What a disgrace!

I would like to see how those 60% of conference delegates justify their shameful surrender before the trade unionists and ordinary workers that they’re supposed to represent, not to mention the broader Queensland public, who were never told of these privatisation plans at the last election, and who are every bit as opposed to privatisation.

So, did anyone else here attend the protest against privatisation today?

There should definitely be another at the opening of Parliament on 16 June.

the conference has passed a motion acknowledging that the sales are going ahead.

I think it would have been a case of wake up in fright if they’d voted LNP, as it has been with the ALP.

During the election, on 7 March their editorial stated: “… if Mr Springborg wants to achieve his aim of returning the Budget to surplus by 2012 he will have to implement a redundancy program and he will have to sell assets. The voters understand this …”

So, even it acknowledged that privatisation was an issue at stake in the recent elections, if not from the quarter that it has now eventuated.

However, the Courier Mail made no other effort to alert its readers to this fact.

People must not allow this to be used as some kind of bargaining chip that would in any way sweeten the outrage of the asset fire sale.

The dishonesty is beyond belief.

Has anyone got a copy of the Courier Mail?

I couldn’t locate the story about Bligh’s own branch calling for her resignation. (I will have another look at it when I get it back off my neighbour.) I would have thought that such a sensational story deserved to be on the front page.

Having briefly slapped the Government on the wrist for it’s blatant deceit, in a short article by Steven Wardill on Thursday and in yesterday’s editorial, the Courier Mail is now running full steam ahead in its clamouring for privatisation.

“Successful grain train movement has been at a pitiful 20 to 30 percent over the past three week, meaning that more than 9000t per day is moving by truck to Brisbane.”- source Agforce

Just look at that figure quoted, 9 000 t/day by truck & think about the extra fuel being burnt in this operation against an improved situation where QR were to run an efficient freight business. Other results from this inefficiency is, trucks are on the road with cars going through Brisbane to the port & increased damage to the roads. Take a drive past Toowoomba on the Warrego highway not only will you note a road deteriorating to dangerous levels but also giant heaps of grain tarped down awaiting transport.

Now I’m not advocating immediate fire sale privatisation in the time of economic downturn will solve this problem, but something needs to be done. “without a guaranteed service level agriculture will be shoved off rail all together under either Government or private ownership.” Agforce

Good: Queensland Forests.

Bad: Queensland motorways.

Ugly: QR coal freight and coal terminals.

Indifferent: Port of Brisbane.

If anyone wants to know the story behind these words in the editorial in today’s Courier Mail:

Ms Bligh’s explanation for this is that, because her Treasurer might have led one reporter to believe that the Government had not ruled out the sale of assets, she was not being dishonest about the issue before the poll. That is simply pathetic, the political equivalent of a child crossing her fingers behind her back to avoid being caught out fibbing.

Madonna King put the question to Andrew Fraser on my behalf and mentioned my named during the interview. It was the one attempt by the ABC to raise this issue during the whole of the election as far as I am aware, and an extremely lame attempt at that. I have written of this in “Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties” of 30 Apr 09.

As far as I am aware, I was the only candidate who contesting those elections, who anticipated the outrage that is now unfolding before our eyes and attempted to do something to prevent it.

If anyone here is going to the state ALP conference this weekend and intends to stand up to the Bligh/Fraser junta please read articles at candobetter.org/QldElections, where you should be able to find ammunition that will help you to tear them to shreds.

See report in the Courier Mail.

Good on them!

At least some in the Labor Party still have backbones.

Heh!

I can’t believe the emotional, silly responses to the asset sales program. How do you expect the State to finance its spending needs in the current climate? You would prefer Bligh to sack teachers? Close down hospitals? Or just conjure up money from thin air?

Paulus, it was the LNP before the election who were indulging in magic pudding economics, by extracting a savage productivity dividend from existing government expenditure, not sacking anyone, maintaining existing government services and enhancing them in many areas with totally unbelievable promises, maintaining expenditure on infrastructure and not going into debt. It made them pretty much unelectable if you had any concern about the conduct of Queensland’s affairs.

In this case all the entities to be sold are trading profitably and I gather all need capital expenditure. Private enterprise is going to have to find the debt or equity finance to do what’s necessary, and charge enough to service the funds employed. As derrider derider said on the other thread, what we are looking at here is window dressing, partly for the benefit of the electorate and partly to appease the ratings agencies, and Bligh and Fraser have admitted that there are no guarantees in that quarter.

As to the in principle question, I think you have to take each case on it’s merits. I know nothing about Forest Plantations Queensland and have no opinion about it. My main concerns are in areas providing monopoly or near monopoly type services to the public and the cost of entry for competition is high. So the butcher shops can go private, although there may have been other considerations and market failure at the time.

I am also concerned in areas such as hospitals and schools where the services provided may be more narrowly defined or distorted for profit. Moreover there is a temptation to take short-cuts on the quantity and quality of staff to the detriment of the service provided.

In this case Bligh/Fraser have avoided selling services provided directly to the public, although the Queensland Motorways thing is curious where the tolling franchise is being sold while the road ownership is kept. On my simple view it can’t be too complicated to make money out of collecting tolls, but I might be missing something.

The QR Coal Network is a strange case. As Mark said, Queensland public services depend on cross subsidy. You could never raise locally enough money to build and operate a school at Weipa or Mornington Island. Making money out of moving coal can’t be too hard. In the early days I understand royalties were so low that rail charges was about all we got out of it.

So this whole thing is motivated, I think, by issues based on perception rather than reality, dressed up to look like brave and visionary action in the face of a crisis. Whatever the rationalities or otherwise of opposition to the sale, the opposition, if talk-back is any guide, is emotionally based and visceral, not susceptible to rational arguments and in many cases ignorant of the facts. If you are not impressed with the arguments here, try talk-back.

So politically the whole thing can’t work.

So Queensland is not saving $600 million pa, it’s getting $600 million in a new tax

It has been of great annoyance to me the use of the word “subsidy” when relating to the fuel rebate being handed back to Queensland motorists. Go check out the link to RACQ Brian placed in the post for this thread. My memory goes back to 1997 & I thought at the time, why call this a subsidy, is there an ulterior motive for naming it as such somewhere down the track? Anna hasn’t been subsidising a pollutant out of the Qld treasury funds & the goodness of her dear little heart. She has been merely handing on funds that the Feds have been giving Qld.

Now despite what I have just wrote I don’t totally disagree with the first part of the comment #13 Go Troppo. But let’s be honest about it, this is a new tax. If as part of the effort to reduce carbon emissions we need to a tax fuel, fine, but only after a proper investigation of the full ramifications for all of the large decentralised state of Qld. It is as Brian wrote in comment #18, “an empty gesture”; “unintended consequences”.