Graham, as a spin doctor you get F for fail!
One remembers the absolute rout the became the guaranteed result for Captain Bligh, when she sold some public assets, and had a few more earmarked for sale, should she be returned!
Labor went from a nice healthy margin to almost complete irrelevance.
And now the only thing that gives them any prospect whatsoever, of a return to the treasury benches, is their current stand against privatization, by any name!
One remembers the outcome of the privatization of Queensland gas; a 400% increase in prices in just weeks.
This sort of muddle headed thinking is entirely illogical!
One sells the asset, usually to a debt laden foreigner, who apart from paying little or no tax, obliges Joe public to pay a premium, in order to one, service the new foreign debt, and the higher profit demands!
The voters out there in mugsville, particularly small business, can then be held to energy ransom!
One of the core responsibilities of Government, was to supply all cash cow essential service; and when they last did, small operators could make a REASONABLE profit!
Now all they seem to do is carry the landlord, as unpaid tax collectors!
It's time we replaced this risible rubbish with some Lee Kwan Yu style pragmatism!
Least we make his predictions a self fulfilling prophecy!
All we need is competent managers at the helm; and sadly, that used to be the coalition!
And virtually the only ones able to not only live within a budget, but run surplus after surplus.
Almost everything has gone downhill since wrong headed power hungry ideologues; heritage listed a clearly dying Great Barrier Reef.
Should that be reversed, by an AWOL captain courageous; there is likely a huge bonanza, that if developed in public hands, (HERESY) provide all the revenue, Q'ld and indeed the country could need, for decades!
Privatization is not the answer, but the very opposite, supported by contract labor hire/management (three year terms) tendering, may very well be!
TIMIDITY IS NOT AN OPTION! NOR ARE BLINKERED IDEOLOGUES!
Rhrosty.

I would love to see examples of privatisation pushing costs down,can I have an example from each state please

The author fails to discuss or even disclose the substantial difference between the situation that exists for a Sovereign (currency issuing) Government and a financially subservient state such as every state in Australia and the USA and all those European countries now dependent on the Euro.

Privatisation only makes sense if the SG is so incompetent that it cannot set up an independent supervision system for an asset it owns. I very much doubt that that independent supervision was deficient the case with any of the sold assets such as Qantas, the CBA and Telstra etc. Had Telstra not been sold, citizens would have had at least fibre to the node ten or more years ago. The CBA had been keeping its foot on the the ability of the other private banks to gouge their customers for years.

Menzies at least had the sense to apply strong regulation to the banks after he won power on the basis of no petrol rationing or bank nationalisation. The sorry state of airlines worldwide shows that that industry does not run well anywhere where the government does not have a significant input.

What will happen with the $5B from the sale of Medibank? Nothing that could not have been achieved by other appropriate means. The SG could have asked the Reserve Bank for the money. The SG deficit in this country is not the main economic problem. In about 2000, a senior economist in the UK Treasury Wynne Godley, was adamant that the private sector cannot continually operate with a deficit. that will be the situation when the Current Account (foreign trade and capital flow) deficit is greater than the SG deficit.

The principal problem is the Current Account deficit. Yet we are doing almost nothing to rectify that problem. We need to take a leaf out of Norway's book in that regard.

The blog articles from the University of Missouri, Kansas City has some excellent material that shows just how wrong the race toward austerity and privatisation is, as does Professor Mariana Mazzucato at the University of Sussex.

America privatised pretty much everything, and promptly lost her middle class. Following their lead, public schools are being privatised as we speak, Medibank Private is up for grabs, public hospitals will soon follow and the list goes on. Is this really where we want to go?
But this argument may soon be moot anyway. How much of it will look like yesterday's lunch once the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is signed? While no one is saying much of anything other than trust me, I'm a politician, isn't one of the defining lines in the TPPA a prohibition on national governments passing legislation that would impact negatively on the ability of a multi-national corporation to turn a profit?
"We can't turn a profit if we don't own it." Will that argument be used?
And what about award rates? It wouldn't take brilliance to argue that wages high enough to support a middle class impact negatively on a corporation's ability to turn a profit.
Government by the people for the people. That's not a bad line, but to have any teeth, the members of the government in question will have to be able to do more than take direction from board rooms.

Hello Graham,
I oppose selling state assets.
Governments only spend money that they firstly take from someone else (usually taxpayers).
Every dollar they no longer get from these businesses they now have to get from us.
Although sometimes market conditions and poor business models dictate that some of these businesses arent very profitable, it's my opinion that the running of the country is the most important business in the country, and if the governments cant find a way to make these businesses run profitably, then it's evidence that the acting governments are incompetent in the bigger business of running the country.

