Privatised power won’t pay for its part in the fires
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Arsonists, says Kevin Rudd, should rot in prison. But who will be punished if the pending law suits find private power companies liable for the fires in Kilmore East, Horsham, Mudgegonga and Dederang? Why, you will, dear reader — thanks to the terms that state governments negotiated when they sold off our public assets. Consider the case of SP AusNet, the subject of a class action for negligence around the Kilmore fires. The Insurance Council of Australia has estimated the damage of those fires at about $500 million. But SP AusNet’s legal liability has been capped at $100 million under a deal struck by the former Kennett government with private utility operators, when the former State Electricity Commission was privatised in 1995. Legal sources said this meant the Brumby Government could be forced to cover a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars. The recent heatwave highlighted some other results of the great privatization binge carried out a decade or so ago. Connex, the group that seized Victoria’s rail network, recently excused the 2300 services it cancelled last month on the basis of … wait for it … the weather. Its trains can’t, you see, function in weather warmer than thirty-five degrees. Given that each year there’s this phenomenon called “summer” (you may have heard of it), operators of a transport system designed for the benefit of the public — most of whom, strangely enough, still have to work on hot days — might conclude that cool-weather-only trains simply don’t cut it. But Connex, of course, is a private company, and makes its decisions on the basis of an entirely different calculus. That’s why, though Melbournians would clearly prefer to buy their fares from a conductor, we’re stuck instead with dysfunctional ticketing machines, unable in most cases even to provide change. Not surprisingly, there’s now a widespread culture of fare evasion, which the private owners attempt to counter with hectoring advertisements and roving gangs of thuggish inspectors. But there’s a bigger issue relating to climate change. Now, we don’t have to believe in global warming. The science is complex and most of us don’t fully understand it. But many of us are also sufficiently mathematically challenged as to not follow the process by which Eratosthenes of Cyrene first calculated the circumference of the planet. But we don’t therefore sign up with the Flat Earth Society, since we possess sufficient common sense to accept the consensus of the scientific world. If we adopt that methodology with climate change — aligning ourselves with the vast majority of scientists rather than the small but shrill denialist faction of oil-company flacks, shock jocks and the tabloid journalists who are professionally wrong about everything — certain things follow. We can expect a small but real increase in average temperatures, and that means bushfires will become more likely and more devastating. No, you can’t ascribe the blame to climate change for any particular fire, just as you can’t definitively link your heart attack to your pack-a-day habit. Heart problems kill non-smokers, too — but only a fool would conclude that means you can puff away without risks. In other words, if we don’t do something, we can expect more tragedies like the one we’ve just endured. But that brings us directly back to privatisation. It’s not only that the process by which we swapped our public assets for a bag of magic beans has led to an appreciable degradation in services, it’s also disarmed us in the fight against the causes and consequences of climate change. How is the private company that makes money from selling you electricity — and thus becomes more profitable the more of it you use — going to foster energy efficiency? The short answer is that it will do so about as effectively as, say, a pub campaigning for sobriety, a casino against problem gambling — or, to use a more apposite example — the private utility in charge of our taps for water efficiency. The world financial crisis has already exposed many of the ideologues behind the neo-liberal excesses of the last decades as at best charlatans and at worst overt fraudsters. By all means, prosecute the arsonists. But let’s also have some genuine accountability about the policy makers who got us into the mess we’re now in. |
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16 Comments
Just remember public private partnerships (PPI’s) are on the agenda for health and education. So if you think things can get out of hand with privatised power, wait till we get the educational revolution tangled up with the profit imperative and see what real havoc can be wrought. Of course the taxpayer will be stuck with the bill for the consequences as usual but they can at least be amused by full and very public handwringing apologies of the offenders.
Whenever the govt. interferes by creating monopolies that the govt then pays to perpetuate with our money, we are going to have problems. If the market were truly free to operate with no barriers to entry, then people could make an unfettered choice about who serves their interests best.
Ev says:
“If you have a genuine problem with the administration, why not detail the policies you think have failed, and offer an alternative? I’m tired of people labelling and not detailing. Your cheap shots achieve little.”
My area of relevant expertise - and I no island, is natural gas transport - a not so complex phenomena that is standard practice is many of our neighboring countries and has merits on so many levels - climate change, energy security, clean cities, transport efficiency…rant rant rant….
I have detailed for your information the failings and corruption of our governments as have many others - you could do yourself a favour and google “Greenhouse Mafia - 4 Corners” or you can visit my site where I have documented in over 100,000 words the pathway to sustainable transport -
Get a grip on yourself Ev and dont throw stones while you live in that glass house:
http://news.rosettamoon.com/?p=193
Why does no one acknowledge the fact there are too many people living in Melbourne’s fragile outer suburbs? The unsightly sprawl which is Melbourne is about the size of Greater Buenos Aires. There are two minor differences between us. 1) The fact of GBA having a population heading to the 14 million mark. 2) GBA is built on a big river and has no incendiary eucalyptus forest around it.
