Speaking with a Forked Tongue !

New South Wales goes to an election next month and the big ticket item is a government plan to divest  Sydney's "poles and wires " from public ownership to fund the billions of dollars of roads, transport and general infrastructure improvements that are otherwise financially impossible.

The Unions that cover electricity workers are spending millions of members funds on television advertising opposing this move.  There are dire predictions of massive hikes in electricity charges if this goes ahead, and yet utter silence when it comes to comparing the situations in both Victoria and South Australia, where just such a scheme is in place - and power charges have actually decreased.

These same power unions are made ridiculous when their superannuation funds pour members money into investing with the very firms that are now the owners of poles and wires in Victoria and South Australia.   The wise people who plan superannuation investment can see both safety and good dividends from such investments, but of course the union bosses and the moneymen are seeking very different outcomes.

Where the government is the employer the unions use pressure tactics to gain both pay rises and outrageous working conditions that are only a dream in the private sector.  This is particularly evident when the commodity produced is electricity.  The threat of a power strike would cripple industry and turn the state into chaos, and so the government usually is forced to compromise, resulting in a bulging work force and fat pay packets.

If poles and wires in New South Wales go private, the days of the gravy train are over.  The work force will slim down and there will be pressure on awards to set more reasonable terms.  Private enterprise has to achieve a profitable result, and it is a fact of life that profit is a word that does not seem to exist in the government lexicon.

The unions want to keep poles and wires as a government employed industry to preserve the conditions they have gained by the use of their muscle, and they know the only way to achieve that objective is to frighten the voters into believing a lie.   Hence the prediction of rate hikes for electricity prices when exactly the opposite has been the reality where poles and wires have passed into the hands of private firms.

The Australian experience with government control of essential services is something that voters would do well to consider.  When the second world war ended, telephone services were a monopoly controlled by the Postmaster Generals Department ( PMG ) and the waiting time for a phone connection was measured in months - and sometimes years.    We were a laughingstock in comparison with Canada and places overseas - and this only improved when that PMG control passed into the private sector.    Strangely, the implementation of Broadband follows a similar pattern.  Way over budget and years behind in schedule.   A familiar - government controlled - story !

Political commentators must at least get a chuckle from the dilemma facing the power unions.  On the one hand, they are opposing the privatization of poles and wires and trying to sell the story that the sale will lead to big price increases and mayhem for families - and at the same time the superannuation that their members will rely on for retirement is pouring money into the very industry that controls poles and wires in other states.

It is said that politics is the art of speaking with a forked tongue !