Mood:
incredulousTopic: big media
On the issue of the sale (sell out?) of NSW power assets we keep reading the cannard of the 1997 sale proposal being worth $30 /$25 billion then only $15B under Iemma in 2007 and now only $5B (or $3B after the coal mine).
These are not the same asset bundle. As pointed out by John Kaye MP (Greens) some years ago the 1997 proposal included the poles and wires which may be Transgrid authority.
No doubt there are other variations in the asset profile for the 3 DIFFERENT sale proposals.
For so called professional journalists or opinion writers in Fairfax and News Ltd in the space of 2 days to get their articles wrong by a mere $15B while promoting their critique is an outrage of public misinformation, probably as bad as the performance of the NSW Govt itself.
No wonder the Govt is so bad. The 4th estate is a sad projection of incompetence. The irony is that this makes the case for Wikileaks regarding actual sourcing of information to cross check the dopes in the big media.
Van Onselen's story may not be online but it appears at p100 today of the Sydney Sunday Telegraph.
Verrender's piece in the weekend Sydney Morning Herald is here:
Seller's remorse hits as power station buyers jump for joy
One stupid quote here:
"At just $5.3 billion, with maybe another $2 billion to come, NSW taxpayers have been royally shafted, ripped off and taken for a ride. At least, that's what the critics would have us believe. And, superficially at least, it's difficult to argue with them.
In 1997, those same assets were in the books at $25 billion. But within two years, the value had plummeted to $16 billion."