Telstra announced a full year profit of 4.3billion.
We've never had a surplus like that.
Our countries total debt is over 600bn.
How are we ever going to pay that back when we cant even get a lousy surplus at all?
We'll never pay it back, and eventually end up like Greece or the Ukraine.

I don't agree with these stupid comparisons that compare debt to GDP.
I believe that if its not in your wallet you cant afford it.

I remember when John Howard made us all think he'd given us a surplus, but did not set money aside for government superannuation.
Alarm bells were ringing for me back then, dirty accounting lies.
I remember when Anna Blight tried to tell us that regular people borrow money to build a home as her justification to borrow more money. - Stupid.

You talk about the assets Queensland wants to privatise only earning 3% and that term deposits could be earning 4%. Considering that idea is just foolish nonsense considering we have another looming GFC with the US dollar about to implode. Better to buy gold or silver if anything. And not to mention the government has signed on to Bail-in powers with the G20 group of countries so if anything happens in the global economy we may as well have sold these assets and flushed the money straight down the toilet. - to save the banks...

Now they talk about things like Debt tax.
Its a bit late now.

I agree with most of the points previous commenters have made.

Essentially privatisation is a method of transferring public assets into the hands of supporters of the Liberal party that's 'justified' by neo-liberal ideology which theorises that foreign oligopolies or monopolies are superior to publicly owned enterprises and the government is just another business.

Graham you appear to forget that without public service membership, unions almost cease to exist. The main reason to resist privatisation could be considered a membership drive.

Rhrosty, & hound, how about Telecom, 3 times the business, with about 45% of the staff, & much cheaper calls. Railways the same. Privatisation can work.

Foyle, I agree selling the CBA was a bad mistake, as was the Government Insurance Office in QLD, however getting rid of railways, Qantas & Telecom were a good idea. As for doing what Norway is doing, if you will just find us a huge oil field, [& sit on the greenies], I'm sure Tony as distinct from Labor, would oblige.

Halduell if the only way to get, & support a middle class is to subsidise it with tax payer dollars, I'll do without one thanks. In fact, the sooner all our universities are sold, the better, they are one middle class bastion of tax waste, we could well do without.

Armchair Critic of course government run Telecom never had a profit of 4.3 billion. It was run by plodding public servant types, with a feather beaded union workforce 4 times that required. No government in our history, except perhaps old Joh could have made it profitable. Remember when he chucked the electrical linesmen out?

Sorry mac, but I disagree. Privatisation is just about the only way of closing down the empires of useless bureaucrats, all government seen to build. With out it, like Grease, we will all be on the government payroll, & none of us working much at all

I don't have an opinion on the broader pros and cons of privatisation verses public ownership however, in the case of Medibank Private I am a bit baffled.

I was of the understanding the members of the fund where the owners in partnership with the government, and the current share offer would be invalid given those buying the shares already own them, being the Fund is a public asset (owned by all tax payers and the govt).

Or am I wrong?

Hello Hasbeen,
Thanks for your response.
I just wanted to reply to your comment to reinforce the point I made earlier.
You said "Of course government run Telecom never had a profit of 4.3 billion. It was run by plodding public servant types, with a feather beaded union workforce 4 times that required..."

This in itself is EXACTLY my point, and completely highlights the problem.
If I owned a small business and it went bust within 12 months would anyone seriously think I had the competence to be state or federal treasurer?
If government doesn't have the skills to manage a business, then what hope do we have that they can run a country? - None.

How much money would the country save if we applied that methodology to all the rest of the state own assets?
We'd be in surplus year upon year with money in the bank earning billions in interest instead of paying it.
Its not hard to understand and we don't need millions spent outsourcing to independent reviews to figure it out and state the obvious.
- Spending money on ads to remind us were all in debt - What's the point of that?
I'd rather see an ad that says "The fact that we spent 8ml dollars of your money on this advertising campaign to remind you of how much debt we put you in only proves how inept we are at running the country." At least we'd have some honesty.
And they throw money away on things like plays called "Kill the Climate Deniers"

What interest on 667bn? -That's 667 Thousand Million, Right?
How much does that take away from healthcare, infrastructure and communities?
The bottom line is that in a space of 15yrs, bad monetary policy has virtually destroyed our kid's futures.

I simply cant see any way to pay back that debt, not matter how much anyone tries to play it down by comparing it as a percentage of GDP.

And can anyone list all state owned assets Australia-wide that have been sold and just exactly how much money has been squandered?

So Graham when we've sold off every asset, does the Govt then take our houses to pay for the debt ?

They should never have sold off the Commonwealth Bank. At least it was creating some money debt free for infrastructure.

