Selling power stations to private enterprise is the first step in more privatisation. Once electricity is privatise despite Santa clauses, the cost to Railways public transport which uses a lot of the stuff becomes horrendous which in turns drains the public purse unless the Railways are privatised (which they are partly for freight, etc) which in turn makes the price of tickets go through the roof which in turn sends private companies to the wall for low patronage and more cars on the road. The government thus has to subsidised the private operator to the full cost of what the operation was sold for except we don't own it, and the privateers rub their hands anyhow with a public cash cow. What's the advantage of selling the public stuff to private enterprise? None, ziltch, zero, nada. The expertise in the public sector in engineering and development is only hemmed in by inefficient and unenlightened dull politicians. But like many accountants that have ruined private businesses, the NSW government pollies see short term cash in hands rather than long term planning of "their" assets — public assets — while the dysfunctional opposition is rubbing its hands because its flock is made of the profiteers in private enterprise who hate anything public. The Liberals always wanted to sell the farm and the Iemma-Costa peddlers are doing it for them. Do they go to the same lodge?

Judy Davis sues over soccer lights article


Two-time Oscar nominee Judy Davis is suing a Sydney newspaper over a series of articles she claims implies she is a "child-hating" selfish hypocrite.

Davis, 53, appeared in the NSW Supreme Court today for the beginning of her defamation suit against Nationwide News, publisher of Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The Emmy and Golden Globe winner is suing over three items that appeared in the newspaper in February 2006 over the proposed erection of floodlights at a park near her waterfront home at Birchgrove, in Sydney's inner-west.

The articles refer to her appearance at a Leichhardt Council meeting opposing the lights, with the first appearing under the headline "My Brilliant Dummy Spit" - a reference to her famed turn in the film My Brilliant Career.

Her barrister, Terry Tobin, QC, today told the jury the meeting was initially civil, but a "rather scrappy tone" emerged after someone suggested the only people opposed to the lights were "toffs who were living up on Louisa Road".

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Gus: night lights are good but sometimes whoever thinks of lighting places the damn things in the wrong places, uses lights that are far too bright or positions the lights in the wrong direction.

I drove up Mrs Macquarie's Chair road (one of Sydney's best vantage spot) the other night and I was incensed: all I could see was bright flood lights that extinguished the view over to the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge — a majestic view which I have enjoyed seeing many times over the years. New super-bright lighting had been installed and replaced the quaint old fashioned lampposts in a jarring ugly new style.

As well, at this spot, it was not unusual to see possums frolicking about in the grass. With such bright flood lights, none could be seen around.

Furthermore, the water vapour, usually not seen in the air, was ghosting everything in the overpowering white lighting. Apart from these bright lights nothing could be seen properly. The art of appreciating one's way in dim light was lost, as well as the art of night vista.

A case of overzealous-over-bright person misunderstanding lighting and having no clue about the necessity of moods.  

from Crikey ….. 

Caucus torn, conference resolute, Iemma, er, powerless 

Alex Mitchell wites: 

Despite laughable attempts by the Sydney metropolitan media to turn Premier Morris Iemma into a latterday Metternich, Talleyrand or Bismarck, the reality is that he has been humiliated by the state Labor conference at the weekend and is now in political isolation. 

Tomorrow morning, hours before the resumption of the NSW parliament, he will face a caucus meeting which has been freshly mandated to support the party’s policy of outright opposition to the privatization of the power industry. 

The caucus, however, is split down the middle. It comprises a wondrous collection of nervous Nellies and tired Tims. 

They are torn between supporting Iemma and his Treasurer Michael Costa or supporting the party which has given them almost everything they treasure - a well-paid job, perks of office and social status. 

The weekend conference voted not once, but TWICE, to show its explicit rejection of the privatization of the publicly-owned energy industry. According to the ALP’s rules, that gives all members, premiers, ministers, MPs and ex-premiers (Barrie Unsworth and Bob Carr included), the clearest riding instructions: they must have no truck with private ownership of power.] It is not an optional issue. Membership of the ALP is voluntary but it carries the basic requirement that all members are bound by current party policy. 

Members who break ranks and oppose the platform are in violation of the party’s rules and risk being reprimanded, suspended or expelled. 

