It,s hard to have things both ways. A govt that interferes in private business is labled socialist by people when it suites them.
You can't forcast what might happen, private is always better for a more efficent company. Deal with any bad bits by legislation later.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11068#185397

JamesH, a conservative Kiwi government just had to buy back some of their rail assets that had been sold off by the former Labour government. They are now in the process of spending a fortune rebuilding it.

Vic rail bought cheap nasty under powered trains a few years ago from China that failed constantly. They now have had to recently replace them with more expensive but reliable ones from France.

Why Australia is not capable of designing & building its own trains, nobody is even asking that question.

Of course the Bradken factory at Runcorn which was making the rail undercarriage has just closed down with the loss of nearly 200 jobs and the replacements will be coming from, you guessed it China.

BTW, as a child in the 60's i don't ever remember the Phone needing repair or my parents complaining about the bill, when it was all the PMG department.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11068#185400

RObert, correct, every possible outcome ends in the taxpayer losing.

1, it all goes well, & after a short term gain, treasury loses a cash cow & must cut services, raise taxes, or a bit of both. Coming off the high, current spending, plus the post sale splurge, the future fall of our economy in QLD will be horrendous. One could be forgiven for thinking, this is "the plan" to hand the LNP a poison chalice & hopefully make them into a 1 term wonder.

2, GFC2, growth in every single economy is slowing, sooner or later the Chinese economy will also slow down, when it cuts imports of coal, iron ore, gas, etc.

The poor fools who bought the shares will end up where T3 shareholders are now.

3, we could work out a dozen variations on these 2 basic scenarios & it would always end up with us losing.

The Clem7 tunnel numbers have been inflated by a Translink bus service that goes backwards & forwards through the tunnel both ways empty all day, every day, every 15 minutes.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11068#185424

Ozandy, your last line nails it, anybody who would give their 1st preference vote to the Labour, Liberal, green or National parties is without doubt mentally ill.

We need a new 3rd force party in politics, or a Real lobby/protest group, not getup who are just cheerleaders for the Red/green/getup/labour Communist coalition.

Cracker night is coming up Friday, 06/11/2010.

How about it guys?

The article makes too many simplistic assumptions whose social consequences have already proved disastrous; in general, that private corporations are 'better' at operating assets than governments. Amongst other things, this assumes that every facet of asset management can be measured in dollars. The resulting arguments are complex, diverse, and inevitably lengthy, and are best summarized by going to the website http://www.thecorporation.com/ and getting a copy of the video from the local library.

This is merely one question of many devolving around the community/corporate issue that is essentially philosophical, not political or financial. If you want a world in which a wealthy elite is free to seek maximum profit at the expense of everything else (including the environment and the general population), then the corporate model is the way to go. If, on the other hand, you value quality of life and moderate wealth for a majority, community and environmental concerns must take precedence over profit, something that the corporatists will ruthlessly resist.