John Quiggin has posted a withering critique of the arguments that Anna Bligh has put forward for her privatisation program.
The Bligh’s government’s original case for the asset sales announced in the June budget was that the state’s finances had deteriorated drastically since the previous assessment at the time of the March election, as part of the generally declining outlook for the world economy. That argument has collapsed as the Australian and global economies have strengthened with the result that the Queensland state budget managed a surplus for 2008-09, as opposed to the projected $500 million deficit.
It would be possible to argue for some (though not all) of the proposed privatisations on the grounds of economic efficiency, but of course arguments of this kind are no more (and, given the epic failure of financial markets seen over the past two years) arguably less valid than they were before the crisis, at which time Labor rejected them.
That leaves the argument that the asset sales will improve the state’s finances. Such arguments depend on showing that the value derived from selling the assets exceeds the value realised by keeping them in public ownership. In this opinion piece, Bligh attempts to make such a case, but the arguments involve hopelessly invalid apples-and-oranges comparisons. When a policy is defended by such obviously shoddy arguments, the only reasonable inference is that the correct assessment comes out the wrong way.
Read the whole thing!
Of course, the Bligh government is fairly open about the fact that this is really just about satisfying the capriciousness of ratings agencies (the people who brought you the Global Financial Crisis). They have been almost sheepish in putting forward any conceivable economic benefit, as indeed they should be.
I’m not so sure this is the case. The cost of raising capital (and hence having debt) has increased as a result of the GFC. This means it may now be more attractive to pay off the debt than before the GFC.
Secondly I think we need to consider that the government can gain more from investing in opportunities not available to the market (health, eduction, etc) that will provide better ROI than current commercial investments.
That said I’m not in favour of the privatisation as I believe the costs of increased commercialisation outweigh the benefits.
I’d be surprised if the cost of raising capital for governments is greater. In a time of insecurity, governments are a very safe place to park a few billion dollars. They don’t go bankrupt, don’t (these days) default, and in Queensland’s case, have lots of valuable assets. It is definitely more attractive to pay off debt now, but now’s not the time to do so, as that money needs to go somewhere, and private investors aren’t going to soak it up. So, a sensible government would actually be borrowing to fund infrastructure (sound familiar?), soaking up that excess in the workforce where possible, and building things that have a long-term benefit for Australians/Queenslanders. If unemployment in construction/mining has gone up, borrow, retrain the workers, and build a solar thermal plant, for example. Everyone wins.
It is a great piece. They are pushing so much shit up hill on this. And moving now to putting it down my letterbox. Fuck off.
I can’t see that it is anything other than complete incompetence on the government’s part and kow-towing to the money market.
Through the last 5 or so years the Qld government has been buying all the farms it can near Tarong power station – claiming a new mine was going ahead. The EIS was due in March 2007, if I remember correctly. It has never been done. Now all negotiations with the remaining farmers appear to have ceased – quietly vanished in a puff of smoke?
Meanwhile all this land sits there, houses empty – and all at Queensland government expense.
And for whose benefit? The mining company?
Brilliant game this: having the government doing the nasty stuff (evicting landowners) and then sitting with the expense of it, while the company decides not to go ahead?
Brilliant, just brilliant.
And how many times has this kind of stupidity been played out around the state?
Of course, it could reclaim some street cred, by re-vegetating and returning it to some semblance of its pre-agricultural condition. Incompetent and stupid is the obvious conclusion.
Agreed. I like Lennons famous saying ” Everything the government touches turns to shit.”
That’s why it is a good thing they are selling this stuff.
Umm… Peter, a quick Google indicates it was Ringo Starr you are quoting.
I have just cross-posted the following to John Quiggin’s blog site:
In fact, the original excuse put by Bligh, back in May, was that the flood damage on top of the other natural disasters Queensland faced this year was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but that excuse has since been quietly dropped. Perhaps it occrred to them that this excuse would have looked too similar to the excuses of Hurricane Katrina, the Boxing Day 2004 Tusnami and other natural disasters used by unscrupulous thieves to ransack the economies of New Orleans, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand etc., as chronicled so well in Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” of 2007.
