So we are not to sell power just gut it and sell the arms and legs.
Would Costa and Morris along with a few trained pups have been better not to have betrayed the state ALP conference?
Yes they would!
But wait there is indeed more.
We now see the butchers knife cutting away to sell parts of our states power.
Do not for a second think the story's about support for a very lost leader are even close to true.
The attempts to dress up the party's image are not too much unlike the RTA resealing over potholed roads looks good for a while but is worse than it was before in just weeks.
Just weeks away from NSW ALP country conference this state is ruled by men who use threats and fear to force a vote in their favor.
Of all the people who ever dogged on the ALP I predict Morris and Costa will do more damage.
I do not betray my party with this thread.
I in fact defend it from men who should not claim to be in it.

Belly,

At a time when govts. are telling us that energy is to become the crucial issue of the 21stC why are they so keen to get out of responsibility for power generation etc? Surely this is the time for our elected leaders to bight the bullet and take control of this apparently crucial issue?

Giving Morris 10 or 20 billion to buy the next couple of elections would be criminal. He is such a transparently grubby little politician. His argument that 'we have failed to invest in our state infrastructure, so we must sell off our infrastructure so we can invest in our infrastructure' is just embarrassing.

These power assets have halved in value since Kerry Chicaroski tried to sell them and was howled down by union thugs, the labour party and members of the public like you Belly.

Thanks to you Belly and the rest of them the NSW tax payer is about 15 billion dollars out of pocket and you are carrying on like it is some sort of achievement to boast about.

Morris should sell all of them and spend the money where it is need on things like public transport.

Anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to keep antiquated power stations at the expense of improving public transport and the like have logic which I am completely incapable of comprehending and I am sure most other sane people are as well.

The gross stupidity and incompetence of the NSW state government is infuriating!

Easy Times save your vitriol, how can you be so sure most want to sell?
And how can you over look it was Costa who lead the no sale crew then?
It is the duty of government to provide some things, surely power is one of these.
Union thugs? on what evidence ?
I do not value your emotional opinion but you may just see I do agree the government is a shambles.
Every privatization of power has seen much higher prices far worse service and public still paying for pensioner discounts as private enterprise only exists for profit.
I could take offense at the child like union thugs tag but understand it comes from the uninformed.
From the same tree as work choices it fails to understand most unions are in no way thugs.
some few are both thugs and mugs, some in the anti Union camp are too.

I don't have any experience in the NSW electricity generation or distribution industry. Can anyone tell me why it is that the value of the public assets that are the subject of contention has declined by 50% since Kerry Chikarovski proposed selling them in the early 1990s?

Had these assets been sold back then, what would NSW consumers have likely been paying for electricity over the intervening years?

Now that it looks like they are not being sold off, what effect will that have upon the viability of the Capital Wind Farms project at Bungendore, a project that has been billed as supplying ALL of the power requirements of the Kurnell desalination plant? The reason I ask this question is that Capital Wind Farms recently was awarded a 20 year contract for supply of electricity to Sydney Water (the desalinator operator) at a price of $0.05 per KwH (approximately equal to the retail off-peak price for electricity) at a time when the existing NSW generating capacity has a surplus of off-peak power to sell.

What I don't understand is how the wind farm project can viably contract to supply a round-the-clock power demand at an off-peak rate when it is itself a form of supply that is subject to intermittency. It must have offsetting arrangements with other base-load generators to maintain supplies to the desalinator when the wind is not blowing fair. How can it pay for offsetting power at peak times when itself only being paid at an off-peak price? It just does not seem a commercially viable situation.

Is the contract price of $0.05 per KwH so much better than the wholesale off-peak prices that it just does not matter? If so, who is getting ripped off and/or taken for a ride? Sydney householders, or the NSW taxpayers at large?

Do any interests in Capital Wind Farms or Babcock & Brown Wind Partners show up in the register of pecuniary interests of NSW parliamentarians?

Who really stood to benefit from this proposed sell-out?

It’s not about most wanting to sell it’s about common sense. Most people don’t want to pay taxes! Should we all stop paying taxes because most don’t want to?

Sure some unions do some good work sometimes but the unions trying to block the NSW power sales are not. They are acting in the interest of their members but it’s not in the interest of the NSW tax payer who owns the power stations. Since when has the employee been the boss?

Worse service? What kind of services do you regally need for an electricity company? As long as when I flick the light switch it comes on I am happy.

We could easily afford to subsidise the pensioners you talk about with 30 billion!

Belly I have a lot of respect for you on OLO but you are destroy your credibility by promoting dogmatism like this.

15 billion dollars gone.. Is this the biggest stuff up in the history of NSW? In the history of Australia? FIFTEEN BILLON DOLLARS GONE FOREVER!! And I am pointing the finger at people like you Belly.