Premier Mike Baird’s proposal for a sale of half the state’s electricity poles and wires, which was taken to party room meetings of Liberal and National MPs on Tuesday, is bad news for electricity customers who can expect higher prices and poorer services.
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Mr Baird was proposing an initial 49 per cent sale on a 99-year-lease of the publicly-owned power companies Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy, Essential Energy and TransGrid, which own and operate every power line in the state, from the high-tension towers down to the poles and wires slung along suburban streets.
Carrying out a staged sale of half the asset is a cynical attempt to deflect the overwhelming community opposition to electricity privatisation and was the same technique used in the privatisations of Telstra and Qantas.
The Premier wants to convince the public that they can sell these assets, get a magic pot of gold for infrastructure, and somehow have no impact on prices or services going forward.
But the hard reality is that in every single state that has privatised the poles and wires prices have surged, jobs have been slashed, reliability has gone done, and in Victoria, poor maintenance by private owners sparked a number of the deadly Black Saturday bushfires.
Price protections are temporary, as are guarantees of job levels, and the fact is that private owners will be wanting to maximise their profits through higher prices or lower services.
It is those facts, along with the experience of past privatisations, that is driving the overwhelming community opposition to a sale of the electricity network.
If the new Premier wants to push through with this unpopular policy that will be bad for the majority of NSW residents, then he is signing the political death warrant of many of his MPs in regional and outer-suburban seats where this issue is a vote changer.
An independent poll of nearly 3000 voters in four regional electorates found more than 70 per cent were opposed to a sale. Even when asked about a partial sale of just 49 per cent of the electricity network, which is the Premier’s preferred option, just 17.1 per cent of voters said they agreed.
And the reason for this opposition was simple, 82.1 per cent believed that privatisation would lead to price rises while just 6 per cent believed the Premier’s spin that they would decrease.
Most importantly, almost half of those polled said that if a sale was taken to the March election it would make them less likely to vote for their sitting Coalition MP.
It isn’t too late to stop this sale, and we are calling on people to contact their local MP and say they do not support the sale of our publicly owned electricity assets to private companies that will drive up electricity bills.
Stop the Sell Off
Adam Kerslake