The unquoted source in John MacCarthy’s Courier Mail article “A very public problem” of 21 Oct 09 (can’t find online version) reveals that almost certainly the later GFC excuse is a lie:
As I have pointed out elsewhere, I e-mailed Andrew Fraser and Anna Bligh even before the elections were called requesting them that they reveal any intentions to flog off public assets. I pointed out the long list of assets that had been flogged off in previous years without the consent of the people. I concluded:
I repeatedly contacted them during the course of the election in an attempt to get them to either make a firm commitment against privatisation or else be prepared to publicly debate a candidate standing opposed privatisation, which, incredibly at the time, in all of Queensland, was only me.
My requests were ignored.
I also attempted to get the Local ABC station, particularly Madonna King (who has since managed to create an illusion of being one of Queensland’s most outspoken critics of privatisation, or, more accurately, ‘the way’ in which they went about it, rather than privatisation per se.) My attempts were ignored save one ineffectual token attempt. Much of the details can be found in the article “Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties” of 30 Apr 09.
Had they simply treated as ‘newsworthy’ my well-founded and meticulously documented fears that privatisation was an indeed an issue at stake in those elections, it would have been impossible for Bligh and Fraser to have avoided the issue. They would have had to have even given an iron-clad commitment not to flog off assets, or they would have had to defend privatisation.
In the latter case they would not be in Government today.
In the unlikely even that the LNP also came out in favour of privatisation during the elections, all independents including myself would have received a far higher vote and many would have been elected.
Even the Greens, in spite of their strenuous efforts to keep their anti-privatisation policy a secret from the Queensland public, would have gained and Lee Ronan and possibly, even Larrissa Waters would be sitting in the state Parliament today.
Today there would be a hung Parliament and the hand of the 84% plus opposed to privatisation would have been immeasurably stronger.
However, as I said, none of the ABC journalists judged privatsation ‘newsworthy’. Moreover, as Kirsten McLeod of the ABC’s Audience & Consumer Affairs section informed me in a letter of 10 June 09:
Consistent with this they swallowed uncritically pronouncementst by both Lawrence Springborg and a senior Government Minster — Bligh, Lucas or Fraser, I can’t remember which — that “a hung Parliament would be the worst possible outcome” (in Lawrence Springborg’s words) and they systematically refused to give any useful amount of air time to any independent (except on one occasion where the sitting rural independents were interviewed in the course of a single story) nor to even the Greens.
Had they behaved in a slightly less blatantly biassed fashion, or had they recognised then what has since become undeniably obvious, that is, that privatisation is highly newsworthy, the outcome of the election would have been very different.
But they didn’t and because they didn’t, the ABC is as much culpable as anyone for the appalling circumstances now faced by the Queensland public in late 2009, not only in regard to privatisation, but in regard to almost every conceivable aspect of state governance.
The incompetence and likely corruption of the Queensland Governmet approaches that of many past fabled Third World banana republics and they are almost as unaccountable as any military dictatorship.
The question is not whether or not the Queensland Government has a leg to stand on an more.
The Question is are the Queensland public are going to lie down quietly as Andrew Fraser and Anna Bligh continue to destroy our quality of life and economic, social and ecoligical viability, or are we going to stand up to them?
The unions response, in particular, is a joke, and that even includes left-wing unions. I know many workers are itching to take industrial action to stop privatisation, and letters to the Courier Mail as well as comments on online forums indicated that many members of the public, even those not normally inclined to support unionism, would have enthusiastically supported union action against privatisation.
But they did nothing, except stage a few token protests and pursue their silly strategy of ‘convincing’ a public who has long since stated its overwhelming and consistent rejection of privatisation, that privatisation is bad.
How would Queensland’s Unions look to unionists in other countries who have fought, and won, against military dictatorships.
For the next two and a half years, they have seem to no better strategy to offer than for all of us to stand, metaphorically speaking, with our arms crossed, gritting our teeth and glaring at a Government that has ‘betrayed’ us, as those QR workers depicted on that large billboard are doing in Bligh’s electorate at the moment, whilst doing nothing more, in the meantime, to stop them from continuing to play out that betrayal.
And what will happen if Labor is booted out and the LNP wins Government in 2012?
