Arsonists, says Kevin Rudd, should rot in prison. But who will be punished if the pending law suits find private power companies liable for the fires in Kilmore East, Horsham, Mudgegonga and Dederang?
Why, you will, dear reader — thanks to the terms that state governments negotiated when they sold off our public assets. Consider the case of SP AusNet, the subject of a class action for negligence around the Kilmore fires.
The Insurance Council of Australia has estimated the damage of those fires at about $500 million. But SP AusNet’s legal liability has been capped at $100 million under a deal struck by the former Kennett government with private utility operators, when the former State Electricity Commission was privatised in 1995. Legal sources said this meant the Brumby Government could be forced to cover a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The recent heatwave highlighted some other results of the great privatization binge carried out a decade or so ago.
Connex, the group that seized Victoria’s rail network, recently excused the 2300 services it cancelled last month on the basis of … wait for it … the weather. Its trains can’t, you see, function in weather warmer than thirty-five degrees. Given that each year there’s this phenomenon called “summer” (you may have heard of it), operators of a transport system designed for the benefit of the public — most of whom, strangely enough, still have to work on hot days — might conclude that cool-weather-only trains simply don’t cut it.
But Connex, of course, is a private company, and makes its decisions on the basis of an entirely different calculus. That’s why, though Melbournians would clearly prefer to buy their fares from a conductor, we’re stuck instead with dysfunctional ticketing machines, unable in most cases even to provide change. Not surprisingly, there’s now a widespread culture of fare evasion, which the private owners attempt to counter with hectoring advertisements and roving gangs of thuggish inspectors.
But there’s a bigger issue relating to climate change. Now, we don’t have to believe in global warming. The science is complex and most of us don’t fully understand it. But many of us are also sufficiently mathematically challenged as to not follow the process by which Eratosthenes of Cyrene first calculated the circumference of the planet. But we don’t therefore sign up with the Flat Earth Society, since we possess sufficient common sense to accept the consensus of the scientific world.
If we adopt that methodology with climate change — aligning ourselves with the vast majority of scientists rather than the small but shrill denialist faction of oil-company flacks, shock jocks and the tabloid journalists who are professionally wrong about everything — certain things follow. We can expect a small but real increase in average temperatures, and that means bushfires will become more likely and more devastating. No, you can’t ascribe the blame to climate change for any particular fire, just as you can’t definitively link your heart attack to your pack-a-day habit. Heart problems kill non-smokers, too — but only a fool would conclude that means you can puff away without risks.
In other words, if we don’t do something, we can expect more tragedies like the one we’ve just endured.
But that brings us directly back to privatisation. It’s not only that the process by which we swapped our public assets for a bag of magic beans has led to an appreciable degradation in services, it’s also disarmed us in the fight against the causes and consequences of climate change. How is the private company that makes money from selling you electricity — and thus becomes more profitable the more of it you use — going to foster energy efficiency?
The short answer is that it will do so about as effectively as, say, a pub campaigning for sobriety, a casino against problem gambling — or, to use a more apposite example — the private utility in charge of our taps for water efficiency.
The world financial crisis has already exposed many of the ideologues behind the neo-liberal excesses of the last decades as at best charlatans and at worst overt fraudsters. By all means, prosecute the arsonists. But let’s also have some genuine accountability about the policy makers who got us into the mess we’re now in.
Just remember public private partnerships (PPI’s) are on the agenda for health and education. So if you think things can get out of hand with privatised power, wait till we get the educational revolution tangled up with the profit imperative and see what real havoc can be wrought. Of course the taxpayer will be stuck with the bill for the consequences as usual but they can at least be amused by full and very public handwringing apologies of the offenders.
Whenever the govt. interferes by creating monopolies that the govt then pays to perpetuate with our money, we are going to have problems. If the market were truly free to operate with no barriers to entry, then people could make an unfettered choice about who serves their interests best.