Yet this is the course that Iemma, Costa and a small minority of party members have chosen. Their status has been conflated by editorial writers from the Tory media, the big end of town and a cheer squad of corporate lobbyists, including Bob Carr who is now a valet at Macquarie Bank. 

Rather than force a caucus showdown tomorrow, factional leaders may try to postpone any vote pending the outcome of the deliberations of the party’s campaign committee which has been called into service to provide an escape route for the premier. 

The obscure but highly influential campaign committee will start meetings today to thrash out a way forward for Iemma, his government, the Labor Party and the trade unions. 

It has a strict deadline of less than a week to overcome the impasse and report back to the ruling administrative committee as a matter of urgency. 

Its members are the four parliamentary leaders, Iemma, his deputy John Watkins, upper house government leader John Della Bosca, and his deputy Michael Costa; party general secretary Karl Bitar, and his two assistant secretaries Rob Allen and Luke Foley; and state president Bernie Riordan and two vice presidents Michael Williamson (health employees’ union) and Andrew Ferguson (construction workers’ union). 

As ALP members, all of them are bound by the weekend conference decision to oppose the sell-off. In other words, the committee’s deliberations are strictly circumscribed: they can consider any policy outcome provided that it does not include the private sell-off of power industry components. 

The compelling virtues of the campaign committee are that it is small enough – 10 members – to be manageable and that it has representatives from both sides of the political equation - Macquarie Street (the parliamentary Labor Party) and Sussex Street (the party machine and the HQ of Unions NSW). 

Now that the conference rhetoric has receded, the only hope for Iemma’s survival is that the centre position occupied by Della Bosca, Watkins and Bitar prevails. This would see some kind of public-private partnership in charge of the industry along with guarantees on jobs and future pricing. 

However, this form of compromise is totally unacceptable to treasurer Costa who stunned conference delegates and the media with his extraordinary rant from the platform and his colorful abuse of opponents during behind-the-stage meetings: "You blokes can get f-cked. You’re going to look like dickheads on Monday morning." 

Is Iemma so desperate for a lifeline that he is prepared to ditch privatization which would lead almost inevitably to the exit of his treasurer? 

Or is he taking his lead from the likes of Roads Minister Eric Roozendaal, Ports Minister Jeo Tripodi, Unsworth, Carr, factional fixer Eddie Obeid and howling right-wingers like Kristina Keneally, MP for Heffron, Michael Daley, MP for Maroubra and upper house MP Amanda Fazio? 

Finally, the editorial writers who fill columns giving stern lectures on democracy (in China, Burma, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Zimbabwe, Lebanon etc) have a very different line on the NSW ALP conference. 

Apparently, the party’s seven-to-one vote against privatization – followed by an almost unanimous second vote on Sunday afternoon - are signs of vile "union power" and "dictatorship". They urge their hero Iemma to show "courage" and "conviction" and soldier on regardless. 

This completely ignores the fact that the vote was carried overwhelmingly by rank and file delegates from party branches as well as those from the unions. Iemma’s pathetic 107 votes came from party hacks on policy committees, right-wing MPs and smalltime functionaries. 

How odd that only recently the same newspapers were denouncing the Iemma government as the worst in the state’s history and calling for it to resign to put NSW out of its misery.

Chinese to Rescue Electricity Plans

06 May 2008

By Simon Shuster and Jacqueline Cowhig / Reuters

Chinese engineers are coming to the rescue of the electricity sector, as outgoing President Vladimir Putin backs a five-year expansion plan that will rival Lenin's drives to electrify the nation.

An estimated 41,000 megawatts of new generating capacity is to come on line by 2011, much of it coal-fired rather than gas, a goal that is way out of reach for Russian machine builders, and even threatens to swamp the order books of global giants such as General Electric and Siemens.

In search of an alternative supplier, power producer OGK-2 turned to a consortium of Chinese engineering firms, led by Harbin Turbine Co., granting them a tender to build two 660 megawatt-hours coal-powered turbines by 2012. It was the first such deal in the sector between Russian and Chinese firms.

"It is simply a necessity for us to work with the Chinese. We will not get the capacity built otherwise," said Stanislav Neveynitsyn, executive director of OGK-2, the country's third-biggest fossil fuel-run generator.