If the LNP remains true to its current stated opposition to privatisation but finds itself bound by contracts entered into by the Bligh, then how do we reverse that?
Personally, I would counsel the LNP Government to simply tear up those contracts, but I wouldn’t count on them doing that.
There is no reason for the unions not to act and act today to stop privatisation.
They need not even strike.
They need only threaten to strike unless privatisation is put to a public referendum.
And they need not even demand that.
They need only demand that Bligh and or Fraser agree to justify the fire sale in a proper televised public debate (with a competent debater against privatisation), lasting at least an hour.
If even just one of the many Trade Unions purportedly opposed to privatisation did that then the Government’s privatisation plans would be abandoned tomorrow.
Given that the unions are unlikely to lift a finger, I think it is up to the rest of us to do something.
I think someone should set up a pettion to the Governor calling on her to sack this Government so that new elections can be called.
I see this as necessary in spite of the obvious difficulties:
1. This may appear to run counter to my own strong objections to the sacking of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975 and the sacking of the NSW State Lang Government in 1932.
2. The Governor may not have the actual constitutional power to do so.
Nevertheless, I believe that is essential that the Queensland public make known as emphatically as possible their objection to the blatant deceit that this Government engaged in in order to get re-elected.
Whether of not the Governor is willing, or able to act, the people of Queensland need to make known their objection to this Government continuing to misrule this state in the way that they have.
They need to make known to whoever it is who is considering entering into secretive contracts and deals with this Government, particularly in regard to the $15 billion fire sale, that those contracts do not have the consent of the Queensland people and that a future Government that enjoys the support of the people of Queensland should not feel bound to honour any such contracts.
A word of advice, daggett: get your own blog, or at least ask for a guest post. Don’t put your bloody PhD thesis in a comment thread.
In blog comments concision is all. What you said above may be brilliant or terrible, but we’ll never know because we’ll never read it. Plus you’re being rude to the blog’s owner.
I read it.
In theory, these arguments should be straightforward economic decisions. If somebody offers more than the valuation in your balance sheet, you should sell; otherwise not. But it isn’t that easy.
There are plenty of major public sector assets that have supposedly been valued on the basis of present value of discounted net returns, but have been given grossly inflated valuations. It seems that many asset valuation models routinely leave out huge chunks of indirect costs and also fail to take into account the joint role of other assets in generating those returns.
One way to spot these is to check whether the holder of the asset is generating reasonable return on assets (7 – 10%). Typically, low ROA in the public sector is ascribed to inefficiency. In my view, it’s far more often because the organisation has a hideously overvalued asset. If so, it should be sold asap to any sucker willing to pay within a bull’s roar of the balance sheet valuation.
Jenny, the problem is that the new owners will attempt to up the revenue in order to meet their expected ROI. While this may achieve their goal it can cause havoc in the local economy as the private owner wrings out the prosperity from the newly captured market.
Thanks, hannah for having read my post.
Perhaps Derrida Derider should have at least started to read it before flaming me. If it was truly waffle, and it could have been shown to be, then there may have been some justification for what he wrote.
I am well aware that posts should be generally kept short, and generally do keep them short (except when I have a lot to respond to as is the case on another forum at the moment).
However on this occasion, I thought I had a lot that was worth saying on the issue that wasn’t generally known and that is why I wrote a long post.
“Perhaps Derrida Derider should have at least started to read it before flaming me.”
Flaming you? What DD wrote is right upthread there, and you linked to it yourself. Do you really think that polite and genuinely helpful advice is “flaming”?
“If it was truly waffle, and it could have been shown to be, then there may have been some justification for what he wrote.”
No, what he wrote was explicitly, obviously, and only about the length of your comment. Hence completely justified.
I read your comments on the other thread, regardless of length, because it’s become something of a habit. But DD’s completely right – I was genuinely interested to hear you talk about something else for a change, but found myslef scrolling through cos it was too long.
Do yourself a favour and take on advice from such patient, non-snarky and statesmanlike blogging veterans as DD.
This is me trying to be genuine and friendly too – no bullshit. I’m not as good at it though.
And DD – [all together now] – get a blog dude.
Hey guys Daggett does have a blog.
And Daggett it would have been so much easier to read and comprehend if you had spread that over 3 comments.
