The article 'Is privatising power a real turn-off?' http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7839 published Wednesday 3 September, is currently languishing a bit.

It would be a pity if paucity of comment there were to be taken as an indication that OLO users were not interested in this subject. I suspect that it is rather the detailed explanations of political philosophical theory that is gone into by the author that may be the turn-off with respect to that article.

With genuine respect for the detailed research that both daggett and Paul.L. have contributed on this thread, I would observe that a debate as to the merits and demerits of privatisation or public ownership has moved a little off-topic here. Right or wrong the public in NSW presently own the electricity business, and 80% of them are far from satisfied about it being sold off from under them. They see it as a failure in duty, fidelity, and imagination on the part of governments that sale even has to be entertained as a solution to what we are told is impending shortage.

This thread is fulfilling the function of showing public perceptions of the consequences of even the retail sell-off, and providing some imaginative suggestions, imagination that has clearly been lacking at Parliamentary level, to solve the problems we all now have, not resolve whether we all arrived here for the right political philosophical reasons.

I think the consensus is that both sides of politics are seriously out of touch with public expectations and ideas with respect to electricity supply. Don't let's debate on ground of politicians' choosing.

Continuing such a debate in the comments thread on Carolyn Currie's article may indeed be quite productive, as indeed discussion of a past coup in Chile may be interesting. This is not meant as a put-down. I just don't think going further down that road on this thread does Belly's rather courageous stand the justice, and consideration, it deserves. After all, we have a coup in Australia to discuss.

PaulL you and I have crossed swords in the game of verbal tennis before.
This is not an attempt at humor just the way I truly think.
I think you are quite wrong.
I share non of your views, not one of the many I have read here.
I like the side track the thread has taken, it interests me.
But Paul I am from the right within my party, and maybe wrong but on the evidence you give me in your posts you are just about as right as you can get in your party.
I can only put my thoughts, true honest belief in this post.
I truly think NSW has better government as of a few hours ago.
And that we will win the next election, remember no longer can conservatives wait for Labor to fall over.
Watch the polls and in 12 months tell me we lost anything to day.

Yah Belly, a good day for us all. With 2&1/2 years to go before the next election we needed this change. Iemma the Inept has gone. We need good governance.

Where does Rees stand on the power sell-off?

Will he push for the privatisation of the retail side?

When will Bob Carr get his come-uppance?

Belly

>> "And that we will win the next election, remember no longer can conservatives wait for Labor to fall over."

What??

Labour has already fallen over. The party has rolled a sitting premier and treasurer on the same day. It is the first time in 117 years this has happened apparently.

The only up side for the labour party is the gormless twats from the opposition who defied Liberal policy on privatisation to score cheap political points. They have done their party a serious disservice as well.

You say you are from the right wing of the labour party but that is nonsense. Privatisation is a policy staple of the right wing of the labour party. Paul Keating, one of my very favourite politicians, is the godsfather of the right faction of the NSW ALP. His grounbreaking economic reforms were the major reason the Australian economy has been travelling so well since the last recession. There is little doubt they were painful initially, but they were the right decisions.

Mostly, the right wing of the labour party understand that good economic management will provide the outcomes working people want and need, not unions selfishly protecting their little empires.

PaulL your self assurance is misplaced.
To over value your own opinion and under value your opponents is not a good debating tool.
Center unity is my home, that faction was Iemmas, and it got rid of him.
Rees while from the left is non factional now as a result of his promotion.
His deputy is from the left too.
But do not look for any lurch away from center unity pathways.
Paul again very very wrongly throws mud at unions/me/and the party.
Remember this is the party taking control, a return to party standing policy's and directions, and I will remind you often Paul the party hit rock bottom yesterday, and found its feet this day.
Hard times ahead for NSW but my party is again united.
The conservatives ran away from their own policy had they went with the sale the ALP would be in internal war right now.
And would have lost an early election forced not long after Christmas maybe before.
The failure to find a heart or a brain is the ALPs win, maybe the last chance for conservatives to govern this state for a decade.

As I said, Paul.L I didn't ever claim that Friedman was personally involved in the coup, so there is no claim I need to back "off rapidly from". However, as Klein has shown, a good many of his followers collaborated intimately with the coup leaders. This is a fact that Friedman tried to conceal in an interview on 10/01/00 (1 Oct 2000(?) or 10 Jan 2000(?)) he claimed that their presence in Chile at the time was 'accidental' (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_miltonfriedman.html#10).

Whether or not Friedman explicitly supported Pinochet's crimes, the clear evidence, as I have shown, is that his economic prescriptions could not be applied with the consent of the people. They were emphatically rejected again and again at the polls and the same applies in Australia.

As for the statistics of the much ballyhooed "Chilean Economic miracle" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chile_GDP.jpg a close examination will reveal that the Chilean economy was doing quite well until the time of the capital strike of Allende's government.

I see Paul.L evaded my point about the disastrous consequences of the free market policies implemented by Pinochet immediately after the coup in 1973 on the advice of Chicago School trained economists, by referring to the economic boom in the late 1980's.As another document at http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/part2/chapter3 http://www.citizen.org/documents/chilealternatives.pdf shows much of this was due to unsustainable exports of raw materials and the pursuit of ecomic policies by Pinochet and his successors which were contrary to economic neo-liberalism.

---

How quickly Paul.L forgot his words "I fully accept that there is no mandate for this change at the present time ..."

... when he complained of ...

"the gormless twats from the opposition who defied Liberal policy on privatisation to score cheap political points."