Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pose a conundrum that has been troubling me for some time, and it is this: What is it with the cigar-chomping Liberal ideologues from Sydney's North Shore and their desire to ruin life for everyone in New South Wales and, indeed, the rest of the country? The North Shore of Sydney has produced a string of politicians who think that public office is merely a fast track into private boardrooms and that the country's woes are best solved by lighting up another stogie and slugging it to pensioners, students, the unemployed, the sick and, worst of all, Peppa Pig.

Look at these North Shore Tories. Even while one of their own is talking about the end of the age of entitlement, another North Shore Liberal thinks he is entitled to sell off whatever public assets he can get his hands on. Of course, I am talking about Mike Baird, a modern day aristocrat, running the state as if he were a member of the court of Louis XVI. You can just imagine him growing up, sitting around the fireplace and listening to the wise old men who think they run the world chatting about how to manage the little people. It is reflected in everything he does. The voters want decent transport; his solution is to take something from them so they do not get too uppity. I will give you this: it is a Genghis Khan level of gall to sell off the electricity network in New South Wales and claim it has got anything to do with public transport.

Joe Hockey talks about the end of the age of entitlement but the kind of entitlement that the North Shore Liberals know is that once they have reached high office, they feel entitled to sell off whatever public assets they can get their hands on. Why? Because a few of their mates feel entitled to make a buck out of the assets that belong to the rest of us. That is where the problem with entitlement in this country really lies.

Friends, the electricity network is simply the latest asset that they want to pilfer from the public. It is wrong and it should not be allowed to happen. What is it about them that makes them so intent on acting with such greed whenever they reach high office? It is a question that has been troubling me and it is a question that has been troubling Graeme Kelly, the general-secretary of the United Services Union—the union I am proudly a member of. It is a union whose members are facing a very uncertain future as the New South Wales government shops electricity grid to bankers and investors just so they can make a buck out of the rest of us. To answer these questions, I want to look at the big lie at the heart of this plan—that is, the lie that selling the power grid will actually lower prices. It is a fraud; it is a furphy. That is the one line, I am sure, that everyone in Mike Baird's office inner guard chuckles about around the fire as they sit around refining their message, drinking their 1959 Grange.

Privatising electricity infrastructure will result in profits for the new shareholders, the bankers and the investors who are already rubbing their hands together in anticipation and gleefully backing the Premier. If the New South Wales Liberals sell the electricity grid then consumers will end up rubbing their hands too—but, unlike the bankers, they will be rubbing them to keep warm. Every time in history that an electricity grid has been sold, it has resulted in higher prices. Frankly, this makes sense. Why would the neighbours of Mike Baird, of Joe Hockey, of Tony Abbott and of Barry O'Farrell—the same people who bump into each other at Millennium Forum fundraisers or the Avondale golf course in Pymble or in the boardrooms of Milson's Point—be so desperate to get their hands on our poles and wires if they were not going to make an extra buck out of it? Does anyone really believe that what they are saying is 'Look here, we will take that profitable asset off your hands but there is nothing in it for us.'

A significant number of households in New South Wales already struggle with their electricity costs. Almost 25,000 families were disconnected in the last financial year from power. Pensioners, students, battlers are people who do not tend to live in the leafy North Shore cul de sacs. They are not the types of people that go to the big fundraisers; they are not the people who engage day-to-day in conservative politics. But it is not just the consumers who will suffer if the grid is sold; jobs will go too.

Many sparkies began their working lives in apprenticeships with our state owned utilities. Trade unions including the United Services Union and the Electrical Trades Union and in particular Unions New South Wales can be rightly proud of the service they have provided to these young Australians, who, in turn, have provided a service to the people of Australia. These are the men and women who drive alongside our poles and wires checking for wear and tear, clearing away the trees, replacing the transformers. These maintenance jobs may not be as glamorous as a working lunch at Rockpool quaffing vintage shiraz, especially when a southerly storm is blowing, but these are the jobs that keep our houses warm, our streets well lit and our businesses operating.

If the experience of our neighbours is anything to go by, we already know what happens to the public grid maintained by these trained professional linesmen and engineers when it is sold for private profit. Maintenance jobs will be amongst the first to go. Out friends in New Zealand, in Victoria and in South Australia have been through it. They are paying even more every time they turn on a switch. But as their networks have deteriorated they have also suffered the indignity of blackouts. The experience of privatisation in Victoria is especially concerning. Power blackouts increased there by 32 per cent.

We live in a wealthy first world nation. I have got two young daughters and I will never support any measure that could see the power cut off to our own home. But we know from experience it is not as likely that my home in central Sydney will be affected and certainly not those harbour-side mansions that light up the North Shore. No, the people who will be most unlucky with blackouts will be the residents of rural and regional New South Wales and those in emerging and growing communities.

I have to give credit to the Nationals in New South Wales, who recognise the impact of privatisation will have on the people who live beyond Sydney's North Shore. Indeed, they have stood up to block the sale of Essential Energy. But what about the rest of us? The Nationals know it is no good; the voters of Sydney know it is no good; the only people who think that this is a good idea are the handful of people who will take ownership.

I call on the member for Manly, the Premier of New South Wales, and his Liberal Party colleagues to take this proposal off the table, to abandon it altogether and to acknowledge the very real concerns of the people of New South Wales, the very real impact it will have on people on low incomes and the destructive impact that privatisation has had on our neighbours. I call on the Premier to stop calling a scare campaign when people rightly outline the concerns that they have with this proposal. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with those who have stood up and fought against this proposal. Frankly, it is lazy, it is predictable and it is wrong to call it anything other than the truth that is being campaigned for. I call on the Premier to stop spreading nonsense that privatisation will lower electricity prices, because, frankly, that is nothing more than a lie.