Without a middle class we will have a very thin layer of the wealthy sitting precariously on a very large layer of the impoverished.
Homelessness will balloon.
So will ignorance.
Selling off the universities will blow the cost of a higher education out the window. This will result in an undereducated population, which when coupled with lower wages, emasculated unions and general uncertainty as to what in this life comes next, will require a militarized police to enforce the guaranteed discontent.
How many people in Detroit now go without water because they can no longer afford to buy it? The American Way - do we really want to go there?

Armchair Critic, Hasbeen and others,
You all need to get some knowledge of the fiscal space available to a currency issuing government before you comment on macroeconomics.

A fiscal space diagram has a Budget Balance (BB) axis running across the middle of a graph page with a surplus result plotted to the right of the central vertical Current Account axis. A positive current account balance is plotted above the horizontal BB axis.

The two values (CA and BB outcomes) allow a single point to be plotted showing the outcome for the financial year. The plots are usually figures that are a percentage of GNP.

A 45 degree line is drawn from the bottom LH corner of the chart, through the (0,0) point to the top RH corner. This line represent when the private sector is in balance. The plot of the CA and BB outcomes indicates whether the private sector had a sustainable outcome for that year. The private sector cannot continually borrow. It will run out of credit-worthy borrowers, hence liar's loans.

If the result is to the left of the sloping line the government has allowed the economy to operate in an unstable area. The most desirable operating space is to the right of the sloping line close to the (0,0) centre.

I have the CA and BB data for about sixty years to 2011. The best performance of any Federal Government was the brief period of the Whitlam Government. Fraser, probably with his foot on his treasurer's neck, was not too far wrong but Howard's was by far the worst performance.

If the Current Account of a currency issuing government is in deficit then the only way the financial wealth (not asset value wealth) of the private sector can increase, is for the sovereign government to run a deficit larger that the CA deficit.

This is not some weird economic theory. It is nothing more than the outcome of one of the the rules of accounting. For every entity that owes money (has a liability) there is another entity that has that debt as an asset.

Essentially privatisation is a method of transferring public assets into the hands of supporters of the Liberal party that's 'justified' by neo-liberal ideology which theorises that foreign oligopolies or monopolies are superior to publicly owned enterprises and the government is just another business.
Posted by mac, Friday, 31 October 2014 11:53:21 AM

I think you will find this includes a large number of Labor politicians as well.

Yes Wolly and that's where the real problem lies?
There was a time when labor pollies came from the general working populace, and semi retired professionals.
Now they seem to come from anywhere else, with types like Malcolm Turnbul and Tony Abbott once considering Labor party membership?
And millionaires like Hawke, Keating and Rudd, actually leading the party and the country.
I find it almost impossible to believe, any of these highly privileged people have any REAL empathy, with the common herd.
If there's any doubt,[by their fruits ye shall know them,] just look at house prices and the level of homelessness in Australia!
One can look the world over, and nowhere can one find, so much as a single example of lower fees and charges following privatization. Simply put, Government owners don't have to pay tax, interest on loans nor shareholders dividends. [The so called natural cost.]
And instead, are able to pour those savings into lower prices, which arguably benefit energy dependent small business most of all!
Sure there are some issues with too many public servants, handing themselves jobs and fat salaries for life.
But that's down to the model, which builds monopolies; which could and should be replaced by bench marked and best practice duopolies; competition for survival and triennial tendering for three year term contracts, for the labor component!
Those attracted to politics as a rescue for a failed/failing business or practice, are the very last people to have control of any business, and perhaps bankrupts etc, should forever be banned from politics, least they spread their incompetence, to the rest of, [the govt has no business in business,] politics.
Not all that long ago, even Menzies would've rejected that argument out of hand!?
If it's broke fix it!
Rhrosty.

Wolly, Rhrosty,

Yes, you're correct, there once was a Labor party, when I was young many years ago, haven't seen it for ages.

Come off it Halduell, shove them through a TAFE, rather than a BA, & they will not only come out knowing more, but they will also be able to do something more useful than push a pen at a government desk.

Hell with fewer in boxes, we would get more work done more quickly by the bureaucracy.

Hasbeen, Posted Friday, 31 October 2014 5:37:43 PM
Can I assume that included in your "them" getting shoved through TAFE will be your children, or grandchildren as the case may be?

The scariest thing about the "Privatisation" of media-bank is that is this one step further into an American for profit health care system.

The selling of the "silver ware" to over seas companies that then use 'Australian Taxation laws' to avoid paying taxes, is the equivalent of shooting your self in the foot. Except that is the politicians shooting the australian taxpayer in the foot.

SBS had a show on what happens in many countries when the water rights get privatised and it is the public that suffers.

Whilst merchant bankers, and politicians profit.

From a practical layman’s point of view, insight to whether privatization should occur can be found by considering why the PMG - Telecom was developed initially.

