Stuart Traill
ETU Organiser Stuart Traill (Photo: CairnsBlog.Net)

May 29, 2014

The Electrical Trades Union has called on State Treasurer Tim Nicholls to “stop the spin and come clean” about the social impacts of electricity privatisation and private equity investment.

ETU State Organiser Stuart Traill said the union “shared the frustration” that the State Government was failing to listen to ordinary Queenslanders who say they do not want asset sales.

“The Treasurer has continued to dodge and weave questions about energy security, services and the price impacts of handing control of our public-owned electricity assets to private companies in the form of private equity investment, ” Mr Traill said.

“Essentially we as Queenslanders through our government will lose control of the Boards of Ergon, Energex and Powerlink to private contractors whose primary function is to maximise profit for their shareholders, and in many cases their overseas owners.

“Do you know the following companies? Cheung Kong, SP AusNet, CitiPower, Singapore Power, Powercor? No? Well you could well be dealing with some or all of them if our power networks are opened up to private equity deals.

“The above companies, which are majority overseas owned, have interests in Victoria’s and South Australia’s privatised electricity networks.

“And how has it worked out for South Australians and Victorians?

“Well, let’s look at two indicators: price and service. Both Victoria and South Australia are more expensive than Queensland, so the competition mantra has clearly failed.

“On the service front, Victoria’s overseas-owned SP AusNet’s poor network maintenance was implicated in the Black Saturday bushfires that claimed 173 lives in Victoria just five short years ago.

“On the issue of depot closures and job cuts the news gets worse, massive job cuts and regional decay became the order of the day in Victorian regions with the Gippsland/Latrobe Valley economies the hardest hit and still yet to recover while in South Australia all regional depots were closed causing mass redundancies and relocations.

“So Mr Nicholls here are the questions you have dodged, again we believe Queenslanders deserve answers:

  • How many more jobs in electricity industry are going to be lost and what regions will be the hardest hit, which Ergon depots will be closed?
  • What price impacts will your private equity deals – which relinquish control of Energex, Ergon and Powerlink Boards to the private sector – have for consumers? Hhow can you guarantee the continuation of the Uniform Tariff Policy?
  • What economic modelling has been undertaken to identify and mitigate the impact of cutting jobs and therefore incomes on the economies of regional areas when depots currently exist?
  • Which companies have you been involved in discussions with and are they donors to the LNP?
  • What will happen to the more than $1.2 billion profit currently used to subsidise essential services such as public transport?
  • Why do you continue to use the term Private Equity Investment rather than privatisation, when they both mean the future running of our essential public-owned electricity networks will be heavily influenced by the profit motives of private enterprise?

“We call on the Treasurer to listen to the Queenslanders and abandon his economically flawed and socially devastating privatisation agenda, before it is too late. The future of our regional towns depends on it.”

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