Public Utilities Should Be Publicly Owned

Selling off public assets didn’t work out very well for the public, but worked well for the politicians:

1. Cash arrived
2. You could blame the private operators for anything

Unfortunately the easy win for politicians means a great cost to citizens. We now have the following:

A multitude of “electricity companies” selling the same thing. The new trend is “pay on time for a 30% discount”, which is shorthand for “the poor will pay much more”.

A public transport system which (in Melbourne) created “competition” between different services on different sides of the city. If you need convincing, Melbourne’s Myki ticketing system cost $1.5 billion over 10 years. It would’ve almost been cheaper to make public transport free, if the demand could have been dealt with…

The NBN is the same no matter who you buy it through. All that differs is the service hoops you jump through if there is a problem. The government should be the only provider, and own it.

Contracts which no private provider in their right mind would take on unless they worked out a way to game the system. In Victoria this meant creating the finest electrical grid in the world, for no good reason except to increase profits at the expense of the public. Read this.

SOLUTION

Well, it’s pretty bloody obvious… Large corporations that serve virtually everyone should be publicly owned. Public transport and energy companies should be publicly owned and managed, with all responsibility assigned to the government. No more passing the blame, no more should the public be paying private profits for monopoly services…