Mood:
sharpTopic: nsw govt
Mediocre laissez faire economic analysis has grown up around the alleged desirability of the defunct 1997 '$35 billion' (or is that only $25 billion?) NSW power sell off plan, rejected by the union movement and ALP conference. But not just those groups. Civil society groups were also very concerned as per this article in the UK The Guardian in 1997 which was provided to NSW MPs with the package below:
The following documentation has never been web published before sitting in a plastic folder in the SAM archive for 12 years now. But we always knew it was quality information that should be kept for posterity, whether one agrees or disagrees with the weight of the arguments.
As stated elsewhere, this writer slotted a copy of this briefing note under every NSW MP's door. A practice we learned from an earlier parliamentary officer job with cross bencher Clover Moore MP in late 1992, when Moore McDonald and Hatton's influence and power was in their halycon days. The unofficial circular under doorways was banned soon after and we may well have caused that. Certainly the anger in the ALP Right must surely have been white hot after their power sale plan fell over.
As stated in the penultimate post regarding plans for the sale income in 1997:
(b) we know of another $450M via John Connor (now of ALP aligned Climate Institute) which Carr planned to insert into a NSW version of Howard's $1B Natural Heritage Trust package in the sell off of Telstra. Indeed the 1997 energy sale plan was quite a monkey see, monkey do version of Carr copying Howard in 1996 federal election win. In NSW substitute power assets for telco, but it was all about smashing unions and getting the money. And people wonder why Carr jumped directly to Macquarie Bank from the premiership?
The briefing paper from 1997 follows and main credit goes to freelance writer and academic Claire Gerson in Third Opinion magazine edited by Stevie Bee/Broadbent (now out of publication) who often worked overnight because back then internet speeds on landlines were so slow it was the only way to access his international sources. Also to then climate change campaigner Dietrich Willing of Friends of the Earth Sydney:
................................................................................
Lastly here is a poster from nascent NSW Green party from that time in 1997:
