Blackout !

Yesterday was one of the darkest days in the history of the New South Wales parliament. At a cost of half a million dollars Premier Morris Iemma recalled parliament in an attempt to ram through legislation to sell the state's power industry.

The recall was a bluff to force the Liberal/National opposition to support the move against strident opposition from the unions and an estimated eighty percent of citizens.

The opposition held it's ground - arguing that a rational decision was impossible until the details of the Federal government's " cap and trade " emission legislation was known - whereupon Iemma withdrew the legislation and fell back on " Plan B ", an end run to retain the generators and only sell the distributing arms - which can be accomplished without the consent of parliament.

This debacle is the culmination of years of indecision by the state Labor government - including the Bob Carr years.

The problem is that power generation in this state is falling below demand and unless additional generating capacity is built we will face load shedding in a few short years when nature delivers hot summer days or cold winter weather strikes.

Building any sort of power generator is a long process, but the biggest headache will be deciding what sort of generating system to adopt. The quickest and cheapest base load relief would come from a conventional coal fired station - but what cost " cap and trade " will impose is yet to be determined.

Public demand calls for renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and possibly wave action generation, but none of these can deliver a guaranteed base load option. The other way of delivering power without adding to Co2 emissions would be nuclear - but this has been ruled out by the Federal government.

The almost hysterical need to dump power generation from government ownership seems to stem from the sure knowledge that whatever happens the cost of power to residents is going to hike to astronomical levels.

The state government claims that if it has to borrow to build power stations spending on health, schools and transport will almost cease and the standard of living will drop sharply.

It would prefer to opt out of responsibility by putting power in the hands of private enterprise and ducking the blame for price hikes.

The lack of any plan to meet future power needs by letting tenders for power generation is putting this state at risk. Any company planning extensions to present manufacturing or new companies thinking of setting up in Australia would dodge New South Wales because there is a question hanging over the future availability of electric power.

Citizens face the prospect of conditions similar to third world countries such as Pakistan - where power is not continuously available and power shedding means intermittent supply - and regular blackouts !

The supply of electricity is the basic responsibility of the state government. It is time Iemma bit the bullet - dumped plans to sell off this vital item of infrastructure - and made decisions of how to generate power to meet this state's needs.

Citizens accept that electricity is going to increase in price and few would object to state borrowings to create the power generators to meet those needs. What is needed is a decision of what form that generating will take - and tenders to get construction under way.

Unless that happens promptly, we have a failed government presiding over a failing state !