Also, if we could rein in our population explosion we wouldn’t have such severe global warming and fewer people would go to live on the edges of the bush, resulting in fewer people being fried alive.
Because the State government has seized the initiative by calling for a royal commission into the bushfires blame can be placed everywhere except at the door of the government itself. Which is, of course, the major culprit. During the tenure of the Brack’s government all pretense of building regulations was abandoned. Developers had carte blanche to build as shonkily as they wanted to. They grabbed at this chance to build homes of a standard so low it would have been a crime to build them anywhere else on the planet. And, as it turned out, it was a crime to have built them in Melbourne.
To add fire to fire (sorry about that) The midgets who always scramble to get onto local councils in order to wield their tin-pot power fell onto the emerging Green movement like a dying vulture onto a fresh carcase. Generally these people loved the chance to use the Green movement: not in order to protect the environment. No, not at all. To these petty tyrants Green meant a heaven-sent opportunity to increase their own power. It became an offense to remove dead logs or kindling from roadsides. It became a crime to remove green rubbish. All these new laws were brought in at speed. Because they had the added benefit of raising more revenue into the local coffers, and so on.
Punishing guilty power companies is on a par with punishing governments and local councils. An exercise in futility.
Judging by some of these comments, I assumed there had to be a full moon. Someone needs to take a cold shower. Notwithstanding one’s view of privatisation, capping electricity supply liability at $100 million effectively reduced the insurance premium costs that would otherwise have had to have been factored into electricity prices. Without this ,electricity prices would have a much higher to buy the necessary premiums. There is no free lunch. Had the old SEC been in power (pardon the pun) any liability attributable to the electricity supplier would have been borne by the State anyway. This is not to defend the negative effect of privatisation.
It should be noted that the quality standards set for Connex are established by the Department of Transport and its predecessors in government, and that the equipment and rolling stock that they operate are what successive governments hav provided directly, or indirectly as conditions of the Franchise Agreements between the State and the operator.
All capital costs associated with rail operations are directly funded by the State budget, to standards mandated by the Victorian government. Connex is merely the operator (sacrificial goat ) to effectively shield government from the consumer backlash associated with poor levels of funding and chronic neglect of public transport funding for the last 50 years.
I initially didn’t understand what this article was on about; how could electricity suppliers be liable for these fires? Poor maintenance practices? Turning off power to water pumps? None of these are mentioned, so, I’m guessing here, are you suggesting that people that burn coal are liable for the damage that this fire caused? That would be a simple case in court.
Rosettamoon, how odd your rant is. It is very easy to label politicians, or anyone for that matter, but the fact remains; Rudd is ridiculously popular. We live in a democracy, popularity is important. I suspect that despite your detailed and well founded mis-givings Rudd will remain PM for some time to come. If you have a genuine problem with the administration, why not detail the policies you think have failed, and offer an alternative? I’m tired of people labelling and not detailing. Your cheap shots achieve little.
Jeff Sparrow is delusional if he thinks conductors always used to collect fares. In the peak hours, Jeff? Or after the footy? What trams were you on? Perhaps the ones that were parked in Latrobe Street?
Present simple system on trams is way ahead of old.
Privatisation? Get over it, Jeff!
Rudd would say that…he is a populist by nature to account for his deficit of substance.
And he will extract every ounce of flesh he can to create more fear and havoc out of his version of the world - the Climate Change scenario according to the Gospel of Saint Garnaut and the Business Council of Australia. Well its a cheap and nasty sermon and he will be ripped from the pulpit in disgrace. He has assembled the most lazy and pre-programmed cabinet perhaps in the history of the nation - and its a business as usual - picked on the merit of their lack of expertise and ability to take orders from the big end of town.
The reality is that we will endure climate change as the world forever has but cheap government handouts to maintain the bubble of consumerism and waste is not policy - its wishful thinking combined with the disastrous invisible hand of the free market - ie the club, or the professional lobbyists that direct public policy along this dull and predictable road of disaster and economic collapse.
Rudd can write essays until the cows come home, but it wont change the fact that Australia’s export economy and wasteful transport systems are a legacy of the good times which are no longer rolling - and it was half expectation that many Australians voted him in anticipating real change that we have never seen…rather like obama we are given a literary PM who see’s the world in terms of money in money out - no courage to grab the bull by the horns and spend money on structural change - a leader would take these tough decisions but a person under duress follows the same patterns of spend spend spend - that narrow and suicidal path of ‘economic growth’.
