The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, June 20th, 2001. 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. ****************************** Editorial: And the answer is -- public ownership The scramble among airlines to eliminate competition and to put up fares again has only one solution that will benefit the Australian travelling public and the overall interests of Australia's economic future. QANTAS should be returned to public ownership immediately. It should be built up as a strong national and international carrier and its management directed to provide a safe and efficient service with controlled fare prices. It should be charged with providing a service to main country centres and provided with a fleet of aircraft that serve the airline's various needs. The network of airports should also be returned to public ownership and equipped with up-to-date aircraft handling technology. QANTAS (and before that, Australian National Airlines) was efficient, it was economic, it was safe. It was highly regarded by the Australian people who had pride in this national asset. Successive governments have sold all this out and the former pride of the Australian people is being squandered. The possibility of the complete foreign take-over now looms over Australia's national air services. The privatisation policies of Labor and Liberal governments and the introduction of so-called "competition policy" is a travesty and will lead to the present competitors being eliminated and the re-establishment of monopoly conditions in private hands. "Competition policy" is not confined to the airline industry. The aim of its proponents is to break up publicly-owned enterprises and services such as telecommunications, public transport, railways, energy generation and supply, not to forget the present attempts to destroy public education, and hand them over to the private sector. Because of the part privatisation of Telstra, a private enterprise jungle has been created in which a bewildering number of private companies have been set up - the so-called "telcos" - some marketing products, others installing, others again providing maintenance or insurance. The object of each is to make maximum profits. The collapse of One.Tel is only the most prominent of such companies to collapse and impose economic losses on those unfortunate to have fallen for their sales pitch. Competition, to the extent that it exists, leads back to monopoly eventually and there is no better proof of that than the rapid elimination of Impulse by QANTAS after only a few short months of operation. Impulse and the threat coming from Virgin Blue lowered prices for a time but now, the bigger players are manoeuvring to take-over the competitors so as to restore their monopoly. QANTAS and ANSETT were able to come out on top in the brief price-cutting war because they have more resources. They lowered their prices, not to benefit the travelling public, but to drive out competition so that they can again charge whatever they like. In the jungle of take-overs, QANTAS has taken over Impulse and wants to buy a significant stake in Air NZ. Air NZ in turn is already 25 percent owned by Singapore Airlines. Air NZ owns 100 per cent of Ansett Holdings that in turn owns 100 per cent of Ansett Australia and 49 per cent of Ansett International. Singapore Airlines already has a 49 per cent stake in Virgin Blue. If QANTAS were to take over Air NZ it would also effectively own Ansett Holdings. At the same time QANTAS is negotiating with Singapore Airlines who may gain a monopoly of Australia's airlines. In this way Australia's airlines would in effect become a monopoly as well as foreign owned. The victims of these high level negotiations conducted in secret by company managements are the travelling public who will be charged higher fare prices and airline workers who are already facing more and more staff cutbacks. In anticipation of the expected backlash from airline QANTAS management are reported to be training senior staff in the Philippines to take over the jobs of airline workers in the event of a strike. In plain language, scabs are being prepared to take over the jobs of workers who are doing no more than attempting to protect their jobs and maintain or improve their working conditions. All these are the direct consequence of government policies and their misguided belief that capitalist ownership is the only way to go. But public is better! This has been demonstrated time and again in the past in air services, water supply, electricity, transport, education, telecommunications and by other publicly-owned enterprises and services. ************************************************************* -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: Editorial: And the answer is -- public ownership
Communist Party of Australia Fri, 22 Jun 2001 00:04:17 -0700