The task of providing communication for a nation was huge, not possible by the private sector, hence government PMG.

It was supposed to be policy that government would develop huge projects and then pass them on to the private sector, in order to help build the economy.

But somewhere along the line things changed.
Telecom was sold but where did the money actually go?
Was any of the money allocated to develop productive new major projects that could later also be sold to the private sector? NO.

Example, I made a submission to the Telstra Natural Heritage Trust Enquiry. Google the latter.
My submission suggested harnessing Telstra sale funds to regenerate coastal wild fish stocks that could be harvested by fishing co-operatives and amateurs for local and export supply.
That suggestion went nowhere in that direction but later aquaculture policy was developed by politicians in the know.

These days unsustainable aquaculture often imports fish and antibiotics to feed caged fish.
Over 70 percent of fish now consumed in Australia is now imported at cost of about $2 billion annually.
Pork (white meat) is imported for pizza filling, also replacing once low cost – bottom of economy Australian fish and chips previously available in almost every town.

It is now apparent money from sale of government assets is not being invested in new major productive infrastructure that could produce exports and ongoing revenue, such as wild healthy high value export seafood.

These days aquaculture interests could still venture into wild fish stock regeneration that does not involve feed cost, end product subsequently lower in price to also supply bottom of economy consumers.

Privatization sale these days could lead to developing a northern Queensland wet season water harvesting and aqueduct system, flowing into upper catchment of the Darling River already running to SA, with vast new and existing food and fibre production en route.
Toward productive outcome, an OLO think tank could make a submission:
http://www.maff.gov.au/Pages/Media%20Releases/dams-water-infrastructure-investment.aspx

You may be on to something there JF Aus.
However, I wouldn't spend trillions on the necessary pipes, which could eventually be privatized, but inject northern surplus water directly into the Great Artesian Basin, which would quite massively reduce the cost and length of the pipeline; and allow gravity to do all the work.
That way, no private company could charge for the water then extracted from a permanently and annually refilled aquifer?
A good lesson is what happens to an economy, [Europe, America,] when water is privatized, and how with each drought the price always only ever goes up, and until we can make it rain on demand, always will. Once it was thought that land was the basis of all wealth.
Wrong, given land without water is just arid desert.
Water and what it produces, however, is the basis of all wealth!
That's why greedy robber barons want to own and control it.
And if they could sell what falls freely on the land from the sky, they would. Moreover, it impacts on the price of everything!
That's why mindless greed and the endless push for privatization of the very basics and support systems/pillars of our economy, must be resisted!
And where that has already happened, reversed by public re-acquisition!
The share market and falling prices is a good place to enact that policy paradigm!
Least we be accused of wanting to nationalize anything; but rather the re-acquisition of our patently purloined economic sovereignty, and then only via the free market!
More erstwhile ideas like your's would enable that, and sure to be resisted tooth a nail by the invariably exploitative over-privileged, who still think the rest of the world owes them a living; and or, endless free lunches!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty,
I am somewhat optimistic about solutions taking place because those at the top of the economy now know their approach/system is failing.
It can now be understood that more and more people cannot afford to buy what the big end of town is capable of producing.
I think solutions very much involve need to generate new productive industry and business able to employ and remunerate workers with enough take home pay to buy the goods that industry is already producing.
Right at this moment even fuel refining companies are pulling out and going overseas because profit they should be getting in Australia is being swallowed by excise tax.
That excise is impacting other industries.
Motorists no longer go on weekend picnics as they used to.
Most people choose not to pay for the virtual high cost of running a small outboard engine to go fishing as used to be the pastime.
Bigger boats now hardly ever leave the marina due to exorbitant fuel cost.
Coastal motels and flats are hardly used by bush people and others going on coastal holidays. Rural people now have trouble paying for fuel to even go to their local town for shopping.
Australia is a country of vast distances.
For an increasing number of people it's a time to stay home and spend nothing or as little as possible.
And the subsequent downturn in spending is reducing government revenue. Response by government has been to increase tax revenue from remaining turnover.
Albanese may have ability to lead solutions because he understands the bottom of the economy, but Shorten ex Gillard-carbon-tax is in the way.
Maybe Abbott will come good. Maybe we will see from what transpires from the productivity infrastructure development his government is proposing.
Absolutely without question in my mind there is need to develop new and clean industry to generate new revenue, instead of new taxes.

Some interesting comments here. To sum most up, it would appear that the best people to run all businesses would be the government, so we ought to nationalise everything now. Or that seems to be the corollary of the contention that we shouldn't sell government-owned businesses because that would put prices up (even though the evidence is to the contrary).

And then we have Foyle, whose idea of an economic policy is to issue IOUs now and expect succeeding generations to repay them, or perhaps just keep issuing IOUs in perpetuity.

