treasurer does not have a monopoly on opportunism when it comes to electricity privatisation. In the other place on 9 May 2007 the Premier said, when referring to the Owen review:

The Government goes into this review with an open mind, and only two things will be ruled out. The first is nuclear power. As I have stated previously, there will be no consideration whatsoever of nuclear energy for New South Wales. Second, there will be no sale of electricity generation, transmission or distribution. On all other matters I am yet to be convinced and will await Professor Owen's expert advice.

The Premier even has been accused of lying to Unions NSW. In a Sydney Morning Herald article dated 25 May 2007 he was reported as stating in a letter to Unions NSW:

The privatisation of the State Government-owned energy companies is not on our agenda. In fact, the NSW Government's commitment to this sector is stronger than ever … with record investment in new and upgraded electricity infrastructure.

I reiterate: This represents a betrayal of trust. It is a lack of trust that underpins the Coalition's opposition to these bills. While such significant uncertainty surrounds the creation of the proposed emissions trading scheme, New South Wales's taxpayers cannot be confident they are receiving full value for their assets. My colleague the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in this House, the Hon. Duncan Gay, will further outline our concerns regarding the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme.

The great disappointment in all of this is that rather than engage in a constructive conversation with the Rudd Government, Michael Costa has wasted time threatening Labor rank and file and berating the Opposition. When the bills are rejected by this House, responsibility will fall squarely at the feet of the Treasurer. From the outset he misled the community, isolated his colleagues and politicised the process. The Treasurer has failed to show leadership. Leadership is about engaging the community in open dialogue, leadership is about asking the hard questions, and leadership is about inspiration and bringing people along on a journey toward a desired outcome. At no point has the Government engaged the New South Wales public in anything resembling leadership consultation. Conversely, it has betrayed and engaged in spin, and in this House it will pay a hefty price for its hubris.

The proposal to privatise electricity does not meet the public interest test. In so many ways Australia's capital market conditions are not conducive to a positive outcome for the people of New South Wales. Since the release of the Owen report in 2007, Australian stock markets have fallen significantly. The Australian All Ordinaries fell almost 20 per cent, and the Australian utilities sector index fell almost 30 per cent. The impact of falling markets is clearly evident in the Hon. Michael Costa's consistent downward revision of the value of the assets. In December 2007 the Treasurer described a $15 billion price tag as conservative. In June 2008, he estimated the price at "around $10 billion". If a public company mysteriously lost $5 billion off the value of an asset in the space of six months, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission would declare an immediate audit. I point out that $5 billion is equivalent to the cost of 5,000 hospital beds or 130 new schools.

Importantly, the negative impact of capital markets will not be limited to initial public offerings; it will also affect trade sales. Market multiples will be used as a part of any basic valuation for a trade sale. Furthermore the global credit crunch makes it more difficult for companies to secure debt funding. My colleague in the other place the member for Manly estimates that the cost of underwriting $10 billion in current market conditions is $400 million more than at the same time last year.

The Iemma Government has spent the last week trying to make the future of its electricity plans all about the Opposition. The Treasurer has made numerous claims about why the Opposition should support the legislation—claims that simply do not stand up to scrutiny—and says that the Owen report found that $15 billion needs to be spent on electricity infrastructure. However, he is yet to explain why spending on electricity assets has been so neglected and why allegedly we need to come up with $15 billion by 2013. We reiterate that even as late as before the 2007 State election on 23 November 2006 the Treasurer stated in this House, "There is no energy crisis in New South Wales … In fact, New South Wales has surplus energy."

Responsible government is about planning for the future and anticipating the need for the replacement and ongoing maintenance of assets, particularly major assets such as power stations, hospitals, schools and police stations. The Treasurer claims that the details of the Commonwealth's emissions trading scheme will be clear by the end of the year, but what he does not point out is that, just as the New South Wales Government does not control its upper House, the Rudd Labor Government does not have control of the Senate. There is no way the Treasurer can be assured that legislation for the emissions trading scheme will be in place by the end of the year or that that legislation, even if it is amended or passed, will operate as intended.

