Post by Flash on May 6, 2008 18:08:44 GMT -5
Iemma deserved better than naked obstructionism
Paul Keating
So the lemmings at the Labor Party conference have given the Premier and the Treasurer a bruising. Well may they come to regret it.
Governments are hard enough to put in place; keeping them there is even harder. The Premier, Morris Iemma, and his Treasurer, Michael Costa, are as honest a pair of souls as NSW politics has had, but more than that, they want to actually do something; in this case, to break the back of electricity reform in this state, stymied now for over a decade.
Iemma, having won a difficult election for Labor, should have enjoyed the support of this conference rather than its naked obstructionism.
Bernie Riordan, the state president, may be a conscientious barracker for his electrical trades constituency but he is a woeful party president, someone who does not understand that the president's main task is to manage the party to keep it supportive of the Government.
I was state party president between 1979 and 1983. I took the job to see the Wran government remain in office amid chronic factional strife while, at the same time, paving the way for the federal Labor Party to defeat Malcolm Fraser. I did not take the job to press personal causes or to indulge my authority.
But I had helpers. Barrie Unsworth was running the Labor Council and Graham Richardson was running the party. Both were attuned to their responsibilities to the state government in office and the federal party in the wings.
These days the Government in Macquarie Street has no helpers. The party president indulges himself as a microeconomic expert while the Unions NSW secretary, John Robertson, sees his role as providing T-shirts to protesters.
Intellectually, both these men know that from the day the National Electricity Market, established by the Keating government, went into operation in 1995, there was no economic or commercial reason why any state would retain state ownership of power generating capacity.
When lights are turned on in NSW now, much of the electricity is provided by private electricity generators in other states. Indeed, electricity prices in the national grid are priced every 30 minutes, so competitive is the national electricity market.
Yet the debate over the weekend was had as if the National Electricity Market, all down the east coast of Australia, does not exist.
Electricity generation has been around now for about 120 years. It is truly industrial archaeology; anyone can build a station and the capital is almost available at your local bank. And that is without tapping the $1200 billion of Australia's superannuation savings.
Paul Keating
So the lemmings at the Labor Party conference have given the Premier and the Treasurer a bruising. Well may they come to regret it.
Governments are hard enough to put in place; keeping them there is even harder. The Premier, Morris Iemma, and his Treasurer, Michael Costa, are as honest a pair of souls as NSW politics has had, but more than that, they want to actually do something; in this case, to break the back of electricity reform in this state, stymied now for over a decade.
Iemma, having won a difficult election for Labor, should have enjoyed the support of this conference rather than its naked obstructionism.
Bernie Riordan, the state president, may be a conscientious barracker for his electrical trades constituency but he is a woeful party president, someone who does not understand that the president's main task is to manage the party to keep it supportive of the Government.
I was state party president between 1979 and 1983. I took the job to see the Wran government remain in office amid chronic factional strife while, at the same time, paving the way for the federal Labor Party to defeat Malcolm Fraser. I did not take the job to press personal causes or to indulge my authority.
But I had helpers. Barrie Unsworth was running the Labor Council and Graham Richardson was running the party. Both were attuned to their responsibilities to the state government in office and the federal party in the wings.
These days the Government in Macquarie Street has no helpers. The party president indulges himself as a microeconomic expert while the Unions NSW secretary, John Robertson, sees his role as providing T-shirts to protesters.
Intellectually, both these men know that from the day the National Electricity Market, established by the Keating government, went into operation in 1995, there was no economic or commercial reason why any state would retain state ownership of power generating capacity.
When lights are turned on in NSW now, much of the electricity is provided by private electricity generators in other states. Indeed, electricity prices in the national grid are priced every 30 minutes, so competitive is the national electricity market.
Yet the debate over the weekend was had as if the National Electricity Market, all down the east coast of Australia, does not exist.
Electricity generation has been around now for about 120 years. It is truly industrial archaeology; anyone can build a station and the capital is almost available at your local bank. And that is without tapping the $1200 billion of Australia's superannuation savings.