Reverse the NSW power fire-sale, freeze electricity prices & hold a referendum on electricity privatisation

Media release January 4, 2010

The Socialist Alliance condemns NSW Premier Kristina Keneally and Treasurer Eric Roozendaal for their sell off of electricity trading rights for a mere $5.3 billion just before the Christmas shut-down, said Peter Boyle, national convener of the Alliance and its lead upper house candidate in the March NSW elections.

“The Socialist Alliance is campaigning in the NSW elections for the annulment and reversal of the electricity privatisation.

“We also call for a freeze on electricity prices pending a state-wide plebiscite on the privatisation of electricity. Which ever party wins the next elections should let the people of NSW decide on this critical issue.

“We condemn the Keneally government for closing down Parliament in order to try and block a parliamentary inquiry into this irresponsible fire-sale.”

Not only has this privatisation yielded just a fraction of the funds the Treasurer Roozendaal has been promising, warned Boyle, it begins the total privatisation of a critical public asset at the worst possible time for the environment. (See http://www.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/101214_nsw_energy_reform_update.pdf)

“About 70% of Australia's emissions of greenhouse gases come from electricity generation. This sell-off will make it harder to make the necessary moves to address the climate change emergency – a threat which will affect everyone, but which will hit the poorest the hardest.”

As Dr Sharon Beder revealed in 2009, privatisation encourages the maintenance of polluting coal-fired power plants that contribute smog, mercury and particulate matter to the atmosphere.

Dr Beder documented that deregulation and privatisation of the energy sector in Australia led to the greater use of brown coal, and by 2001 there had been a 31% increase in greenhouse gases as a result of energy deregulation.

“Privatising the electricity industry means that the community will have less influence over it,” Boyle said.

“Private companies are not likely to encourage energy efficiency and conservation when their profits depend on maximising electricity demand.

“It also means that the NSW government is forfeiting opportunities to shift to renewable energy sources.”

The current media focus on the legality, or not, of holding a parliamentary investigation into the electricity privatisation after Parliament has been prorogued, has also diverted attention from the ugly fact that both the NSW Labor government and the Liberal-National opposition have been pushing for the privatisation of the energy industry.

If there is an inquiry into the forced march and secretive sale, it should also investigate the sustainable energy alternatives that could be delivered if the electricity sector remained in public hands and the likely price hikes that will result from the energy being privatised.

The Socialist Alliance has been a part of the community-union Power to the People campaign against privatisation in NSW.

The Socialist Alliance pledges to do all it can to strengthen the union and community campaign to stop the sell-offs, and force accountability on whatever government is formed after the March election.

• No privatisation: keep public assets in public hands
  
• Massive public investment into renewable energy
  
• No new coal mines: phase out existing mines while guaranteeing alternative jobs for workers in the industry
  

References:

Sharon Beder: Electricity, generation, climate change and privatisation

Sharon Beder: Electricity change will shock the state

For interviews contact Peter Boyle 0401 760 577

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NSW: Not for sale!

Peter Boyle
December 2, 2010

The Socialist Alliance will be campaigning in the upcoming NSW elections around the slogan: “NSW: Not for sale! Community need not corporate greed”. It sums up the about turn in priorities that is needed in the interest of environmental sustainability and social justice.

The ALP is going to get trashed in these elections. The Victorian election result confirms that. The Keneally government is much more on the nose that the Brumby government was in Victoria.

Keneally and her predecessors have taken the ALP government to record lows in the opinion polls and the reason for this is their criminal embrace of the corporate profits-first agenda.

In the interest of boosting corporate profits they’ve gone on a mad privatisation spree, with the electricity industry currently on the auctioneers block. They have run down the public transport system and wasted billions of dollars in various disastrous Public-Private Partnerships mostly on building a string of private tollways.It is bad enough running down the rail system, delaying much needed heavy rail extensions and light rail developments, and pouring money into the pollution-creating and still gridlocked road system, but they did it in the most wasteful way possible.

An independent study commissioned by the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils found that if these tollroads and tunnels had been built by the government, it would have assets worth $12.8 billion on its books and it would be at least $4.6 billion better off.

The Keneally government is prepared to blow a further $1-2 billion to subsidise the wholesale price of electricity from dirty coal powered stations to guarantee the future profits of the electricity privatisers.

Over the last 15 years, NSW’s publicly owned electricity industry generated $15 billion in dividends for the NSW government, income which will turned over to private corporate profit. According to Professor Bob Walker of Sydney University, any price the NSW government may get for its electricity privatisation was likely to be ”dwarfed by the potential value to taxpayers from retaining these assets.”