The Treasurer also believes that financial market conditions, now or indeed at the end of the year, will be conducive to the sale of our State's electricity assets. Nobody, not even the Treasurer, knows what the market conditions will be at the end of the year. What we know now is that since the release of the Owen report in September 2007, the Australian stock market has fallen significantly. As I have said, the Australian All Ordinaries fell by almost 20 per cent and the Australian utilities sector index fell by almost 30 per cent. International rating agency, Fitch Ratings, stated:

The final valuation of NSW's coal-fired generation assets will be affected by the details of (the) carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) due to be introduced in 2010. Uncertainty over how the CPRS will affect the electricity generator's cashflows and of the present state of credit markets are likely to affect the value of proceeds.

It should never ever be forgotten that the only reason the Government faces defeat is that it has failed to secure the votes of its own caucus members. This predicament is entirely of the Government's own making. The Coalition's approach to electricity privatisation was never about ticking boxes or meeting deadlines. It has always been about what is in the best interests of the New South Wales community. Our approach to this legislation has not been about the father-knows-best politics of the Australian Labor Party. From the outset, it has been about doing what the people expect of us.

My colleagues in the other place each represent more than 40,000 voters in their respective electorates. The Leaders of the New South Wales Liberals-Nationals involved each and every one of those 40,00 voters in formulating the Coalition's final position. The Hon. Michael Costa and his leader cannot say the same. The Auditor-General's Report and the Rural Community Impact Statement have played an important role in our decision. We also considered a range of factors, including external economic conditions and the current state of flux in the energy sector. The process has involved wide consultation with groups ranging from business interests to energy sector employees and of course the general community.

Ultimately the Coalition decided that the Government cannot be trusted with the privatisation of electricity. Let me echo the words of the State's Leader of the Opposition, Barry O'Farrell, who confirmed this morning that the New South Wales Liberals-Nationals will have an energy policy to put to the people of New South Wales before the next election. Our policy will include the principle of private sector involvement where it meets the public interest. It will consider the broadest range of methods that deliver to the public the best outcomes in electricity. What our electricity policy will not be is the singular agenda of an individual member of Parliament who is intent on rushing through a fire sale of the State's most valuable asset.

Much has been said in the press concerning the effect that this decision will have on the Coalition's relationship with the business community. Irrespective of what some business groups might think about the role of private enterprise in electricity generation, most members of the business community would agree that the Government cannot be trusted with even the most basic economic endeavours, let alone something as substantial as electricity privatisation.

Ultimately, the key stakeholders in the proposed sale of the State's electricity assets do not sit in New South Wales boardrooms; they sit in lounge rooms. They open a power bill every three months. They will watch as market forces, both external and internal, affect the retail price of power generation. Some of them will be renters, some will pay mortgages, some will have children, and some will live on a pension.

While the Iemma Government decides how to divide the spoils of its sale across marginal constituencies, these people will decide what to cut from the family budget as the cost of living in New South Wales continues to increase. It should never be forgotten that if this legislation fails today it will be because the Labor Party has split. Two parties with conflicting agendas now run the New South Wales Government. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with my Coalition colleagues The Nationals in condemnation of these bills and the manner in which they have been introduced. Today we oppose legislation that puts Morris Iemma and Michael Costa's interests and quick-fix financial gains above the interests of the people of New South Wales. The Opposition opposes this legislation.

#EditorsComment">Editor's comment on speech #speech">above

Although I am elsewhere highly critical of many other Liberal Party politicians, I found this speech by NSW Upper House Opposition Leader Michael Gallacher to be brilliantly incisive and informative. Thanks to Sheila Newman for having drawn my attention to it. Site visitors should also take the opportunity to read Treasurer Michael Costa's speech in support of the Electricity Privatisation bill in order to form their own judgement. It can be found on the Parliamentary web site. We intend to publish it here when time permits.

Readers should also contrast the damning case against Treasurer Costa and his Government presented here with the craven pro-NSW-Government coverage of electricity privatisation by virtually all the mainstream press, including that given by the supposedly independent ABC.

Why is it that newspapers, such as Rupert Murdoch's Australian which postures incessantly about its struggle to supposedly defend Your Right to Know so rarely report to the Australian public important basic facts about issues - like that of electricity privatisation - which can be readily found in the Parliamentary Hansards of almost every sitting day of the year?