Ah yes, good point Jules, and well made.
In which case, the thing to do would be to write a punchy summary here, with a link to the full text at Daggett’s own site.
Jeez people where are we?
In the remedial reading class where unless its short and punchy we can’t comprehend?
On Today Tonight whatever?
Yeah I found daggets comment a bit long winded but still worth the effort.
And if something is worth saying and reasonably well written then I give it ago.
There are enough pollies out there speaking in 10 second sound bites to keep those with short attention spans satisfied.
I’d rather see some detail and length than cut conversation down to short, often smart arse to and fro’s.
Dog-gone and dagnabit, Daggett! I read your post – dam good too. I’ve never been to your blog – don’t know who you are or where your blog is – but I’ll try and rectify that.
I think if you would like to stand against Andrew Fraser in the next state election, you’ll find quite a number of locals very prepared to begin now on working with you.
Perhaps an “Independent Labour” Ticket?
By exchanging preferences with The Greens, you may even unseat the him.
Some of the policies would obviously include full retrospective disclosure of the sale contracts – ie none of this hiding behind “commercial in-confidence” – which time and time again is used to hide the true extent of the hand-in-glove workings between business and government.
For Queensland to have sunk so quickly back into the mire – as highlighted by so many commentators during the 20th anniversary of the Fitzgerald Inquiry – shows either gross incompetence, an arrogance and stupidity of astonishing proportions or – dare I say it: the “C” word. Or all three?
“By exchanging preferences with The Greens, you may even unseat (fraser)”…
That won’t work, but by then, if Larissa is unavailable, (having picked up a senate quota), and she is prepared to anoint you, urge her constituency to bestow their 24.9% three party preferred votes on you, AND you can make the tory machine droids see sense, …
(that they will never get up in such a green electorate, with its poison payload of watermelon greens who, when it comes to the crunch, from the inevitable third position, deliver their preferences to labor, regardless of official party injunctions, and effectively deliver the seat to labor on a plate,) …
and deploy the Freemantle strategy, ie run dead, or actually not at all, then Fraser is just so much roadkill* ( he only got 38% of the 3 party preferred, 1.5% ahead of the tory, absolutely depending on them watermelon preferences for his seat, bigtime).
*Apologies to kangaroos everywhere, for the odious comparison.
The huge and pointed unions-financed, asset-sale driven, ‘Bligh Sells Qld Out’ billboard on Gladstone Road (arterial, nearly the cbd, thus getting major eyeball share from south bound/sourced traffic) will be biting. It must be galling for her to see it every morning on her jog/ trip to the shop for papers and milk.
This is at the night-owl, so locals, here in her electorate, can’t help but notice. It may very well be having an effect: At the last west end street festival, a cuppla weeks ago, just around the corner from where her electoral
fortificationoffice is, and where she used to be the very pinup of pollies, her walkthrough with greg and spooks looked a grim duty. Previously unimaginable (anti-asset sales) abuse from lubricated crowdsters was hurled her way. ( What’s that classic pollie lament, ” A fete worse than death”?)Maybe it’s possible, with the anti-assets sales/ betrayal scab there to be picked at, that the same ‘freemantle’ strategy (19) ( tories don’t run in seats with enough green votes for the labor-preferncing watermelon brigade to be big enough to guarantee the tories can never win) could see Anna lose her seat.
I reckon she’ll happy to be taking up her reward position with bechtel or whover it is that will be enjoying her benificence in delivering up the goodies, ASAP. She’s got her spot in history, first woman premier and all that, hubby’s in a good spot, she’s not mad with greed, and values having a real life too much to have to put up with the daily merde ( if mark, paul norton and kim are on the money, comments 47,48 & 51 about her only getting the gig on condition of being, please pardon the canin-ist expression, Bill Ludwig’s bitch, and looking after Mike Kaiser), of being only a cipher, with no real power, the boys of the right doing all the deals. That really would suck.
“Dog-gone and dagnabit, Daggett! I read your post – dam good too. I’ve never been to your blog – don’t know who you are or where your blog is – but I’ll try and rectify that.”
Just visited said blog and was alarmed to find a tab on 9/11 that contains a whole lot of posts that support the bizarre claim that the US government was behind the whole thing.