Ev says:
“If you have a genuine problem with the administration, why not detail the policies you think have failed, and offer an alternative? I’m tired of people labelling and not detailing. Your cheap shots achieve little.”
My area of relevant expertise – and I no island, is natural gas transport – a not so complex phenomena that is standard practice is many of our neighboring countries and has merits on so many levels – climate change, energy security, clean cities, transport efficiency…rant rant rant….
I have detailed for your information the failings and corruption of our governments as have many others – you could do yourself a favour and google “Greenhouse Mafia – 4 Corners” or you can visit my site where I have documented in over 100,000 words the pathway to sustainable transport –
Get a grip on yourself Ev and dont throw stones while you live in that glass house:
http://news.rosettamoon.com/?p=193
Why does no one acknowledge the fact there are too many people living in Melbourne’s fragile outer suburbs? The unsightly sprawl which is Melbourne is about the size of Greater Buenos Aires. There are two minor differences between us. 1) The fact of GBA having a population heading to the 14 million mark. 2) GBA is built on a big river and has no incendiary eucalyptus forest around it.
Also, if we could rein in our population explosion we wouldn’t have such severe global warming and fewer people would go to live on the edges of the bush, resulting in fewer people being fried alive.
Because the State government has seized the initiative by calling for a royal commission into the bushfires blame can be placed everywhere except at the door of the government itself. Which is, of course, the major culprit. During the tenure of the Brack’s government all pretense of building regulations was abandoned. Developers had carte blanche to build as shonkily as they wanted to. They grabbed at this chance to build homes of a standard so low it would have been a crime to build them anywhere else on the planet. And, as it turned out, it was a crime to have built them in Melbourne.
To add fire to fire (sorry about that) The midgets who always scramble to get onto local councils in order to wield their tin-pot power fell onto the emerging Green movement like a dying vulture onto a fresh carcase. Generally these people loved the chance to use the Green movement: not in order to protect the environment. No, not at all. To these petty tyrants Green meant a heaven-sent opportunity to increase their own power. It became an offense to remove dead logs or kindling from roadsides. It became a crime to remove green rubbish. All these new laws were brought in at speed. Because they had the added benefit of raising more revenue into the local coffers, and so on.
Punishing guilty power companies is on a par with punishing governments and local councils. An exercise in futility.
Judging by some of these comments, I assumed there had to be a full moon. Someone needs to take a cold shower. Notwithstanding one’s view of privatisation, capping electricity supply liability at $100 million effectively reduced the insurance premium costs that would otherwise have had to have been factored into electricity prices. Without this ,electricity prices would have a much higher to buy the necessary premiums. There is no free lunch. Had the old SEC been in power (pardon the pun) any liability attributable to the electricity supplier would have been borne by the State anyway. This is not to defend the negative effect of privatisation.
It should be noted that the quality standards set for Connex are established by the Department of Transport and its predecessors in government, and that the equipment and rolling stock that they operate are what successive governments hav provided directly, or indirectly as conditions of the Franchise Agreements between the State and the operator.
All capital costs associated with rail operations are directly funded by the State budget, to standards mandated by the Victorian government. Connex is merely the operator (sacrificial goat ) to effectively shield government from the consumer backlash associated with poor levels of funding and chronic neglect of public transport funding for the last 50 years.
I initially didn’t understand what this article was on about; how could electricity suppliers be liable for these fires? Poor maintenance practices? Turning off power to water pumps? None of these are mentioned, so, I’m guessing here, are you suggesting that people that burn coal are liable for the damage that this fire caused? That would be a simple case in court.
Rosettamoon, how odd your rant is. It is very easy to label politicians, or anyone for that matter, but the fact remains; Rudd is ridiculously popular. We live in a democracy, popularity is important. I suspect that despite your detailed and well founded mis-givings Rudd will remain PM for some time to come. If you have a genuine problem with the administration, why not detail the policies you think have failed, and offer an alternative? I’m tired of people labelling and not detailing. Your cheap shots achieve little.