Jun 06
4
Government Mismanagement in Australia
Why is it that we allow governments to stay in power when
they can’t manage?
In Australia
over the last month or so we have had the NSW government promote and try to
sell off the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Business, which is a public
utility. It appears that the primary reason for them wanting – or needing – to sell
it is that the state is on the ropes financially.
The federal government is trying to finalize the ‘privatisation’
of Telstra, the major phone company – another public utility.
The NSW government has another disaster it has to deal with in the form
of the cross-city tunnel. It is a toll road that is owned privately. It has
recently opened. And to ensure that people use it the company that owns it did
a deal with the state government to close a number of roads to traffic so as to
ensure that people have to use it, and have to pay the toll. It is still losing
money and the state government now is attempting to renege on the deal and the
state faces a massive law suit.
This stuff is happening on both sides of the political spectrum. They are all as bad as each other unfortunately.
Why are we tolerating this stuff?
One of the things that made America great was the build out of
the highway system. The ability for traffic to move rapidly and freely
accelerates and encourages trade. And trade makes the world go round.
In Australia
it seems that our governments – state and federal – want to encourage just the
opposite. If we have toll roads all over the state, it will create a disincentive
to use the road system. This will cause a decline in trade, companies moving to
less expensive places, and consequently will inhibit our economy.
If we privatize utilities – water, telcos, roads – what we
get is a restraint on free trade. The public loses.
And the reason is that the politicians don’t want the
responsibility of running these enterprises because to do so requires having a
tax regime to afford to maintain them.
Moving utilities into the private sector doesn’t improve
their efficiency at all. It just means that our taxes no longer are used to
support them. Instead the prices that the utilities charge are increased – so one
way or another we pay.
However, the politicians who were originally charged with
managing and maintaining these national assets no longer have to do so. So the
result is that our taxes just go to pay the elected officials salaries and the
bureaucrats that are counting the money coming in.
We, the shareholders in this country, need to object not to
the way that our national assets are being packaged up and sold off, but to the
fact that the elected officials of this country no longer have anything to
manage except their salaries and their superannuation.