So, don’t think that James would be an ideal “independent labor” candidate for anything.
Moreover, having read the entire post above (don’t care much about the length, just its lack of clarity and cohesion), my favourite part was the call for the Governor to sack the Government. The lack of constitutional grounds doesn’t seem to bother James too much!
However, that is kind of odd, given the statment below:
“The incompetence and likely corruption of the Queensland Governmet approaches that of many past fabled Third World banana republics and they are almost as unaccountable as any military dictatorship.”
Setting aside the fact that as far as I know Bligh has yet to launch any military action against her opponents, nor divert public money to private Swiss bank accounts, it makes it hard to know whether James is for or against upholding constitutions or not!
Bizarre…
Labor outsider @ 21
You haven’t been paying attention.
Labour Outsider. Mate, thanks for your comment about the “Daggett Blog”. I find it unlikely that someone running as govenor of New Jersey would be contributing to an LP thread on the ineptitude of the Qld government. But I can’t find another “Daggett Blog”. Doggone eh!
But I think the point remains that there are a fair number of locals interested in a longer term effort against Andrew Fraser.
Would the wilfull pauperization of our future through asset sales be a sufficient millstone around his pretty effective local campaign strategies, I don’t know.
Would there be enough potential to oust him? Time will tell. With or without Larissa in the frame.
But as Danny @ #18 suggests The Greens are gathering enough to maybe pick up a Senate seat – and I look forward to it!
Perhaps Larissa can add another plank to her next (Senate) tilt: a Senate inquiry into the probity of Qld’s asset sales.
The recent NZ experience where the government bought back a completely run-down railway for some hundreds of millions, lost the public purse twice: when it was sold for a song and bought back at what many commentators said was an absurdly high price (and left the real profit making part of the enterprise – the north / south ferries – in private hands).
If politicians are blatantly mis-representing the financials behind the “need” for privatisation, does that open the debate up to that other option: retrospective re-nationalisation, without compensation?
Does it also boil down to how much flogging the public will tolerate? When we are pleasantly comfortable, we tolerate a huge amount and merely scoff at the pollies and their antics.
But we have a little thing called a GFC and a brewing environmental crunch, both of which appear to be a pretty large and open-ended chasm.
Will that make the public take more notice and be more demanding for accountability of their governments? Let’s hope so!
PS. Did you miss the discussions around the time of the 20th anniversary of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and the comments about how quickly contempt for due process gets forgotten?
Labour Outsider wrote,
Just visited said blog and was alarmed to find a tab on 9/11 that contains a whole lot of posts that support the bizarre claim that the US government was behind the whole thing.
Martin Luther King famously said in 1967 when he changed his view and opposed the Vietnam War:
As I wrote on the now extremely long forum discussion about 9/11:
… I fully accepted the US Government version at the time and (unfortunately) did not even begin to seriously question it until 6 years later.
Since then, particularly beginning 14 months ago, now I began to seriously study 9/11 and found that the whole Official US Government story about 9/11 was a pack of lies. As I explained at length in that post and elsewhere, on that forum, I didn’t just change my view overnight. I carefully read and listened to arguments for and against the official account of 9/11 including a radio debate between Richard Gage and ‘sceptic’ Michael Shermer to whose e-sceptic e-mail list I was subscribed at the time, and who I greatly respected until that point.
As a result of that debate my view shifted firmly to be in support of the 9/11 Truth movement. It happens that quite a few people in Australia are also aware that the Official account about 9/11 is a lie, but choose to remain silent. If you approach most people who sell far left Socialist Newspapers including Green Left on the street, there’s a good chance they will put to you essentially what was put to Martin Luther King when, in 1967, he started to state his opposition to the Vietnam war, as he related earlier in that abovementioned speech:
Of course, the parallel between those who questioned Dr. King’s adopting a stance against the Vietnam War and those on the left who are silent about 9/11 in 2009 in Australia is not exact, because the latter purport to oppose the wars for which 9/11 was used as a pretext.
Nevertheless, I am sure that if MLK were around today, his views on those who remain silent on 9/11 would be essentially the same.
