The 28 January 2010 report in the SMH gave two estimates for the increase in Sydney Water's price. The Premier, Hon Kristina Keneally, was quoted as saying that an average water bill would rise by $2 per week or $154 per year; and the Opposition's Ms Katrina Hodgkinson said it would rise by $4.71 per week or $245 per year within two years.

Is there a source document, from either side of politics, for their price increase estimates?

Kellie, have you put the questions to the NSW Opposition?

Greg Cameron

Malcolm Turnball, is I understand very keen on privatising water.

SBS had a program on the liquid gold.

Whilst our politicans sell the story that privatisation, means improved effeciencies, and cheaper costs. The reality is that privatisation means greater costs.

Dear Kellie, why are we debating who or what the ownership of water should be? Surely the issue is supply and demand. If we had enough water, who cares who owns it?

Conservationists of many persuasions have killed off new storage facilities across the States for a generation. Limited storage means that even when we do get good rains we can’t collect it which means higher and higher prices.

This ownership issue is dealing with symptoms not the causes.

The mission and sole purpose of a privately-owned business is to maximise profit for shareholders. They are the reason the business exists. When water is a private good, the public interest is only relevant in the context of its impact on returns. When water is a public good, its use is managed to benefit people, not shareholders. The only privately-owned naturally occurring water in Australia is that which falls on a person's roof – rain. When rain is allowed to flow from a roof onto the ground, the rights to that water are vested in governments. The interesting thing about the use of rainwater tanks – when the rain is collected so that it does not fall on the ground - is that it competes with both big government and big business for consumer spending.

Greg Cameron

JamesH,

You claim that privatization means higher costs. This is true generally when the privatization process has been botched.

When councils out source equipment the compliance requirements they impose are gold plated, and far exceed anything they had ran with before. On top of this they seldom shed their internal administration for the product, and duplicate it in the supplier.

After all this they are surprised when the total cost is higher.

What is also true almost without exception is that services taken over from private companies by councils or governments run at much higher costs.

If the privatization is done properly with minimal duplication and interference, privatization is more often than not less expensive.

Congratulations, Kellie Tranter, on attempting to scrutinise, without the benefit of parliamentary privilege, the attempted privatisation of reticulated water supply in NSW.

Questions such as you have posed (and more) are what we should have been hearing from the Opposition in the NSW Parliament at least since 2006. Why haven't we been hearing them? It seems it has been left to the likes of the article author to do the job of a parliamentary opposition all on her own. Thankfully, someone with the necessary writing and legal skills is at last ventilating this fundamentally important issue. I wish her every success.



I am particularly intrigued as to the full implications of the quote the author has included in her article from the NSW Auditor-General’s Report to Parliament 2009 Volume Seven, speaking with respect to electricity supply for the Kurnell desalination plant, to wit:

“... the power need of the desalination plant
will be offset by renewable energy at a wind farm,
as opposed to it being operated by renewable energy.
The wind farm is located between Bungendore and Tarago
and Renewable Power Ventures (a subsidiary of Infigen Energy)
has built and will operate the wind farm. The wind farm,
known as the Capital Wind Farm, has a capacity of 140 megawatts ...”;

especially as they might relate to one of the questions posed by the author, to wit:

"What provisions are there to ensure supply
to customers if power outages occur? Are there
provisions guaranteeing Veolia’s revenue if there
is a power outage? Who pays for that? Sydney Water?"



I have a question of my own. Is the offsetting of the power needs of the desalination plant calculated in terms of Megawatt hours of electricity used, or is it measured in terms of the dollar cost of electricity used?

To amplify my question, given that wind-generated electricity is not necessarily available to match demand, might not the desalination plant frequently have to pay significantly higher spot prices for its electricity in order to maintain supply?

Hidden NSW government cost-shifting to Sydney Water consumers, by any chance?