The privatisation of energy in Australia was a mistake and as there is no signs of reversal any arguments of energy or electricity reform are academic - which suits our PM. The very fact that we do not have a strategic energy policy (and never have) is all that needs to be said - whitepapers change zero!!!
The actions taken by the NSW Unions are vindicated now. Apparently, when Jeff Kennett sold off the Victorian Electricity assets, he legislated so that there’s a maximum of monies that can be paid out - $100 million? So, no matter how negligent the Singapore owners of the electrical infrastructure are (allegedly)proven to be, and no matter how many names are on the Class Action, the limit is $100 million. Welcome to Kennett’s view of the world! We could have had the same situation in NSW thanks to Iemma and his bunch of opportunists! And there was a rumour at one time, that the Federal Libs wanted Kennett to get them to the next election. Perhaps now people will wake up and realize, that these bastards would sell of their own mothers if it meant lots of money now! They should be placed in the town square like days of old! It’s called stealing other peoples’ assets and selling them off - they’re OURS!
Ev
Monday, 16 February 2009 4:36:06 PM
“I initially didn’t understand what this article was on about; how could electricity suppliers be liable for these fires? “
Ev, the alleged complaint is, that there were live wires either on the ground, on ‘waving’ around in the air, and people saw sparks etc that could’ve started fires. This sounds a reasonable explanation, and I should think there’d be submissions made to the Royal Commission by residents and others. If neglect or shoddy work or lack or supervision or maintenance could be proven, they may have a strong case. They are allegations only at this stage - nothing’s been proven - yet!
I think that people who wave cigarettes around outside the car window are also negligent. Here we have a record lack of rain, everywhere prior to recent rains as dry as a chip (even along the coastline)horrific heat and people just don’t give a damn. If they don’t want cigarette smells in their car, don’t smoke at all - summer or winter. I just missed one coming through my window a few years ago, and it scared the hell out of me. What if I’d had my grand kids in the car? While I sympathized with survivors being in a state of shock and wanting a cigarette, it wasn’t a good look while we were watching those horrific fires at the same time! It should be a criminal offense, and that might just stop those fools being selfish and possibly destructive!
(Now we’ve had several days of beautiful soaking rain along the coast! Strange country, this one!)
gARy joHnSOn - Who is dat fellow who’s been arrested? There were up to 8 different fires as I understand it. This person is charged with allegedly starting one of them. I hope that people remain calm and allow the legal processes to run their course. We don’t want any more tragedies, and those who are screaming revenge could cause a mis-trial - that wouldn’t solve a thing - it would be a travesty! We should all back off now!
re last line. The return of Pol Pot or a reign of terror is what those responsible should experience. Heads have to roll!!
Remember Ken Davidson- column after column he detailed point by point what has come to pass with the privatisation/ corporatisation of power transport etc. Nobody who could stop the lunacy listened because there brains were full of dollar signs as the utilities were flogged off.
Here we are a country with politicians so inept that they allowed a double roll-out of cables for everything but baulked at undergrounding our power lines in the driest continent with the most flammable trees. Europe did it- becasue of their ice/snow why cant we? ooops guess it would interfere with the shareholders profits!
Last line should have read ‘attempting to punish guilty power companies is on a par with trying to bring government and local councils to justice. Buckleys!
lemme see now, da faulty power lines caused da fire, so da owner of da faulty power lines = arsonist and arsonist should rot in jail
then who is dat guy they got locked up down in melborne?//?? and howcome they keepin his ID a secret??// i smell a rat, is dis guy a scapegoat for da big end of town???// lets shake on it
Sorry - did I hear you say accountability… no, it must have been a typo..
Australia was crawling in energy efficiency buffs in the early ’90s. Their message was that the economy would benefit from reduced energy use and a cultural change to a market selling energy services rather than kWh. Avoiding the greenhouse effect (yes we knew about it then, and the experts gave us 10 years to avoid runaway climate change) was only one of a long list of benefits.
But that would have meant selling less coal. And ahhhh, I can hear it now - ‘competitive advantage’, who was it said that?
accountability is a very latte-like substance around the trough..
The various hyperlinks on this piece seem to have dropped out somewhere between my computer and Crikey.
For third para comes is a quote from the Age, which you can still find on the Canberra Times website.
Apologies to Camera Houston and Michael Bachelard for the misattribution.
“How is the private company that makes money from selling you electricity — and thus becomes more profitable the more of it you use — going to foster energy efficiency?”
This is an issue regardless of whether electricity utilities are privatised or not. Just look at the corporatised government -owned energy utilities (eg Western Power) offering cash prizes for the most expansive and impressive home Christmas lights every December. Rather, the answer to this issue lies in proper regulation of utilities (eg the advanced interval metering programme recently imposed by the Vic Govt on electricity distribution businesses) rather than retaining public ownership of the energy sector.