Socialist Alliance is discussing a proposal, inspired by excellent work done by the Beyond Zero Emissions project, for a full-scaled, pilot solar-thermal power plant to be built in NSW near a major regional city such as Broken Hill, Moree or Dubbo, as a first investment in a fully renewable energy future. BZE calculates that a power station that could supply all the electricity needs of such a city could be built for less than $1 billion and it could become part of a future national network of solar-thermal that could in future help take Australia to using 100% renewable energy.

The technology, expertise and resources are available and a project like this can focus society on the urgent collective investment we need to make in a renewable energy future.

The privatisation madness needs to be stopped and indeed reversed! The billions of dollars wasted squandered on privatisation and PPPs could be invested in better hospitals, schools, public transport, public housing and a serious transition to renewable energy. Hospital waiting lists could be slashed, nurse-to-patient ratios could be lifted to a mandated minimum of 1:4.

Socialist Alliance has a placard that says: “Privatisation is theft – No means no”. It sums up the truth about the privatisation drive and the overwhelming public opposition to the various NSW privatisations registered in numerous polls.

Privatisation is but one aspect of a system that is totally corrupted by the profits-first agenda. Coal mine owning billionaires, developer billionaires and the like have literally bought the NSW state government and the traditional parties of government, the ALP and the Liberal-National Party Coalition.

In turn, these politicians have help carry out a massive transfer of income share from the majority of people who are wage earners to corporate profits, which are monopolised by a tiny minority. We have calculated, using Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, that $2.2 trillion (in today’s dollars) has been shifted from wages to profits across Australia since 1974-75! Profit share of total income in Australia has increased from 16.9% to 27.7% while wage share has decreased from 62.7% to 54%.

To get away with such a systematic transfer of wealth to the richest, our politicians have used age-old techniques of divide and rule. In articular, they are using racism, blaming and demonising refugees for our economic woes and growing insecurity. In expensive and socially destructive “law and order” campaigns – a staple of Labor and Coalition state election campaigns minority communities like Aborigines and Lebanese are targeted. Meanwhile the jail population keeps growing, with no positive impact on crime, and deaths in custody (particularly of Indigenous Australian) continue.

Politicians are systematically bought with corporate donations which they then used to carry out lying, negative TV election advertising. Politicians and the fat cats heading government departments demand that they can like the grossly overpaid corporate CEOs while values such as public service, accountability and political independence are destroyed.

It is no wonder that a major issue in this elections, is how to end this rot. The Greens have combined with the Keneally government to place limited restrictions on corporate and union donations to political parties. But these corrupt parties still be able to collect millions of dollars from these donations plus from the election funding system – which grossly favours the big parties — to will spend on manipulative election advertising.

We suggest a different approach. Let’s kill off this multi-million dollar deception industry that comes with every election and get the state electoral commission to distribute the policies of all parties and candidates contesting the election.

Let’s put a limit on politicians incomes and the incomes of the top bureaucrats. These should be limited to the wage of a skilled worker and they should not be allowed any pay increases unless they are matched with similar increase for ordinary workers, pensioners and the unemployed.

In the new year, the Socialist Alliance will release its election platform and a couple of specific proposals that will focus an alternative way forward for NSW. We have announced four Legislative Assembly candidates and part of the full-ticket of 21 which we plan to run for the Legislative Council.

The candidates that the Socialist Alliance is fielding in the coming NSW election are just a small selection of the committed socialist activists urgently needed to build a new social movement for real change. There are many more such people out there – people who are already helping transform the unjust and unsustainable society we now are forced to live in – and only some of them are in the Socialist Alliance. We are working to unite all the social activists who are critical to mobilising the people’s power that is required to wrest society away from the corporate rich. This is why we are approaching activists who are not members of the Socialist Alliance but who share our values to be part of our upper house ticket.

The Socialist Alliance will be directing its first preferences to the Greens as a general rule and, though we don’t think that the Labor party is much better, we will preference Labor ahead of the Liberal-National Coalition and other right-wing parties.

(Peter Boyle is National Convener of the Socialist Alliance and will head its Legislative Council ticket in the March 2011 NSW election.)

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Keneally must place a moratorium on gas exploration & boost funding for real sustainable energy

Media release Friday November 19, 2010

Socialist Alliance joins the call demanding the ALP state government place a moratorium on gas exploration in the Sydney basin.

The revelations by the Greens in NSW parliament that the Keneally government had secretly given the go-ahead to Apollo Energy to start exploratory drilling for gas in St Peters, in inner city Sydney, have outraged many.