You'll forgive me if I don't fall into either camp and continue to campaign for the most efficient use of national resources.

Ronald Regan did us all a disservice by so successfully bankrupting the USSR so they had to convert to a brand of capitalism. At one time you could win these debates by pointing the obvious natural experiment that was the USSR and how badly it was failing to provide a decent standard of living to its citizens. Alas they're 25 years gone, and with them that object lesson.

The 80s promise of a "democracy of shareholders" has been proven to be a failure.

It was a victory for financiers and those with significant capital to be able to plunder public assets and divert future profits into their own pockets.

Infrastructure built up over generations is sold off at bargain prices and most eventually ends up in overseas hands.

Converting public monopolies into private monopolies is not progress.

I can not think of a single privatisation that has resulted in a more effective or less expensive service to the public and all are just a massive transfer of public wealth into private hands.

Australia is a world leader in government asset sales and arguments have been based on rhetoric and dodgey financial analysis.

When you look at the actual revenue that came from past sales it becomes obvious they were less of a "sell-off" than a "sell-out", as analysed in the book "Privatisation" by Bob Walker and Betty Con Walker.

And Rhosty and others,
The proposed aqueduct would provide water for the Coorong that is supposed to be a nursery feeding animals in waters of the Southern Ocean. Aquifers need pumping.
Gravity will take water from Gregory Range high country downhill to the Darling River catchment without cost of energy. I think the fall will generate some energy. See:
http://www.murrayriver.com.au/images/map/Murray-Darling_basin.jpg
Big or small aqueduct can provide for barge freight.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Pontcysyllte_aqueduct_arp.jpg
and
http://cdn.homedit.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Magdeburg-Water-Bridge-Pictures2.jpg

There is need for management of the world ocean in order to sustain protein and fertilizer supply and to maintain atmosphere and climate.
Long term research and evidence indicates how and to what degree international institutions will have to participate in partnership with nations engaging in development of water ecosystem management infrastructure.

This planet is a unique life support habitat in the Universe and it's fragile life support ecosystems have to be maintained.
Evidence indicates that task could generate vast and interesting employment and business, prosperity and peace, that could be more interesting than argument, terrorism, recrimination and stupid bloody war.

Your full of it Wolly. Tell us what privatisations you are thinking of that have resulted in higher than normal prices.

The privatisation of our Govt Banks was an absolute disaster.

Banks create money from nothing to equal growth + inflation as debt. The real rate of inflation created by our banks in the West is more than double the stated figures.

The banking system is stealing from us on 3 levels. First with the depreciation of our currency, then we have to repay principal + interest on what should be ours. Private banks should not be allowed to create money from nothing to equal growth and inflation.

As James Rickards said in the 1950's $1 of debt created $ 2.40 of growth. By 1980 $1 of debt created 40 cents of growth. Today $1 0f debt creates 3 cents of growth and soon that growth will be negative.

What gives these private institutions the right to counterfeit our currencies ? Our Govts should be creating all this new money and we could have infrastructure and services debt free. Govts can be made more accountable if we had a proper constitution of rights and responsibilities.

We are at a stage now whereby exponentially more debt must be created to pay for the debt of present and past. Aust total debt is $5 trillion or 3.3 times our GDP. So the workers of this country will have to produce each,over $400,000 of extra production to pay this this debt off.

Right now the West our Govts are owned by the banking system because this system creates from nothing nearly all the new money for them to function. Corporatism and Govt are now one in the same.

So Graham,how is selling off more public assets to pay for their contrived growing debt,going to fix this problem ? We will become total serfs while the 0.01% will own even more.

<Your full of it Wolly. Tell us what privatisations you are thinking of that have resulted in
<higher than normal prices.
Posted by GrahamY, Saturday, 1 November 2014 10:40:25 PM

Insult?

I said, that selling the silver ware to overseas companies, that then use Australian tax law to avoid paying taxes. Is like shooting the public in the foot.

The Privatisation of the electricity network in Victoria, the poles and wires, resulted in a decrease in routine maintenance that help to contribute to the bush fires in victoria.

There is delusional thinking on the part of economists, that our politicians sprout, is that competition leads to lower prices, improved services ect.

The number one beneficiary of privatisations, is the CEO and boards, followed by the share holder,(but the shareholder is often kept in the dark)

SBS ran a program about the privatisation of water, prices increased and many very poor people were unable to pay their bills.

In Australia, State owned monopolies are only following the trend of Victoria's privatised power network and price gouging the public.

As too, the Public Hospital system, the New Premier of NSW mentioned that he wanted to privatise the public hospitals. There have already been disastrous experiments in the past where public hospital costs have blown out, once private operators have had their grubby little hands on them.

