In what can best be described as an out of character move, the Federal Coalition Government has blocked the NSW Coalition Government’s sale (99 year lease) of 50.4% of ‘Ausgrid’ to Hong Kong Chinese interests, sighting “national security” concerns. Treasure Morrison could not exactly detail what those concerns were.
Bob Carr said the Federal Government's decision may have been driven by xenophobia in the new political climate, Hanson and co in the Senate. The decision could cost NSW $1 billion, not to be sneezed at! Mike Baird is not a happy camper this morning over the whole affair. The broader question is, how do you feel about governments selling public assets in the first place.

I'm completely opposed to the privatisation and sale of many of our assets.
I think that a government needs to prove it can run a business properly in order to demonstrate it has the ability to run a country.
Politicians don't deserve to be paid for the time they spend selling off that which Australians worked so hard for in the first place.
They never did any of the hard yards themselves building it.

Also, I believe capitalism in some areas hurts the economy overall.
For example its not good to have skills, training, transportation and energy creation as capitalist business if this increases costs overall because it just provides a bottleneck to overall productivity by increasing costs to businesses.

"The decision could cost NSW $1 billion"...
Yeah... and not selling my spare kidney and other organs is costing me a fortune too.

Nothing should be sold to China. Nothing should ever have been sold to China. Utilities should always remain government-owned. Where they have been sold off, consumer prices have sky-rocketed. Electricity was sold off in SA (China is involved) and we now have the highest power prices in the world; the forests of inefficient wind mills have something to do with that as well. Whether or not the Chinese attempt and Baird stupidity in NSW has really been blocked because of security or not, who knows; but China is a natural enemy of Australia. Pauline Hanson? Well, we shall have to wait to see if she gets something she wanted before we can involve her. The point is, it is foolish to sell off essential services to anyone, including China and any other foreigners. Australian politicians, idiots that they are, have to stop spending to claw back what they have fritted away, not sell off Australia bit by bit to keep themselves in power and a job for life.

There is virtually no justification for governments to be running businesses unless they are natural monopolies. However, given that Ausgrid is critical infrastructure, there is good reason to exclude state owned "businesses" from less than ideal governments.

Anyone owning Ausgrid could shut down NSW in a day.

@Paul1405, Saturday, 13 August 2016 7:18:28 AM

Typical Greens 'Protest' Party, the federal government is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. You are only in it to stir.

However for the benefit of other posters who would like to discuss the pros and cons, this being a discussion site and not a wall for Greens political graffitti, I would say that Baird was misdirected on this one.

The feds have cited security concerns and that is enough to advise against the sale. Others might also ask why Government would sell a money-making concern into foreign ownership.

There is a higher plane for this discussion, which is the failure of both sides of governments to plan for the future that is resulting in the need for State and federal governments to sell assets to plug holes in the Budget.

However, States and Territories do have a defence and Bob Carr should remember it since when he was Premier of NSW and later as a federal government minister he cited it.

It is quite simply that for decades the feds have been running over-ambitious immigration with often new records being set every year and that has continually overstretched the available infrastructure AND the pockets of the over-taxed public. It is also why there is so much restriction of government services and 'user pays' - 'that was previously paid out of available tax revenues.>

to be continued..

continued..

<<Bob Carr urges 50% cut in immigration
FEBRUARY 16, 2016

Australia's population ticked over to 24 million on Tuesday, on the back of record net overseas migration in the year to July 2015.
Mr Carr said the country's rapid population growth was flooding major cities and putting huge pressure on house prices.

"People wonder why their youngsters can't get housing in the big cities," he told reporters in Sydney.
"And the answer is we are going for breakneck population growth, and it's all about supply and demand."

The former NSW Labor premier and federal foreign minister said Australia's growth rate outstripped Indonesia's and was the highest of any developed country.

"We've got a third-world style population growth rate and I think the Australian people need to be alerted to this," he said.
"There's a case for pegging immigration back by easily a third, perhaps 50 per cent."..

Mr Carr said the "hugely over-ambitious" approach to migration was devised by Canberra bureaucrats without sufficient thought to the pressure it was putting on property markets and congestion in cities like Sydney and Melbourne.

"No matter how much governments spend on infrastructure, at this level of population, it's always never enough," he said.>
http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/population-growth-fuels-house-prices-carr/news-story/48d783c75758347b0d83469537fbe5f8