Editorial: Privatisation the enemy The following Editorial was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, October 20th, 1999. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** PLEASE NOTE OUR CHANGED EMAIL AND WEBPAGE ADDRESSES AND MAKE THE NECESSARY ALTERATIONS TO YOUR ADDRESS BOOK CPA CENTRAL COMMITTEE: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The Guardian": [EMAIL PROTECTED] Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au ****************************** We are told about "competition", "choice", "efficiency", "paying off the public debt", but not about the deaths and injury resulting from profits first and relegating safety to a minor consideration. These issues have come to the surface again following the lethal British rail crash a few weeks ago. British Rail had been built up as an integrated, publicly owned rail system for more than a century. But it took the "economic rationalists" only a few years to smash it up and sell it off. In 1994 it was divided into 25 Train Operating Companies, three Rolling Stock Leasing Companies, Railtrack which owns the track and signals, and three Train Freight Companies. There were also three engineering service companies. This nightmare is further complicated by more divisions within these companies. This was Margaret Thatcher's doing but the British Labour Party, although talking about re-nationalisation, has done nothing about it and, before the most recent crash and fatalities, was about to privatise part of the London Underground and the air traffic control system. These have now been put on hold at least. And why did the accident happen? We are told that one of the drivers went through a signal light on red. But where were the fail-safe systems which exist but have not been installed? There are automatic systems which put the brakes on if a train goes through a red light. Furthermore, there had been complaints going back years about the location of the particular signal light where the accident occurred, but the complaints were ignored by management. Thatcher's Tory Government thought the cost of $1 billion for the safety system might stand in the way of their privatisation plans. The Labor Government which followed, didn't insist upon it either. Following the most recent accident (and this was not the first at the same signal point) the British Minister of Transport has come out in favour of the computerised safety system but the Government wont pay and the private operators would put up charges to pay for it. So privatisation has created a maze of different companies - the companies which operate the trains do not own the railtracks or run the signals system. Other companies operate the freight and passenger flow. Different companies again operate the engineering side of things. What does all this amount to? In anyone's language it is plain stupidity or to be more accurate - criminality. The real culprits are those who, pursuing their mantra that "private is best" created such a monstrosity out of the formerly publicly-owned, integrated system. A Financial Review article (14/10/99) reveals that Britain's rate of rail-passenger deaths was three times those for Italy, Belgium and Spain in the ten years to 1996 and higher than those in France and Germany. And what is the difference? In these European countries the rail systems remain publicly owned and they have installed the already developed and available safety systems. Have Australian Governments learnt from these lessons? Apparently not. The Victorian Government privatised the Victorian rail system, also slicing it up into segments. The Federal Labor Government privatised National Rail and the NSW Labor Government is hell-bent on privatising and fragmenting the State Railways - a process which has already commenced. But the opposition to privatisation is growing. In NSW the Government's proposal to privatise the electricity network was thrown out - at least for the time being. The NSW Labor Council has strongly opposed the privatisation of the rail system. Labor Council President, John Whelan said "this is a big campaign, against the tide of economic rationalism, but it has our highest priority." A Council report showed that fragmentation would lead to inefficiencies, fewer jobs in rural areas, contractors would have little interest in training apprentices or improving employee skills and this would have an impact on safety. The present process of "contracting out" has already led to the creation of about 3,000 separate contracts requiring a large bureaucracy to manage them. They would multiply under further privatisation. Public transport provides a service while privately owned transport gives priority to shareholder profits. Services go down, prices go up and safety become a poor relation. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: EDITORIAL: PRIVATISATION -- THE ENEMY
Communist Party of Australia Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:01:23 +1000