We only need to look at the skyrocketing costs of parking at Sydney and Melbournes airports. I know in Melbourne that there has been a gradual reduction in areas around the airport that people could park for free.

It is almost impossible to drop someone off on the concourse at Melbourne airport, and if by chance you do it in an undesignated area, you get fined.

I firmly believe that essential services should remain in government control, sure the government does not always act in the best interest of the public.

Personally I think anyone who advocates for the privatisation of public assets, is either delusional or stands to make a lot of money.

The failure of Privatisation.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/08/05/8-ways-privatization-has-failed-america

Privatisation, the good, bad and ugly.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/12/privatisation-good-bad-ugly

Electricity Privatisation failure.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-20/report-finds-electricity-privatisation-a-dismal-failure/5271492

In the late 1990's the government owned nursing homes in the ACT were privatised.

Today complaints are being kept secret.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/aged-care-complaints-kept-secret-20140927-10myjn.html

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/one-in-five-nursing-home-residents-malnourished-study-finds-20130522-2k1oe.html

It is extremely clear that in privatised nursing homes, the elderly are being neglected as private operators try maximise their profits.

That is not to say that neglect can not or does not happen in Publicly run nursing homes, it does.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/jan/10/privatisation-benefits-are-not-assured-and-public-are-sceptical-history-shows

http://www.waterjustice.org/uploads/attachments/whywaterprivatisationfails_PDF.pdf

Some advocates of privatisation, say that government regulation can be used to stop exploitation, however politicians are 'open' to influence and he who has the deepest pockets often wins.

From my point of view regarding essential protein required daily to properly nourish people worldwide, and from discussion here on OLO, I can see that concern should not be just about privatization of government assets.

Privately owned established industry and precious fertile land is also apparently being sold.
The milk industry is about to be taken up by food industry multinationals and I hear they are also presently after the best dairy producing land in the SW Victoria region, to vastly expand milk production for export.

Massive economic opportunity for Australia is being lost while politicians argue about boat people, detention, corruption.

Food forms the biggest economy in the world. Absolutely the biggest.
The economy of New Zealand is now virtually booming due to export of milk product alone.
Australia should be making a fortune from milk and beef exports instead of increasing fuel excise and possibly GST and other taxes.

Investment dollars coming into Australia may well help balance the books but in terms of producing wealth for Australian people, I think buying the farm is actually buying the livelihood of our future.
Australian people are being changed from being dairy farmers and milk producers to just being dairy hands.

Politicians should be seeing the increased worldwide demand for protein now that whole world ocean seafood protein supply is not presently sustainable.

Media should be informing dairy farmers of the virtual world protein supply drought, so farmers and industry can see the real value of land and industry they are about to walk out of.
The walk out is due to lack of present viability in dairy land and milk industry in Australia.
The supermarket milk war may not just be about super market competition.

Recent government reply to my insight and concern in these matters, is that foreign investment in Australia has always been welcome and is therefore still welcome.

Perhaps the question should be, why won't the political parties support Australian industry and the Australian people?

@ Graham Young
Posted Saturday, 1 November 2014 10:40:25 PM
Water. All across the US and elsewhere in the world privatisation has led to abuse. We can argue about most commodities, from electricity to parking spaces and hospitals to schools, but water is unique as it is the ONLY commodity without which we cannot live.
Public ownership, public care, subsidised where need be - hands off, or what's a government for?
A similar argument could be made for primary health and primary education, but, sadly, if the horse hasn't bolted, the barn door is open.

Come on Halduell, I supply my own water at considerable investment in tanks, pumps & underground reticulation system. I don't see you volunteering to pay for that, why the hell should I, & the hundreds of thousands like me, subsidise water to inner city greenies, who don't like dams, or the rest of the city population.

As for "Public ownership, public care", just ask the people of Brisbane about that. The public servants go home for the weekend, they get flooded next week, & you can't sue the pants off them, the way you can a company.

Hasbeen,
Let's be fair about this.
Rural development including for water supply usually has some degree or tax deductibility.
The gal tanks and pipes and pumps come from the cities after being imported or manufactured by city people.
City people pay water and sewage rates, including the greenies.
Maybe there is need for a revenue spike into your rain gauge. LOL.

