With the news that even the French Government is selling more of their stake in the majority government owned Electricité de France SA to fund the country’s university system, perhaps Morris Iemma may discover a backbone and do the same in NSW.

When Fidel part-privatized the Cuban telecommunications system in 1994, the game was over for serious opposition to privatisation for everyone except the union movement in New South Wales and the Gillard faction of the ALP. Hopefully that is about to change.

Carr could have done it in 1998 but he wimped out. Interestingly it’s worthwhile highlighting what “co-operative federalism” meant to Labor in 1998. Carr did not proceed with sound public policy because federally Labor was opposing further privatisation of Telstra. It was simply a bad look for “Team Labor.”

Labor now finds itself in an interesting situation over the issue of privatising the New South Wales electricity industry.

According to “new” Labor, they are not run by unions and yet it is on the public record that unions stopped privatisation in the past. Will they do it again?

Kevin Rudd has made much of the importance of his education revolution, so if the French believe that investing in students is more important than owning rusting electricity assets, does the Labor Party believe the same?

Finally, given that the New South Wales government does not have the money to “green” the sector, why not let the private sector do it? Cynics might say that the private sector would not do it, but overseas evidence points to the contrary.

In the US earlier this year, Texas Utilities was sold to a private equity group and environmental groups supported the deal, because the new owners promised to invest in alternative energy forms, and also to reduce from 11 to three the number of coal-fired plants that the company was planning on building.

Let’s hope the Luddite economics doesn’t win out this time.