Even the local council covering the area was not consulted.

“Community consultation is not a strong point for this state government. If the Keneally government was so confident about pushing this huge new gas project as the new sustainable energy, why has this plan been kept a secret?", asked Pip Hinman, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Marrickville.

“The big greenwash being promoted by the NSW government is that gas is clean and sustainable energy. It is not. It is the fossil fuel industry’s bid to continue its existence beyond coal – at the expense of the planet."

Socialist Alliance is also calling on the state government to rule out the use of hydraulic fracturing (known as “fracking” or “frac’cing”) which, in the US, has been held responsible for poisoning people and drinking water.

“There has to be a full public inquiry into the misguided plans to power Sydney with gas before any exploration is allowed to proceed.

“The inquiry should also be charged with assessing the health and environmental impacts of setting up renewable energy systems using solar, thermal and wind power", said Hinman.

According to the Greens, the department of environment had no role in the approval process for coal seam gas exploratory drilling.

The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempted hydraulic fracturing from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. US environmentalists say this has led to this century’s biggest national eco-disaster, poisoning water supplies for tens of millions.

"The Keneally government and the federal Gillard government must abandon its embrace of gas as a “green” energy alternative. Gas is no answer to the looming climate catastrophe.

“Gas is neither renewable nor sustainable. Right now, the only responsible course of action is to invest massive public funding in real renewables – solar, thermal and wind."

Socialist Alliance is campaigning in the coming state elections for the following:

1. An urgent public inquiry into the safety of coal seam gas mining.
2. Moratorium on all coal seam gas drilling until outcome of inquiry.
3. Ban on all coal seam gas mining under cities, water catchment areas, farmland and other environmentally significant areas.
4. A ban on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking” or “frac’cing”).
5. Massive public investment into renewables – solar thermal, solar and windpower.

For interview contact Pip Hinman 0412 139 968

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Socialist Alliance condemns attack on NSW Greens offices

The NSW Socialist Alliance condemns the cowardly attack, involving faeces, on the offices of the NSW Greens sometime over the night of November 7-8. Such actions have no place within a democratic society and should be rejected by all supporters of democracy.

This attack comes after the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union was finally able to fully reopen its offices following the attack on that union when a car, filled with petrol, crashed into their offices and set it alight.

Given the growing disaffection with the major political parties, these attacks were aimed at intimidating progressive forces and their supporters.

Despite media hype about so-called terrorist threats, a lot of the same outlets have been unusually quiet about these two attacks on progressive organisations.

Some commentators have even sought to downplay the attack on the NSW Greens office (“a little bit of poo”) while, at same time, arguing that what’s beyond the pale is that the Greens supported anti-war protestors’ rights to throw shoes at cardboard cut-outs of Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates on November 8. The clear implication from some quarters is that democratic rights to freedom of expression should be curtailed. We reject this.

The cowardly attack on the Greens, implicitly supported by a section of right-wing media, is aimed at creating fear about the growing support for the Greens, which, the latest Newpoll puts at 17% compared to Labor’s 23%.

Socialist Alliance condemns this attack on the Greens offices, just as we condemned the attack on the CFMEU offices. We will continue to work as closely as possible with the NSW Greens and other progressive forces. Just hours before the cowardly attack, NSW Greens activists, along with those from other left parties and progressive campaigns had been warmly received at our NSW state conference.

Socialist Alliance calls on all supporters of democratic rights to unequivocally condemn this attack, and any other such political attacks.

For more information:
Pip Hinman, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Marrickville, 0412 139 968
Federico Fuentes, Socialist Alliance candidate for the Legislative Council, 0412 556 527
www.socialist-alliance.org

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NSW Labor’s worst day yet

Saturday, September 4, 2010
By Dick Nichols

On September 1, Luke Foley, the newest Labor member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, rose to make his inaugural speech to the chamber.

Foley began: “It is with pride and humility that I enter this place, Australia’s oldest Parliament, as a representative of Australia’s oldest, and greatest, political party — the Australian Labor Party.”

Oh dear. What a day for Foley to praise the ALP in NSW.

Earlier that day, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) revealed it found that NSW Maritime's most senior lawyer, Tonette Kelly, had forged documents, cheated on her tax and lied repeatedly about a private conveyancing business worth $120,000 a year, which she ran from the NSW Maritime head office.

The same day, the government ordered an internal inquiry into the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority and suspended senior consultant Andrew Kelly. As the second-most senior employee of the SHFA, Kelly received secret incentives from the Kazal family — a prominent tenant of the authority’s harbourside properties.