As for public ownership and transfer of liability, there could be big costs for GBR ecosystem damage at Gladstone and to fisheries and whole Queensland coast tourism. http://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/news/will-gpc-be-sold/1778735/

JF Aus. You have some interesting and seemingly good ideas, many of which would seem on first blush, to be eminently sensible.
However, there are some points of difference.
If wages increase so as to make local production more affordable, more and more of those asked to pay, will simply seek refuge offshore!
With the real likely outcome, more expenditure on fully imported products. And a lose lose option for Australia, every which way?
I favor a very different approach that would reverse that outcome, and the return of affordability, by the reduction of unavoidable costs.
Lets start with the biggest, energy!
What would you say to the virtual halving of domestic and industrial energy costs, with the savings enabling both lower production costs, and increased discretionary spending!
Because that's exactly what we would get, with publicly owned and operated thorium reactors producing our industrial energy, and some of our domestic energy. Coupled to the conversion of most residential power supply, to biogas driven ceramic cells; which, with a 80% energy coefficient, the best in the world, reduce power bills by as much as 75%!
Enact those pragmatic changes with legislation, that literally taxes the profit demanding middleman out of business!
The hoary old chestnut, that the government has no business in business, would then be replaced with the much more pragmatic; the profit demanding middleman has no business in business.
And when achieved, cut the cost of living, energy and production by half!
Even poor old Hasbeen, who can't see beyond his farm gate, burdensome city slickers and his immediate family, would have to agree with that?
The PM, given his public utterances, may well see coal and foreign investment/ownership as his personal future?
But it is clearly not the nations, nor in the national interest to continue to rely on it, when there are far more pragmatic, and vastly cheaper locally available alternatives/solutions!
Doing what you've always done only ever gets you what you've always got! The sound of an economy going down the gurgler!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty,
Thank you for your comment.
Evidence indicates wages must increase worldwide because it is economy’s worldwide that are in trouble, so to speak.
There is need for more marbles in the marble bags to do the playing and trading worldwide.
I think the biggest unavoidable cost is that for food. We can all go without buying energy but we have to eat.

How can costs be halved without halving something else, such as halving profit of suppliers? Even a nuclear power plant will reduce viability of coal fired power.
Surely the solution is to increase supply of money worldwide so that nobody loses and everybody stands to gain.

In any case energy cost should not be influenced and increased by CO2 non-sense, because it may well be there is another cause of change to climate, maybe multiple causes.

Government is an important vital player in establishing big new and therefor untested business, such as developing infrastructure to manage the water ecosystem of this planet.
Really that is no big deal. I think a bigger task was communicating from Melbourne to London for the first time not so long ago. But the government PMG made it happen including on a commercial basis.

I think use of coal will continue. Why not? Ignore the CO2 nonsense and think of coal as it really is. Most soot is filtered out these days. Furnaces are high tech and are still improving. Modern light bulbs have more than halved energy consumption.

Rhosty you hit the nail on the head with this; “Doing what you've always done only ever gets you what you've always got! The sound of an economy going down the gurgler!”

Has been knows if the tank is empty you fill it up.
He also knows that leaks have to be plugged and pumps have to be sometimes serviced and updated.

The world cash system is virtually empty and it needs topping up to cater to worldwide modern day demand and needs of government and private enterprise and consumers - the people.

Those much-vaunted Public Private Partnerships that NSW and Victoria seem to be especially fond of the build tollways are another source for ripping off the public.
The Private partners have to borrow their money at a higher rate than the State Governments can and the public hold all the financial liability if things go wrong.
We may get the "joy" of new toll roads in the short term but we end up paying far more for them than we really needed to.
While it's electorally good for the politicians it the public who end up over-paying.

Internationally the privatisation of water has been a series of scandals and failures.
As well as what happened in Bolivia, the UK experienced many instances where children were put into State Care because their parents could no longer afford running water in their homes.

When Telstra was sold off the impression given by the government was that we were only one of a couple of countries with a fully government-owned Telco.

This was a deliberate half-truth.

We are now only one of a few with NO government part-ownership in a National Carrier because the majority of countries in fact retained a majority shareholding in their Telcos.

Any farmer will tell you that you can milk a cow every day but you can only eat it once.

Wolly, "It is extremely clear that in privatised nursing homes, the elderly are being neglected as private operators try maximise their profits."

People like you with your lefty attitude make me sick. My mothers last days were destroyed by the slack, useless, bitch, weekend overpaid, nurses in a large public hospital. They were too slack to do their job, & make sure an immobile 98 year old was fed & watered on their watch. They were too busy picking up their full weeks pay for 2 weekend shifts to bother even looking at what they should have been doing.

When I visited there were 3 meals, & 30 hours of liquid sitting out of reach, & she was delirious with dehydration. She could never walk again.

I'm surprised you didn't hear about it, I shouted loud enough for you to hear, where ever you live. I have never seen so many bureaucrats appear from no where when I started mentioning legal action, & that on a Sunday.

Our local public hospital refused to take her, as her high platelet count was beyond their capability they said for god's sake. Take her to a nursing home, not here they said. That's right, a nursing home with no doctor. It is a wonder all the bureaucrats survived, I must be getting tame.