The NSW's State Opposition's stance against privatisation is, unfortunately, not absolute. Ironically though, the NSW public and NSW unionists owe Michael Gallacher, Peter Debnam, Barry O'Farrell, Andrew Stoner and the whole NSW state opposition an enormous debt of gratitude. This is because the state opposition informed the NSW public of the truth about privatisation and the Labor Government record. The opposition then put its words into action. Of course, credit also rightly belongs to the Greens, the minor party and independent members, and those Labor members who defied the unprincipled stance of the Labor Caucus majority to vote against privatisation. Also credit is due to the trade unionists and community grass roots activists who campaigned so hard against privatisation. - James Sinnamon

#speech2" id="speech2">Uppper House Nationals Leader Duncan Gay's speech against electricity privatisation

The Hon. DUNCAN GAY (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) [1.16 p.m.]: Today we have witnessed the contrast between two leaders: one leader who divided the party and another leader who brought two parties together. Never before have we seen greater contrast in this State. We have a political party that wants to hide in the back rooms of this State and not take decisions to the people. Its members do not want to walk up the front path to the front door of a house, knock on that door and say to the constituents in that house, "This is what we want to do." That party has defied the people's house of New South Wales and has not gone into the Legislative Assembly where the elected members of this Parliament represent the electorates of New South Wales.

We have seen vicarious cowardice on the part of the Premier and his tyrant Treasurer, who is probably already out there with the failed Babcock and Brown hunting for a job. Never before in this Parliament have we seen a greater contrast between those who are willing to listen to the people of New South Wales and act in the community's interest and a group who refuses to do so. That particular group unwisely spent taxpayers' money to recall the Parliament to debate a flawed scheme. The Parliament was offered one option, a flawed option that does not add up with the trading schemes yet to go before the Australian senate.

<8>

The balance of power in the Senate will be held by a small group of Independents, including the newly elected South Australia Senator, Nick Xenophon, the Family First party and the Greens. Who knows what cost that will put on power generation in New South Wales? The Treasurer, in a rare bout of honesty in this House, indicated that cost could be as much as $3 billion. No-one knows what that cost will be out of Canberra. No-one knows what the competing cost will be out of the current fire sale at Babcock and Brown, as it divulges similar interests into the markets in this country.

Yet, we were given one option: to support the sale, or nothing! Today in this House, questions must be asked: What has the Government been doing for the past 13 years? Why is it suddenly Barry O'Farrell's fault? For 13 years the Government has had a chance to fix this problem. For 13 years former Treasurer Michael Egan and Treasurer Michael Costa have told Parliament that the New South Wales taxpayers have had a surplus through the good financial management of the Labor Party. Treasurer Michael Costa told New South Wales taxpayers before the last election that they had nothing to worry about. One reason why the people of New South Wales and the Opposition cannot support this legislation is because the Government's Ministers cannot be trusted. Their word is not what they stand for.

The Government promised to fix the roads, it promised to lower hospital waiting lists and it promised to provide extra police, but it has not delivered on one of those promises. Not one Government promise has been fulfilled. The electricity legislation that was introduced today is dead in the water, because the Government did not consult with the people of New South Wales and it gave a flawed plan. The Government has reaped its own revenge. The Government has lost, and it deserved to lose. The contrast is stark—we will go to the people with a proper plan. [Time expired.]

See also: Open letter to NSW state Opposition members urging a vote against electricity privatisation of 28 Aug 08, Open letter to NSW Labor parliamentary caucus members to urging a vote against electricity privatisation of 27 Aug 08

Dear Premier John Brumby,

Candobetter.org welcomes your statements acknowledging the problems that Victoria now faces as a result of past population growth as reported in the Herald Sun article Premier John Brumby warns of dangers in growing too fast of 28 July.

Indeed, Candobetter contributor, Sheila Newman, who is a population sociologist and past President of the Victorian branch of Sustainable Population Australia, has been warning for years of precisely the problems which you have now acknowledged.

We think, however, that you should have been well aware of the trends:

The government has received submissions and press releases from various groups about petroleum depletion projections and oil prices and there has been a Senate enquiry into oil depletion.

The Australian CSIRO study by Barney Foran and Franci Poldan, Future Dilemmas: Options to 2050 for Australia's population, technology, resources and environment, published in 2002, was already flagging problematic trends. See Chapter 4, "Natural Resources and the Environment".

The 2007 VAMPIRE study (pdf, 1.2MB) from Griffith University, Queensland, drew attention to Melbourne for its oil-reliant transport vulnerability.

Apart from that, explosive oil prices and depletion fears are constantly in the news. One would therefore be entitled to expect the Victorian government by now to be aware that business as usual has gone completely off the radar.