Your comment, essentially dismissing me as a nut for having made my views on 9/11 known confirm that it would be easier in many ways for me to remain silent on 9/11.
In many ways it would be easy, also, in a more practical sense to remain silent on 9/11 because, like most people appalled at the direction in which our society is headed I already had more than enough concerns before I worked out the truth about 9/11. It would have been easy for me to come up with excuses not to provide practical help to those few decent and clear-headed people in the country today, who are prepared to tell the truth about 9/11, but I am not going to leave them in the lurch.
One way I lend them practical support is to make sure that I attend the Truth Action protests that occur on the 11th of each month all over the world. In Brisbane they are currently held outside Central Station.
Another way I lend them practical support is to publicise the forthcoming tour by Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. He and other members of the US 9/11 Truth Movement, brought to Australia are enormous expense will be in Brisabane at the Clayfield Bowling Club on Thursday 17 Novemeber from 7PM. I urge you to attend. I can guarantee that if you go there and listen to the case to be put by Richard Gage with an open mind you will be convinced at the end of the night.
On the other hand, if you are so sure that the case of the 9/11 Truth Movement is wrong, why not try to prove me and Richard Gage wrong by coming along and putting to him the most difficult questions you can come up with at that publc meeting?
I suggest that you don’t pass up that opportunity unless you have other pressing commitments on that night. A number of ordinary people on ordinary incomes in this country are likely to be out of pocket to the tune of many thousands of dollars even if the tour goes well.
Further details of meetings in Sydney on the weekend of 14 and 15 November and in Melbourne on Tuesday 17 November can be found here and at thehardevidence.com.
I don’t think I am necessarily the best candidate to stand against Andrew Fraser.
If someone else more articulate, more experienced and better qualifed, who stood for essentially all the same policies that I stood for in March 2009 (and, prior to that, in the Brisbane City Council elections of March 2008) stood for election, then I would happily throw my weight behind such a candidate.
However, as it turns out, I happened to be the only candidate in all of Queensland who understood that privatisation was an issue at stake in those elections and who took a stand on it.
For years prior to that I had attempted to persuade the Greens to adopt a few of the basic commonsense policies that the Labor Party had sacrificed on the altar of ‘free market’ fundamentalism, in particular, emphatic opposition to privatisation, a peoples’ bank and direct Government spending on useful and sustainable public works, but with no luck. I did so in 2003 as a member of the ACT Greens and I have tried since on numerous occasions as a relatively sympathetic outsider. In October 2006, I tried to put to the Greens and others at a large public meeting against the Hale Street Bridge white elephant that they sponsor a broad coalition of independents to challenge all sitting Councillors, both Labor and Liberal in the forthcoming council elections. My written proposal which I attempted to put at that meeting was sidelined on the basis that “it would be referred to Greens committee”.
I never heard back from the Greens.
In 2008 they did precisely what they haved done during every election before and every election since, which was to run a narrowly based campaign, controlled from the top down, focused only on a few of the most limited motherhood Green issues and I think the results speak for themselves.
Campbell Newman’s stranglehold on power was strengthened and he has been able to continue with his massviely costly white elephant construction projects and overdevelopment, largely destroying the social fabric of Brisbane in the process.
On Sunday 22 March, the day before Anna Bligh announced the early early elections, I approached Bob Brown and Ronan Lee after a Press Conference and tried to put to them, amongst other things that the Greens campaign against privatisation. Bob Brown’s answer was that they wouldn’t because they would have been ignored by the media if they did.
Personally I don’t see how the media could have ignored the Greens any more than it turned out they were. To the contrary, I think it could only have raised the profile of the Greens immensely if they had pointed out Labor’s past record of privatisation and demanded a commitment from Fraser and Bligh not to sell any more assets.
Anyhow, Bob Brown, Drew Hutton, Ronan Lee all walked off and in the ensuing election campaign no Greens candidate that I am aware of, bar one, very briefly, breathed a word in opposition too privatisation.
The results speak for themselves. In spite of dissatisfaction with both the major parties and having the profile of Ronan Lee a sitting member of Parliament, the Greens actually got a smaller vote (if we remember that this time they contested all seats for the first time) than previously and Ronan Lee lost his seat.
