Medibank should be privatised. Australia Post should be privatised.
Lumbering bureaucracies and wasted taxpayer dollars in them both.
Bring it on!
All good stuff, particularly the Friedman quote, but Iemma no longer has the cred to push through major reform. The public and the media (especially talk radio) up here see him as a Clouseau-like buffoon.
Can someone explain why Iemma got hardly any support from the right at the conference?
Why could he only get 100 votes, and not say 300 to at least make it look competitive?
I'm usually in favour of privatisation, but Iemma's plan makes no sense. Sure, he'll sell the power, but then he's going to spend the money on a whole lot of public infrastructure.
So we get less publically owned power, but a whole lot more publically owned roads and hospitals. A least the power made money. The taxpayers are going to have to pay the bill for all this infrastructure.
That means more taxes and bigger government thanks to Iemma the commie.
This is good, the Taliban can buy shares in NSW electricity generation, or perhaps your more comfy with the Chinese owning it?
"So too will be a disastrous election result if government backbenchers don't suck it up"
What will guarantee an ALP slaughter at the next election will be the privatisation of our power. Will some future government apologise for "the stolen generators" ? Power to the people, not foreign capital!
Maybe if he really was going to invest the proceeds in much needed infrastructure the sale might be justified but that would never happen.Before the property boom lost its steam the Carr Labor Government was picking up a Stamp Duty windfall of as much as $4 billion a year.This was over and above Budget projections.Not a cent was spent on infrastructure the whole lot went on establishing bigger and better bureauracies to provide featherbedding for Labor-connected bludgers and hangers on.It's keeping that bloated Public Service fed that now makes the electricity sale necessary.What will they want to sell next?
Yeah you'd know all about spending other people's money wouldn't you Landeryou? Anyway, if Iemma can't organise a conference, how's he gonna be organising electricity privatisation. Real tough machine men they turned out to be - they're a pack of clowns, and today they got their comeuppance.
Australia Post's core business these days is parcel delivery, not conventional snail-mail.
It is therefore a direct competitor for companies like Fed-Ex and so on, and there is no reason it cannot be privatised.
As for Snail Mail, USPS in the United States has many local mail routes sub-contracted to private companies because USPS itsel does not have the ability to cover those routes.
I'll also point out, it is a requirement of the EU for all member states to liberalise their postal companies by 2011.
Germany liberalised Deutsche Post and now in partnership with DHL, it is the worlds pre-eminent global logistics service.
Japan intents to liberalise its postal service in the next few years.
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