And what a delight those private industries are. We held street parties to celebrate the outbreak of giardia and cryptosporidium generously given to us by the French company which had the contract to deliver clean drinking water to the people of Sydney. After the feigned indignation of our governments following the Moruroa atoll atomic testing done by the French, to turn around and award a contract to a French company is beyond understanding but that's another matter.

I do hope that this privatising caper goes all the way. I know a bunch of Chinese politicians who could do the job of any of our governments for about AUD$15,000 per year.

I’m not sure the Government deserves the perceived credit or the inference of well thought out policy given by your comment on their successful privatisation formula; to think that the handsome price received by the Government is anything but luck when AGL and now Origin bumble around spending big to chase growth.

While the bureaucracy struggles to work together and is challenged in understanding and communicating the commercial, policy and engineering complexities of the industry it is difficult to think that the Government could put together a well thought out strategy such as that suggested.

I see the heart of the problem lies in the Government being the shareholder, policymaker and regulator. Undoubtedly until this conflict is resolved the decisions about the future of the industry will be driven by the part of the bureaucracy with the greatest influence at the time without consideration for what is best for the bigger picture. (e.g. the water usage issue at Tarong – surely without the conflict of being the shareholder the Government would have recognised and implemented an approach that could have saved a significant amount of water without putting the system at risk )

The Natural Hedge - In theory your discussion on the natural hedge sounds good however when you consider that large electricity consumers presumably receive the benefit of a lower price environment and speculators can position themselves between relatively unsophisticated or restricted Government generators and retailers I am certain that the leakage would be much bigger than you suggest.

How is this a positive? Selling off our essential industries will only cause nothing but disastrous effects. After electricity is water and this is bad for all of us.

Essential infrastructure/industry such as electricity and water must be retained by the people but not run in the way it is now. I would prefer to see electricity and water run at a local level where it is run by community elected boards where any profit available after working out the costs and investment should be returned back to the community via local community groups.

Privatisation equals nothing but marketable greed.

Could we please privatising and contracting out our politicians so that at any time we could not only cancel their contract which would cancel their employment, we could change over to a more competitive politician.

Sounds like the fair option to me.