In spite of that I am not hostile to the Greens. I hope that, in future, they get a high vote (although, obviously not at my own expense or the expense of other good independents) and win more seats but anyone who expects them to show the way forward, given their lamentable past record, is deluded.
My apologies for another long post.
By intention was to break it up with bold subheadings, but I used <blockquote></blockquote> tags in place of <strong></strong> tags and vice versa. Can’t fix that now. I think duplicating that post to fix that would not be helpful overall.
Labor Outsider wrote:
Yes, it does. Why don’t you read my post again properly? I acknowledged that the Governor may not have the power nor the will to sack the Government, but explained why I believe that the Queensland public express the view that this is what they wish her to do.
Queensland is not being Governed democratically today in any true sense. The clear wishes of the Queenslad public in regard to privatisation, petrol subsidies (which I personally oppose, BTW), forced loca governmen amaogalmations, the Traveston Dam, dictatorial state Government seizure of local Government planning powers, etc., etc. are being wantonly and flagrantly disregarded.
There can be no doubt whatsover that Anna Bligh would not even be in office today if she had revealed her true intentions back in March, yet she and her Government arrogatly presume to have the right not only to continue to impose those decisions upon us, but even to spend our own taxpayers’ dollars to lie to us in defence of those decisions.
We are going to be both heavily in debt and left without any family silver paid for by us, our parents and grandparents if they are not stopped. If there was ever a clear case for people having the right to recall elected representatives, who are no longer governing in accord with the people’s will, then this is surely it.
Even if it proves impossible to remove this Government, at least people should make known that what decisions are being made today, are being made without their consent and without any electoral mandate, whatsoever. Those, who intend to unscrupulously exploit those decisions should then consider themselves warned that a future Government, that enjoys the support of the Queenland public, should not consider itself bound to honour those corrupt arrangements.
I wrote:
Then Labor Outsider wrote:
How members of the Queensland Government intend to gain in future from the theft of publicly owned assets that they are facilitating today is unclear, and obviously it would be difficult to prove, whether it were to be through Swiss bank accounts or through other means, such as simply positions on company boards subsequent to retirement or job offers to sons and daughters, etc.
However, that is really beside the point at the moment at the moment.
The Queensland Government may not have launched military action, but they have stooped to using Howard’s Work Choices legislation to prevent workers who stand to be affected by privatisation from holding workplace meetings to discuss the issue. On at least one occasion, they threatened to dock four hours’ pay from any worker who attended such a meeting, regardless of teh meeting’s length. It’s a shame that the workers did not turn around and take the full 4 hours off, or, indeed, the rest of the day. The Queensland public would have warmly applauded them for having done so.
Daggett seriously … privatisation is obviously a big thing with you yes?
If you had spent the last 14 months brushing up your search engine optimisation and online marketing skilz you could actually have had a serious influence on the privatisation debate. Instead you got distracted by someone else’s bullshit.
“Personally I don’t see how the media could have ignored the Greens any more than it turned out they were. To the contrary, I think it could only have raised the profile of the Greens immensely if they had pointed out Labor’s past record of privatisation and demanded a commitment from Fraser and Bligh not to sell any more assets.”
See thats a valid point, and yet the only thing people are gonna remember about you from this site is “Daggett is the mad conspiracy theorist.”
And if you’d really got a handle on blowing your own trumpet effectively online … well that idea could have more traction than it currently does. At the moment its all about you not any effective ideas you might have. (This is meant to be constructive btw, not just an attack on you for the sake of it. I hope you know you “Can do better.”)
jules, so lovely. Walk on by. And think.
State ALP government have to actually stop and some point and return to evidence-based policy on these questions.
I say, eg, to the Victoria government: you’ve already publicly accepted that Kennett’s privatised rail in Melbourne has
a. Been a service provision disaster, and
b. Has not saved the Victorian taxpayer one single cent.
Its important to actually reflect on the evidence. There is nothing economically rational about this situation. Even the most uncritical Friedmanite would have to concede that the only thing worse than a public monopoly is a private one.
Nationalise it! We dont have a user-pays system. We have a user pays *twice* system: once to Connex, and then via our taxes in the form of Vic govt subsidies.
This was suposed to save the state money. Its hasnt.