One has only to go to amazon.com to find a hundred or so books written in the last ten years about the coming energy and fuel crisis, most restating and reaffirming projections made for peak oil production and then decline to start around about now.

If that were not enough, in the past few days, on July 11, 2008, the CSIRO came out again and warned that the cost of petrol could rise to $8 a litre in the next 10 years. “A new report by the CSIRO has warned the cost of petrol could rise to as high as $8 a litre in the next 10 years.”

Those are the energy trends.

The trends against democracy have also been more than evident, with a proliferation of groups horrified by Victorians' loss of control over their local and wider environments in the face of corporate backed population growth and its accompanying infrastructure. The changes to State and local government powers have been traumatic to our faith in government and our sense of safety in the long-term.

The trends in housing unaffordability, as land-prices responded to the inflationary pressure of forced population growth, have had profound repercussions socially, creating an asset-rich/poor divide and making life unnecessarily tough for many people, old and young, but especially young people on the threshold of independence, who now find themselves inextricably in debt to HECS, Housing and car purchase for unavoidable commuting in the absence of adequate public transport.

The trends in wildlife and natural ammenity loss have been especially grievious. You personally received in 2006 news of how poorly kangaroos near your electorate were fairing among the industrial estates of Thomastown. Nothing effective has been done by the Government to assist these animals. Did you consider that activists have put their lives and happiness on hold just in order to confront unflinchingly a searing reality which government inflicts through its negligent administration and cognizance of the real biodiversity situation?

Some of us activists have put our lives on hold just to try to combat the policies for population and high consumption which preceded your government in Kennett's, but for which you have had responsibility in the long term in your capacity as Treasurer and now as Premier. We felt a personal responsibility to try to halt by any civil means what we could see was infinitely harmful in the long term to our social and biophysical capital. Without any government support we have laboured to point out the existence of the lobbies which your government has been responding to, to the disadvantage of democracy.

We would also like to point out that if population were stabilised it would not be necessary for the Victorian Government to take water away from the Goulburn Valley against the heated objections of local farmers (see www.plugthepipe.com) or to build an energy-intensive, stupidly located, massive privately operated desal plant on the Bass Coast (www.yourwateryoursay.org), or dredge Port Phillip for a growth project for an artificially bloated population, or to deprive city and suburban dwellers of the right to a local solution to the predicament posed by oil depletion, in the right to water for growing food.

Although you are reported to have stated in the Herald Sun article, "I think we are probably at the limits of growth," we feel we must also ask you whether you intend to continue to make the problems worse or whether, from now on your government will abandon its official encouragement of population growth. The first thing your government should do is to remove your www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au web-sites and related programs, which encourage high immigration.

It seems likely that the corporate drivers of your government's program - such as the banks and the engineers in the Academy of Technological and Scientific Engineering (ATSE), and the developers and their allies in the Property Council of Australia, who have dug themselves very deeply into the housing and infrastructure economy, which is costing the rest of us so much - will continue to try to push the government into more unsustainable growth. We know that the mainstream press will not be your friend if you start to represent the public democratically in this matter. If, however, the government can gain our confidence in its committment to refrain from talking up or importing additions to our population, then candobetter and many other organisations and alternative sites will support you solidly in this.

I look forward to your response and hope to be able to publish on our web site at http://candobetter.org/node/699 so that we can share it with the wider public.

Sincerely,

James Sinnamon for candobetter.org, a website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy.

See also: Brumby's call for 'pause' in rate of population growth insufficient of 1 Aug 08, Premier John Brumby warns of dangers in growing too fast in the Herald Sun of 28 July 08, Brumby 'blaming' migrants in the Age of 2 Aug 08

This article was also published on qlddecides.com as Saving the Regent - The Sinnamon plan. My response to the choice of that title was posted to that site and is included below.

In little more than a generation, Brisbane's skyline has been transformed into a ghastly inhuman wall of office blocks and high rise residential apartments. Today, much of Brisbane resembles a war zone as established business districts and neighourhoods are further trashed as this process is continued, along with a spate of more recent white elephant infrastructure projects, all at a horrific cost to our local and global environment.

A small, but welcome, pause from this breakneck pace of over-development occurred when Labor Premier Anna Bligh on 23 February, as reported in Brisbane's Courier Mail Newspaper, responded to a public outcry against the threatened destruction of Brisbane's Regent Theatre. The 80 year old Regent Theatre was to be effectively destroyed in order to make way for an AU$800 million 38-storey commercial high-rise at the back of the Regent Theatre. However, Premier Bligh used rarely enacted legislation to stop this. The legislation allows the Queensland Government to force the private developers, Multiplex and ISPT, to keep the Regent cinema operating regardless of whether or not they wanted to.

