Corporatisation in Canberra

Corporatisation in Canberra

By James Basle

Here we go, here we go, here we go again. A Liberal government is elected because people are angry with Labor. The Liberals cut the public sector, corporatise or cut health and slash education. The union ALP bureaucrats talk tough and do little. The Liberals get away with it.

Here is the Canberra case study. In late June the ACT Legislative Assembly voted nine to eight to corporatise ACT Electricity and Water (ACTEW) by July 1.

Seven Liberals voted for the corporatisation, with the independents, Moore and Osborne, joining to make up the majority. Two Greens voted against, as did six ALP members.

The Labor Party opposed corporatisation in word alone; it did nothing to build a public campaign to stop it. The ALP did not guarantee that it would reverse the Liberals' decision if voted in at the next election. It also seems hypocritical that the ACT Labor Party opposes corporatisation, yet the federal ALP has just privatised the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas.

The union movement was split on the issue. The union with the largest coverage in ACTEW, the Communication, Electrical and Plumbers Union (CEPU), supported corporatisation. The union with the second largest coverage, the Community Public Sector Union (CPSU), opposed it.

The ACT Trades and Labour Council (TLC) initially expressed reservations and began negotiating with the Liberals. It planned an action in front of the Legislative Assembly which was subsequently cancelled. In the end, the TLC supported corporatisation.

It is hardly surprising the TLC did not run a serious campaign against the corporatisation of ACTEW. In Victoria, when Kennett launched his privatisation program, Trades Hall mobilised thousands of workers. But the main demand put forward was to vote for Labor. This strategy was doomed to fail because Labor is so similar to the Liberals. Labor was hardly an alternative.

[James Basle is a workplace and branch conference delegate of the ACT branch of the CPSU and member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]

From GLW issue 195