By Dave Wright
SYDNEY — Since its election 14 months ago, the Carr government has continued the program of neo-liberal "reform" introduced by the previous Greiner/Fahey Liberal governments. The differences between the NSW Labor government and Coalition governments in other states seem small, to say the least.
Under Carr there have been cuts to welfare, education, health and transport. At the same time, Carr has bent over backwards to help big business. A notorious example is the handing over of the Sydney Showground site to Rupert Murdoch, along with generous concessions on payroll tax and stamp duty. In return, Murdoch's Fox Studios will pay only $2 million in rent to the government, and won't have to begin doing so until 1999.
Broken election promises have been mounting. These include the failure to scrap tolls on the M4 and M5 motorways — seen as a significant factor in a number of Labor seats being lost to the Liberals at the federal election.
Carr also promised to cut hospital waiting lists by half within the first 12 months or resign along with his deputy premier and health minister, Andrew Refshauge. In January, the government claimed the promise had been met, but the reduction seems to have been accomplished by accounting procedures, not medical ones.
In fact a number of hospitals have suffered dramatic cuts. St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney has closed a number of outpatient clinics and has sacked 300 staff.
In its 1995 October budget, Labor showed that it was going to follow in the Liberal government's footsteps. It increased train fares 5%, cut insurance pay-outs to those injured in car accidents, increased water charges to farmers by 15%, attempted to slash free school travel for 100,000 schoolchildren (but later retreated after a huge public outcry) and cut payroll tax from 7% to 5%.
Carr's government has moved quickly on privatisation. Carr previously criticised the "reckless privatisation" carried out in other states, a reference to what has happened in Victoria. But the idea that he might be different was not encouraged when Carr recruited Jeff Kennett's top bureaucrat, Ken Baxter, to head the NSW Premier's Department.
Carr is already well under way to privatising electricity. Baxter and Fred Hilmer, the architect of the federal government's blueprint for opening public utilities to competition, were appointed last year to head Pacific Power, the state electricity supplier. It is now being divided into companies which are supposed to compete with each other.
Also the old county council electricity utilities are being amalgamated. For example, Sydney Electricity and Orion (Newcastle) have merged to become Energy Australia. This makes it the largest electricity retailer in Australia with nearly 1.5 million customers and expected revenue exceeding $1 billion per year.
On the surface, it appears that these new electricity companies are planning to cut charges. This is only half true. Competition will drive prices down for the very large customers such as BHP as suppliers fall over each other to get them on the books. However, for domestic customers, the price of electricity will go up because there will be no discounting to smaller customers. As well, new charges are being introduced for services previously provided free.
Carr's industrial relations policy is to use a very aggressive Industrial Relations Commission to push through workplace "reform". Its brief is to police workplace agreements and identify industries where productivity needs to be increased. The government has the power to quash wage deals that are deemed not in the "public interest".
The government refuses to consider the claim of teachers a 12% and now 24% wage rise. Joe Tripodi, a Labor backbencher, wrote in a letter that teachers should look for another job if they didn't like what they were getting. This confrontational approach has led to a large industrial campaign by the Teachers Federation.
At the teachers' rallies and mass meetings there has been a huge amount of anti-Labor sentiment, including calls for campaigning against the Labor Party in future elections.
Last week's state budget was presented as an attempt by the government to mend some of the damage of its more unpopular decisions. However, it is continuing on a path of real cuts. It includes:
- $25million slashed from health
- more teachers but an overall cut of 4.2% to education
- $76 million cut from State Rail
- $22 million cut from the Department of Agriculture
- $442 million increase in spending on Olympic Games
- plans to sell the State Office Block and the St James Centre, sell and lease back the government car fleet, and sell buildings owned by electricity, railway and port operations.
The sale of public assets has meant that Carr has not had to cut more deeply into public spending. But there is little left in the cupboard to sell and the government will have to cut more deeply next time to continue to govern in the interests of big business.