Mood:
rushedTopic: nsw govt
Costa as NSW Treasurer correctly stated at the recent ALP conference that Iemma won the "unwinnable" election, which conversely is another way of saying Bob Carr left an indefensible NSW Premiership: A flaky dishonest premiership that always wanted to privatise public energy assets since 1997.
Yet it's the same policy flake, ex premier, Macquarie Bank carpet bagger, in Bob Carr who is still pushing the same spiv Labor agenda 10 years later. And not declaring his financial conflict as often as not too on 'our' ABC. Such advisers are very unsafe for NSW Labor to place their trust in. And much of the democratic institutions of NSW are a wake up to this reality. It's hardly a union monolith against public energy selloff. And it's going to get rough given the issues at stake: MP bullies 'reduced Lynda to tears'
The most influential press has been SMH's John Garnaut re China Inc stalking the $15 billion NSW public assets - see front pager last Friday -and Monday follow up: Looks to be offline, omitted from 8 day archive index, but here's a mention from the pay per view listing:
More to gain and less to fear from China power giant
Sooner or later some anti-privatisation activist will start doing background checks on China Huaneng Group, which is at the front of the queue to bid for $15 billion in NSW's power assets. They'll see that Sydney might soon be powered by the world's biggest corporate contributor to global warming. Sydney Morning Herald 12/05/2008 Cost - $2.20 957 words
The same story runs in The Age under a very different headline spin:
NSW power play stirs up a giant of global warming | theage.com.au
[What is strange is that a May 15 story called Emboldened China won't be bullied by the West any more is on the May 12 archive index (where the John Garnaut or Ross Gittins story might be) and as best we can tell never appeared in the print copy until today!]
Then combine with Gittins same Monday 12 May business press (again cutely omitted from the archive index but found here "Why the unions fight so hard to keep electricity publicly owned") in the SMH that deplores alleged union feather nesting in the public energy sector. True to his expertise he completely ignores the pressing environmental dimension.
Gittins says it's "gullible" to ignore this stodgy union inefficiency. Only we saw the unions deliver on asbestos justice. We saw in late 2006 John Robertson as chief of Unions NSW marching in alliance with the NSW Conservation Council and the Rising Tide Coalition against global warming on Ch31 community tv (we vetted the legals for the programme too).
Then Garnaut junior points out China Inc's massive carbon emissions is so 20C political economy, but that (last paragraph p20)
"Most importantly, however, inviting leading Chinese corporations [vertically integrated as Garnaut admits to CPC central govt] to work within Australia's regulatory system will assist their transition into globally responsible players."
Now who is being gullible Ross Gittins after reading that? SMH or the anti privatisation alliance including former Liberal Party NSW leader, ex navy man, Peter Debnam as reported here, and his own statement here?:
ELECTRICITY PRIVATISATION STATEMENT BY PETER DEBNAM MP - 12TH MAY 2008
Call us economic nationalists but why don't you put those western biases aside and take defector Chen Yonglin's word that it is "suicide" to let China Inc/CPC exercise full influence here in Australia.
Don't assume we are any different to Tibet, or East Turkistan, Burma, North Korea. Believe Amnesty International not the Beijing Olympic Committee. And the clues are Garnaut's own reportage anyway with this tickle up of an Australian mining house in China by the looks.
All this is true even as Garnaut junior is also right surely to say :
"The Chinese leadership knows it has a social, economic and environmental disaster on its hands and needs to act fast to reduce pollution and greenhouse as emissions."
Notice the same China Inc power company runs nuke reactors for energy production but is well known as a dual use sector for weaponry in an expanding military with eyes on Taiwan, the Pacific and Africa resources.
And NSW public energy assets are in the picture and you want to devolve all that policy balance to a foreign investment review board and deal Parliament out?
We say get real and who exactly is gullible? The truth more likely is we are seeing the beginnings of the transformation of the 20C political economy into a 21C one with some major changes in priorities and true representation of the public interest. It is increasingly clear Iemma is from the last century.