Power producers TGK-12 and TGK-13, which are together installing 2,200 megawatt hours of capacity by 2011, have also visited engineering plants in China.

"I can tell you they liked what they saw," Neveynitsyn said. "Our colleagues are watching our experience with the Chinese very closely."

Former electricity monopoly Unified Energy System designed the ambitious growth program for the sector, which it says needs $135 billion of investment by 2015 if the country is to avoid a critical shortage of power.

The sector has not seen such an overhaul since Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin pushed to industrialize the country in the 1920s, '30s and '40s with little foreign help.

UES, the Soviet-era power monopoly they envisioned, is being split up and sold off by this summer to help pay for the new construction.

The investors buying up UES assets are committing to fulfill these expansion plans, meaning there are hundreds of construction tenders in the pipeline.

"The engineering firms that win these tenders will be those that give the best quality and price," said Boris Vainzikher, UES' chief technical officer.

"But another factor is speed. If someone offers to build cheap and build well, but only by 2015, that won't work. So in this case, the Chinese won the tender."

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Gus: sell the NSW electricity supplies to the Chinese and the farm stays in the hands of the socialist comrads. brilliant. Why did we not think of it before? And using coal too!... Seriously though... 

Opposition gives conditional support to Iemma's power sale

The sell-off of the NSW electricity sector now appears to be just a formality, with the NSW opposition giving conditional support to the state government's privatisation push.

Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said while the coalition could not support the government's plans at present because they lacked detail, it would support them if five conditions aimed at protecting the public were met.

Mr O'Farrell has previously refused to say where he stood on the issue, calling for more detail before stating even an in-principle position.

"If these conditions are met, clearly it has our support," Mr O'Farrell told reporters.

"It's clear that Morris Iemma is pressing ahead with this deal, parliament or no parliament.

"What we are determined to do is instead of allowing it to be negotiated in backrooms ... to start to put the public interest front and centre."

The coalition's support for privatisation would make it impossible for any dissenting Labor MPs to block the sale by crossing the floor of parliament.

Mr Iemma, who managed to avoid a caucus vote on the issue on Tuesday, today treated Mr O'Farrell's position as another victory in his campaign for the sell-off.

He said the opposition leader had finally got over his "indecision" and had "fallen in behind the government" over the electricity sale.

China eyes $15b NSW power play

John Garnaut Asia Economics Correspondent
May 9, 2008

EXCLUSIVE

CHINA'S largest power company has its eyes on Morris Iemma's $15 billion sell-off, as part of an ambitious strategy to buy Australian power, coal and even uranium assets.

China Huaneng Group has already bought power assets in Queensland and Singapore and now wants to greatly expand its presence in South-East Asia and Australia.

The company has asked its "Australian team to follow these reforms and send suggestions back to senior management", said a source with knowledge of Huaneng's foreign investment plans. "The precondition is that Huaneng's existing businesses are going well enough," the source said, referring to a five-year-old stake in two Queensland generators.

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Gus: what did I tell you? see couple of blog above "The Chinese Solution"... Exclusive? my foot. I wuz there first. And I wuz not flippant...

Power crisis hits Indian states

Power cuts have become routine around many states

Authorities in the western Indian state of Maharashtra have announced tough measures to deal with a power crisis.

The state's 250,000 industries will now get power only five days a week and malls and government offices have been told to reduce energy consumption.

Scanty rains, growing demand for power and lack of new power plants has led to shortages in others parts of India too.

The southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are also reeling under severe power shortage.

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This problem is likely to hit Australia in the next few years if we continue to add consumers (via population growth) into the system, even if we become savvy in reducing consumption by using the funny lamp bulbs as more and more people install massive wattage hungry air-con increasing demand by hundred fold. We can add more centralised coal or gas power stations, but these are expensive wasteful and global warming unfriendly... We need to develop better isothermal housing, individual or local renewable power supply that caters for a fixed sized area. Any new development needs to invest in its own renewable power supply. Solar energy, wind energy and geothermic energy to the forefront as well as minimisation of transport. Create more "villages" than towering burbs, arrest population growth and rethink the economic system in which more people benefit in local and international improvements. Style of housing needs to be more grounded in earthly materials than be of highly processed concrete and steel jungles that are symbols of our greed-based pyramidal societies.

More power to the people. Smarter consumption.