Desperate Kirner boycotts ALP
By Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — Premier Joan Kirner's government is looking desperate. On June 12, her sub-faction in the Victorian ALP, had to organise a boycott of a meeting of the party's state administrative committee.
The boycott by the so-called "mainstream Socialist Left", joined by a few members of the right-wing Centre Unity faction, stalled attempts to call a special party conference to stop the government's corporatisation/privatisation drive. The meeting failed for want of a quorum, and the next is not due for a another month.
The previous meeting of the administrative committee showed a majority of its members opposed to the corporatisation moves, which will do away with thousands of jobs and pave the way for the privatisation of major state utilities. That meeting deferred the calling of a special state conference pending negotiations with the government.
While Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary John Halfpenny claims that there has been "progress" in negotiations with the government, the State Public Services Federation (formerly the Victorian Public Service Association) whose members' jobs and conditions are at stake, is waging a public campaign against corporatisation. The SPSF has published a booklet called Sale of the Century: Labor Corporatises Victoria.
Kirner's position is further weakened by allegations by the state auditor-general, Ches Baragwanath, that the government wasted $70 million subsidising private development of Bayside, a formerly industrial area with water frontage in Port Melbourne. The developers have since pulled out of the deal.
The $70 million was made up of $13 million for cleaning up the site (which the auditor-general says was the legal responsibility of BP Australia), $18 million for site consolidation, $11 million for interest, $10 million paid to Sandridge, the developers, and $10 million for public housing.
Even if Sandridge had not pulled out, the government stood to recoup only $14.3 million under the deal. Further, the government had persisted with the deal when it was aware that three of the major investors in Sandridge were bankrupt, offering new guarantees worth $12.6 million for the developers late last year. In agreeing to the deal, the government ignored advice from the Department of Premier and Cabinet that it was a "very poor deal from the Government's perspective", said Baragwanath.