By Margaret Gleeson
SYDNEY — Emulating Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, NSW Labor treasurer Michael Egan announced on May 22 that the government intends to sell the state's power generation, transmission and distribution system for a $22 billion mess of potage.
The announcement is the culmination of a process that began with the Fahey Liberal government's corporatisation of power transmission.
The Carr Labor government continued with the "rationalisation" of distribution authorities from 27 to six and the commercialisation of power generation by creating three companies. The smallest of these, Pacific Power, headed by Professor Fred Hilmer, the architect of the government's national competition policy, is earmarked for immediate sale.
NSW's six electricity distribution companies, the Transgrid high voltage transmission network and the state's 58% share of the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme will be sold.
With tactics reminiscent of the Howard government's promise to use the Telstra sell-off to fund environmental projects, this fire sale is being marketed as a means of eliminating the state's $18.7 billion debt and bankrolling new infrastructure and the rehabilitation of the Snowy River.
In a discussion paper circulated to Labor MPs and unions, Egan argued that the conservative estimate of $22 billion anticipated from the sell-off would allow NSW immediately to retire its debt, create a $3 billion fund to rebuild state infrastructure, leave $2 billion for commercial investment and provide $500 million a year more for budget spending.
Not surprisingly, the Liberal opposition has supported the plan. Immediate reaction from left-wing Labor MPs and unions has been to oppose the sale. Left caucus secretary Jan Burnswoods accused Egan and Carr of lying to the party over the last two years while plotting the privatisation agenda.
"For anyone buying these utilities, the first thing they will do is save costs by cutting jobs", Burnswoods said. She said the jobs of 5000 of the power industry's 13,000 workers were at risk.
A task force that includes representatives of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, the Public Service Association, the Australian Services Union and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, together with ALP left MPs, has been formed to oppose the Egan plan.
The Socialist Left executive has appointed NSW ALP vice president Chris Raper, ALP assistant secretary Damien O'Connor, MP Ian MacDonald and building union leader Andrew Ferguson to run a campaign against the privatisation.
But before the campaign has even got off the ground, it has been undermined from both left and right forces within the unions and ALP. At a Labor caucus meeting on May 27, a motion calling for the immediate rejection of the sell-off was ruled out of order. Caucus voted 55 to 13 for a proposal from Premier Bob Carr to establish a committee of inquiry to report by August 18.
The committee is to be chaired by Bob Hogg, who has a proven track record of damping down internal opposition to ALP betrayals. As leader of the Victorian Socialist Left in the early 1980s, Hogg engineered the ALP's reversal of its anti-uranium mining policy to allow mining at Roxby Downs.
Damien O'Connor was quoted as saying that the ALP state conference must make the final decision. However, the May 30 Sydney Morning Herald reported that Carr had denied that the ALP rank and file would have any say on decisions to sell state assets.
"There's no way we'd let this drag on until October ... The sell-off was a decision for Cabinet within the case by case privatisation policy established at the 1992 state conference", Carr said.
The SMH reported that representatives of three power industry unions and the NSW Labour Council confronted Carr on the issue but that he had rejected their argument that conference agreement was required.
Debates and submissions to lame duck inquiries chaired by former left-wing quislings won't defend the jobs under threat, or defeat the Carr government's privatisation plans. What is required is an all-out industrial campaign linked to a concerted political campaign to defend public assets.
It is unlikely that such a campaign will be led by the ACTU. The best that Jennie George has come up with is a warning that unions may push for the replacement of pro-privatisation Labor MPs with candidates who fight for "their own community's concerns". Perhaps she has forgotten that even Michael Egan was once an anti-privatisation advocate and led the doomed opposition to the Wran Labor government's privatisation of Lotto in 1979.
Despite their fighting words, the left unions' strategy has been to focus on defeating the privatisation at the ALP state conference rather than in the workplace or the streets. There have been indications that even the CFMEU would leave the door open to privatisation if the union benefits from investment of super funds in the privatised bodies.
An Electrical Trades Union delegate, speaking anonymously to avoid victimisation, told Green Left Weekly that if the unions were interested in genuinely fighting the privatisation they should "withdraw all funding from the ALP, all trade union officials should leave the ALP, and cross-union delegates meetings should be organised to plan a campaign of mass meetings and industrial action."
He said that since the announcement of the privatisation his union had not even called a delegates' meeting. "In fact, the union stopped having delegates' meetings in February, when the delegates gave the officials a roasting and forced them to organise a mass meeting over job losses.
"If the ETU does little, like when Energy Australia got rid of about 800 workers, then we have no chance in stopping this privatisation", said the delegate.
The ALP Rural Conference, to be held in Orange May 31-June 1, will be a litmus test for any genuine campaign of fighting opposition to the Egan plan.