Kudelka: http://www.kudelka.com.au/
Behind the scenes there is a big power play going on in Tasmania right now as private power utilities attempt to force the Tasmanian government to go well beyond privatising Aurora’s electricity sales.
If current reforms go through as expected, Tasmania’s small power consumers (meaning all households and very small businesses) will soon be buying their electricity through one of three corporate retailers who win the rights to that retail electricity market. Householders won’t choose, the deck will be shuffled and each household will be simply allocated to one of the three retailers in the first instance. Personally, I think that is a better way than people having to make choices from the very start, but that’s not the most important issue at stake.
What is much more important is that the businesses that are dominating the energy scene in the Australian electricity market are really wanting to grab hold of Hydro Tasmania’s electricity wholesaling. A strong argument is being bandied about at present that no business would want to buy into Aurora’s retail business unless Hydro dominance of the wholesale electricity market is first killed off. It’s a rubbish argument. The corporations that are dominating the energy scene in Australia – most notably Origin, AGL and True Energy – have been lusting over Hydro Tasmania’s electricity wholesaling business which is worth a whole lot more to them.
This article in yesterday’s ‘Conversation’ applies to the whole of Australia, but it could be read in the context of what is happening here in Tasmania.
http://theconversation.edu.au/why-we-should-pull-the-plug-on-privatising-electricity-10824?
The privatisation agenda has backfired in NSW and Queensland where Labor governments have been mercilessly tossed out of office for trying to privatise public assets and the incoming conservative governments know that they would suffer the same fate if they go too far down that track.
But the power brokers that are overseeing market reform, particularly the energy utilities who are wanting slices of the cake, are playing a patient game of slow attrition across Australia. They are in for the long haul and know that they will get their way as time goes on. The slide only goes one way. Never back the other way.
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More reasons for people to switch to solar as soon as they can. Privatisation has destroyed the fabric of our society and put control of the countries economies into the hands of the idelogical elite.
Hydro Tas should be exporting it’s energy to Aus and the people should have independent local althernative generating capacity, then the state would be making profits. The people and reducing power costs as they feed energy to local business, lowering their costs as well.
Time to remove the encumbent fools and get this state into the 21st century now, instead of being held back until it sinks under the weight of reality.
These changes are driven by the ideology of ‘economic rationaism’, ‘small government’ and a faith in the ‘free market economy’ in which Government should play no role as a business operator. These are the sort of ideas puhsed by Thatcher and Reagan and Bush at the behest of business interest and are still sliding through our society even when they are shown to be fatuous - because they are pushed by the ideologues of wealth.
This is what happened when Kenntt took power in Victoria and look what happened to their public transport system. However it is an example of the ‘P-P Game’: Privatise profit - publicise the cost.
Many of the entities privatised are public utilities (a rich asset) which are held for the common good. But the unproven claims made by the ideologues of wealth is that this is ‘less efficient’ and usually just plain wrong as governments shouldn’t be in the market, that is best left to ‘efficient businesses’.
These claims are provably wrong. Yet they are still pushed by free marketeers like the insitute of Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies, the Liberal Party extremists, etc.
The same has been happening to water supplies around the world.
Installing water meters is the first step to privatisation…
Core services should be managed by Government or sooner or later human life will have a plummeting market value.
What I really want is an individual to blame, sue, incarcerate or just plain punish. Then they can do what they want because I hold and am able to hold someone responsible and mete out due punishment if they screw with my life.
Domestic solar enthusiasts are still under the control of the power companies. It’s they who decide what rate of rebate is allowable. The rebates have steadily lessened in various states since the early days, as domestic solar users erode the consumption of industrially supplied electricity, and governments defend it.
All part of the global agenda to place control of all wealth and assets into the hands of fewer and fewer people until we mere peasants have no freedom of choice and are also controlled by them.
Maybe in our lifetime, maybe not but certainly the wheels are in motion.