It was a local nursing home that had to nurse her back to some level of health. About half the staff in public hospitals are more likely to kill, than help you.

You have no idea do you JF Aus.

To start with our neighbourhood watch area has 880 homes & growing. No more than 20 are commercial farms, just acreage living lifestyle blocks, with many amateur equestrian people. There is no town water, every one of them supply their own water, & there is no tax deductibility involved.

Those further out who farm, contributed to a rural water scheme, & spent big dollars up front. They have between $25,000 & $60,000 annual bill for maintained of the damn & infrastructure, to be in the scheme, plus a charge per megalitre for the water they draw.

A few years back, when it was dry, that bastard of a man Beattie took the water from their dam to supply Swanbank Power Station, leaving them with no water at all for 2 years, but they still had to pay the infrastructures maintenance. Any form of tax deductibility is pretty useless when you have no production, no income, so no tax.

I might mention that in 2 recent years, when we had too much rain, also reducing production, they drew no water, but they still had to pay that infrastructure cost.

Our local council, & most country councils, have spent heaps on water infrastructure for the towns folk, most of which the residents pay in rates & water rates. It is only the city folk who have the major investment in dams picked up by the state government.

Continued

Continued

Beattie spent billions on pipe infrastructure to pinch country & Gold Coast water for Brisbane in the drought. Water in the Gold Coast damn, built by Gold Coast council funds could be pumped to Brisbane. After a rate payer paid for raising of their damn, they had extra capacity when Wivenhoe was being reduced for safety.

Don't waste all that water said the Gold Coast, send it down here, to fill our 40% increase in capacity. Guess what, the multi billion pipes can't work that way. They can't pump to the Gold Coast, only away from it to Brisbane.

And you people wonder why many of us don't have much time for whining city folk. Yes their water rates have skyrocketed, but that is because they had that Idiot Beattie, followed by Bligh. They panicked & spent billions on a white elephant desalination plant & piping system.

All of the comments so far, while all insightful and knowledgeable in terms of their practical application, overlook the real underlying issue.

The fact is that, had Australia not gone down the privatisation road, it would have become a pariah in the international financial community. Those who refuse to participate in the international financial consensus are punished, through a variety of measures - low credit ratings, isolation from trade pacts, enforcement of trade and economic sanctions, media demonization, political ostracism and, in extreme cases, destabilisation, proxy civil wars and bombing.

The enforced demise of the Whitlam government - the last publically responsible of Australia's economic administrations (despite enduring Murdoch propaganda that it was wasteful and profligate) - was the final death knell to Australia's public ownership of national assets.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that privatisation offers absolutely nothing to ordinary citizens, and simply transfers wealth to an increasingly corrupt private sector, nothing is going to change.

Privatisation is now a sacred religion. For any politician to challenge it is to invite career suicide and instant social exclusion (worse than death for politicians, who are by nature pathetically conformist establishment players).

The best we can hope for is for the system to play itself out until it totally collapses under its own corruption and excess. But whatever comes after offers little hope of a happy ending.

Posted by Hasbeen, Sunday, 2 November 2014 10:19:45 PM

Sorry to hear about your loss and your experience. It sounds like your grief is still pretty raw.

If you continued to read my post, I also said that neglect can and does happen in the Public institutions as well.

A prime example of good privatisation is the sale of electricity generation in Victoria who now has the lowest bulk price of power in the country.

Similarly, the sale of medibank in a mature market will put about $5bn in the government's pockets for further infrastructure growth, and continue providing company and individual tax revenue with no price increases.

Thanks for your condolences Wolly. Yes I am a bit raw & sensitive about it.

Hasbeen,
I grew up on 240,000 acres in Paroo country and so have the bush in my blood.
In previous comments of your on other threads it has appeared to me you live a perfect life in the hills away from suburbia, but now it seems suburbia is creeping in around you.
Let me know if you need a hand to move one day, to where rainwater is still free as nature intended.

Killarney,
You have hit the nail well and truly on the head in my opinion, especially where you say;
" Those who refuse to participate in the international financial consensus are punished, through a variety of measures - low credit ratings, isolation from trade pacts, enforcement of trade and economic sanctions, media demonization, political ostracism and, in extreme cases, destabilisation, proxy civil wars and bombing."

Something is going to have to change.
The money people will surely want some change once they realize there is much more money to be made, for example by government developing infrastructure for major new productivity that can be engineered right from the start to be later privatized.
I am referring to significant new food and fibre productivity and exports.

As present however the big end of town has the blinkers on.
I think bigotry and ego have a lot to do with it, together with greed and corruption as you say.

I think there is a tiny little bit of hope and that could be enough to get the blinkers off for a happy ending.
Hopefully soon.

Apologies for talking in riddles, there is not the space to elaborate here and now.