Policy FAIL – therefore, renationalise it. Then the state will reap the big profits going to Connex, despite offering a 3rd rate service. It can pay for social policy initiatives. It really is that simple.
There may have been a case for asset sales as the response to a real financial crisis. However, the better than expected recovery from the GFC gives the government an excuse to take time out and review what action is still justified and to quietly drop the bits that were never justified.
At the moment, Anna seems to be flapping around from photo opp to photo opp instead of stopping and thinking through what the Qld gov has to do actually make life in Qld better than it was when the Nats were in power. She also needs to think about her power base – effectively banning abortion, fighting to pay Qld teachers less than other in other states and a failure to improve public education, health etc. and now asset sales must be making Labor supporters think that they have little to lose if the socialist country party gets back into power.
Jules,
YOu seem not to have comprehended my post quoting MLK and JFK and a number of other posts I have addressed to you on the other thread. If you think I am wrong about 9/11, then prove me wrong, (but I think, if you objectively look at the debate on the other thread, now that Bob and Adrew Reynolds are, in effect, arguing against Isaac Newtons’s Second Law of Motion, you would concede that I am right).
If you can prove me wrong, then fine. Your point about me being seen as “daggett is the mad conspiracy theorist” would be correct.
However, if I am right, then should I spurn JFK’s and Solon’s counsel to not avoid controversy, just because some people regard taking a stance in support of the 9/11 Truth Movement as off-limits?
If I am right in my view that people, innocent of the crime of the murder of almost 3,000 US citizens on 11 September 2001, have been falsely blamed by those who did commit the crime and been bombed, shelled, shot, killed, maimed, jailed, tortured and displaced from their homes in their many hudreds of thousands as a result, should I spurn MLK’s counsel and remain silent about this?
If people judge me as loopy because I speak my mind, then too bad.
But, as I point out, we are never going to rectify all that is rotten with the world if we attempt to sweep such a pivotal part of the overall picture as 9/11 under the carpet.
Lefty E,
Of course you are right.
However, I think we need t0 recognise that most of the political class are no longer interested in looking after the public interest. They are there, apart from to look after themselves to help the corporate elites ransack the economy.
If you have not read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” of 2007 go out and buy a copy. Everyone I know who has read it thinks it is brilliant. (Personally I think it is flawed in one or two aspects, and I could have skimmed over Chapter 2, but I still think it is head and shoulders above anything else that has been written so far this century.)
It shows how the rich have deliberately exploited natural and economic disasters to advance their interests. Their criteria for success is no longer in any way related to the overall benefit of society.
If it was possible to reason with the likes of Bligh, Fraser or down in Victoria, Brumby or Bracks, it would have happened long before now. The fact that they persist in policies that not only redistribute wealth away from the poor, but, on top of that, reduce the overall wealth available our society aas a whole, only to enrich an unbelievably selfish and shortsighted few, confirm that Klein was right.
John D,
You need to appreciate that Bligh couldn’t care less about her power base.
My own theory about why she failed to act decisively to legislate for abortion reform, as she could so easily do, is that it suits her to have political activists tied up for years fighting these causes. The energy that many are to expend trying to bring about abortion law reform is energy they won’t be able to spend fighting privatisation, the Traveston Dam and dictatorial state government planning powers.
My guess is that was also the motivation behind her decision to pour rat poison fluoride into our drinking water.
Picket State Parliament to stop the theft of Queensland’s public assets
Tell Anna Bligh to get her hands off OUR public assets!
Time/Date: 4:30-6pm, Tues Nov 10
Meet Outside State Parliament, Cnr George & Alice Sts, City
For more information, visit saveourpublicassets.org
It would be interesting to know how much of this is coal related. If so is it a pre-emptive move to avoid the ETS compensation row that has come up in Victoria? Arguably some services albeit fee based may be what used to be called a ‘natural monopoly’. In that case perhaps they should not have make returns that will please shareholders. For example in the supply of electricity and gas to households there may be a token PR effort on handy tips for lower bills. In reality they want customers to spend spend spend. However a publicly owned enterprise may have the freedom to introduce radical policies. Private ownership creates another layer of difficulty in getting certain outcomes; then again it may be more efficient.