As welcome as Premier Bligh's stance is, it is sadly out of character with her overall record. Anna Bligh and her predecessor Beattie who have embraced a 'growth at all costs' mind-set which has no regard for the preservation of Brisbane's quality of life or the well-being of future generations. Both the Queensland Labor Government and Campbell Newman's Liberal Brisbane City Council administration have ridden rough-shod over community objections to many other inappropriate infrastructure and housing developments. These include the Suncorp Stadium, the Hale Street Bridge, the North South Bypass Tunnel, the Airport Link tunnel, Brisbane Airport's second runway, the conversion of the publicly-owned Yungaba migrant hostel into a private gated community, Minnippi Parklands, the Traveston Dam, the Wyaralong Dam, etc. In 2005 the residents of Maleny endured an invasion of 150 Queensland Police so that the Woolworths supermarket, opposed overwhelmingly by local residents could be built.

However, on this occasion, instead of ignoring the wishes of the Brisbane community, the Queensland Government has supported them and even the equally pro-development opposition leader Laurence Springborg has endorsed Anna Bligh's stance.

However, another force for relentless over-development, namely Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper, owned by US citizen Rupert Murdoch, has chosen not to relax its stance and has harshly criticised the Premier in an editorial "Protection in name of popularity" of 26 February.

The Courier Mail editorialists believe that the right of the developers to profit from the further disfigurement of Brisbane's skyline is more important than the wishes of of Brisbane residents to retain what little is left of their heritage. It stated:

... but does that then give the State Government the right to dictate to a profit-driven private sector developer what sort of business it can or cannot operate on the site? Presumably, one reason for the proposed redevelopment is that a 30-year-old four-cinema complex is a less profitable use of the land than a 38-storey office tower.

From the point of view of society at large, few profits are to be had from these projects. Instead, they merely facilitate the transfer of wealth out of its pockets into the pockets of the likes of Multiplex and ISPT, whilst massive quantities of greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, particularly during their construction phases, and the earth's scarce and diminishing stocks of fossil fuel and metals are exhausted. In no more than a generation, these high rise structures will be inoperable as the necessary fossil fuels become ever more scarce and will stand just as much as monuments to to the folly of today's political and business leaders as do the pyramids built on Central America's Yucutan peninsula stand as monuments to the folly of the leaders of the failed Mayan civilisation.

The Courier Mail editorialist then argues that the taxpayers of Queensland to make up for the shortfall in profits:

Now it is quite possible that the developers might be able to rethink their proposal and decide they can make it work, with the Regent intact. However, if Ms Bligh feels so strongly about preserving the whole of the theatre complex, then perhaps she should be arguing the case for some sort of government underwriting – not something we would support – rather than simply sticking it to the private sector, as it were.

In reality, the evidence shows that it is today's taxpayers and ratepayers, as well as future generations, who subsidise the profits of developers, because they are forced to foot the bill for the infrastructure made necerssary to service such developments.

The editorialist also effectively accused Premier Anna Bligh of pandering to populism, when it asked:

But is it possible that this whole exercise is less about protecting fond memories and more about good old-fashioned, politically motivated playing to the crowd?

The Courier Mail editorialists no doubt prefer leaders who know better than 'the crowd' itself what is good for them, hence their past support for the North South Bypass Tunnel, the Hale Street Bridge, "Work Choices", the privatisation of Telstra and Queensland's Energex electricity company, high immigration, the Iraq war, the Traveston Dam, forced local government amalgamations, etc.

James Sinnamon
Independent candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane

Comment posted to qlddecides.com:

Thanks Jason for posting this. The original article is entitled "Saving the Regent Theatre earns Queensland Premier the wrath of the Courier Mail" and can be found at http://candobetter.org/node/342

However, the article is not actually a plan to save the Regent. That appears, thankfully, to have been done by Premier Anna Bligh. I meant to use the occasion to give due credit to a politician in whom I otherwise see very little of merit, also to comment on the anti-democratic pro-developer stance of Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper.

Whilst normally supportive of Bligh, when she does the bidding of powerful vested interests, the Courier Mail was hostile to the Premier's out-of-character decision on this occasion.