On the same day, famous NSW anti-corruption campaigner John Hatton, the independent MP for South Coast from 1973-1995, confirmed he would run for an upper house seat at the March 2011 state election.

Hatton said he was “fed up” with corruption in the state after successfully campaigning in the 1990s for a royal commission, which eventually led to the creation of the Police Integrity Commission.

He criticised the failure ICAC, saying NSW was now more corrupt than it was under super-corrupt Liberal premier Robert Askin, in power from 1965 to 1975.

In particular, Hatton attacked ICAC’s failure to draw the connections between corruption it uncovered in Wollongong City Council and the upper reaches of the NSW government.

Finally, on September 1 the Daily Telegraph “learned of” a parliamentary audit showing internet pornography use by ports minister Paul McLeay. Confronted with this information by the Telegraph, premier Kristina Keneally demanded, and got, McLeay’s resignation.

September 1 was the worst day yet in the history of the decaying NSW Labor government.

Even traditionally pro-Labor media like the Illawarra Mercury are now calling for its head, using the foibles and petty corruption of its ministers to bury all discussion of politics before the March 2011 election.

This campaign is intended to create an atmosphere where the Coalition will win in a landslide, opening the door to a government of Jeff Kennett-style “reform”.

So far, thanks to NSW Labor’s abominable record in privatisation of public services, its corruption and all-round incompetence, the campaign is a great success. Labor is at 25% of the primary vote support in the polls, its lowest rating since it won 23% of the vote in 1904.

If an election were held today, the conservatives would win with 61% of the two-party preferred vote.
In this context, the enormous challenge for the left and progressive movement in NSW is to make sure as much as possible of the community’s completely justifiable anger with Labor feeds into support for socialist, Green and progressive candidates.

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Socialist Alliance’s analysis of the elections

Saturday, September 4, 2010
By Dick Nichols

The Socialist Alliance national office has produced its analysis of the August 21 federal election. It traces the precise mix by electorate of the increased Green, Coalition, independent and informal vote, produced as voters deserted Labor.

The differences among the seat-by-seat contests in an Australian federal election have never been so great. The general disillusionment with the two major parties expressed itself in quite different ways in different electorates and areas.
For example, along with inner-city seats, the epicentre of the national “Greenslide” was southern Queensland. Of the 28 seats where the Greens enjoyed a swing of 6% or more, half were in southern Queensland. After Melbourne, the second biggest swing to the Greens (10%) took place in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher, where the Queensland government’s proposal to dam the Mary River at Traveston was defeated last year.

Even where the Greens recorded low swings and low votes, there were still big percentage leaps in the vote. For example, in Murray and Calare, the Green vote almost doubled, in the outback NSW seat of Parkes it increased 70% and in outback Queensland Maranoa 60%.

Barbara Shaw, a vocal opponent of the Northern Territory intervention, also increased the Greens vote by 60% in the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari. In the new Western Australian seat of Durack (with an Indigenous population of 16.8%), the swing to the Greens was 3% and the vote reached 20% in Broome.

Along with the “Greenslide” went an “informalslide”. The biggest leap was in Sydney’s working-class and migrant western suburbs, peaking at 14.2% in Blaxland.

This informal vote saved Labor in Sydney’s West. If the increase in the informal vote had gone to the Liberal candidates in a number of seats, Tony Abbott would have won on August 21. The Liberals had big swings in safe Labor seats but, except in Queensland, were largely kept at bay in marginal seats.

In NSW, Labor’s tactic of not worrying about safe seats, but throwing as much “pork” and organisation as possible at the marginals was effective. If the 4% swing there had applied evenly across all seats, then Labor would have lost Robertson, Eden-Monaro, Page and Dobell — and government.

The Coalition’s biggest swings took place in seats it already held or in seats it couldn’t feasibly win.

However, Labor’s “sandbagging” of key NSW marginals meant marginalising safe seats. For example, the “iconic” ALP seat of Werriwa (former members, Gough Whitlam and Mark Latham) is now close to marginal as defined by the ABC (held by a majority of 56% or less). The swing against Laurie Ferguson, who was preselected as part of a factional deal to reshuffle safe Labor seats, reduced his majority to 56.9%.

Labor’s biggest gains took place in seats where they won back votes from independents and minor parties that had stood in 2007 but not 2010 (Corio, based on Geelong, and the Tasmanian seats of Bass, Lyons and Braddon).

The full analysis is available here

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