Missing the point on the power selloff ripoff.
Anyone of the slightest intelligence reading the common press in New South Wales cannot fail to notice the shallow understanding displayed of most issues, nor the narrow intellectual spectrum of ideas which are permitted to be expressed. The latest in the litany of examples of these tendencies is the present brouhaha over the privatisation of electricity retailers.
An honest press enquiring into the sale of the electricity assets might first ask whether the privatisation was in the public interest at all, an obvious line of enquiry suggested by the electricity price rises experienced in Victoria after the Kennett government privatised their power assets in the 1990s, to say nothing of the well-known Enron crimes in California. I can find no evidence of such questions being even raised in the press - the most trenchant criticism being that an incompetent government wished to rush through the sale for political reasons. As always, analysis of shallow political interests trumps more comprehensive analysis of the public’s interests.
However, the supposedly left-wing Sydney Morning Herald published, not one, but two articles - on the same day - by IPA privatisation fanatic Alan Moran, chiding the NSW government for not selling the power system earlier, before the threat of carbon trading could make the coal-fired generators pay for the pollution they cause. If Fairfax had a sense of humour, they might even wish to describe themselves as “fair and balanced”.
In the News Limited papers, the only shadow on their glee at the privatisation was that the “spoils” would be distributed to only two private companies. The discussion of the matter in the Daily Telegraph was beneath contempt, and we need not spend time reviewing it.
After the sale was announced (negotiated, as always, behind closed doors, and the details naturally kept confidential as the commercial rights of the buyers trump any democratic rights the people, or the parliament might purport to exercise), the NSW premier took the extraordinary step - even in the debased democracy of this State - of proroguing the parliament in anticipation of the March 2011 election, thus preventing any inquiry into the details of the sale.
The naive might expect that this enquiry, conducted by the representatives of the people of NSW, would turn its attention to how the sale would benefit the public of NSW - after all, that is the putative role of parliamentarians in a representative democracy. Of course, this was not the case: the NSW Liberal party narrowed the scope of the enquiry to largely a question of the government’s competence in conducting the sale, rather than the public benefit of the sale itself. Similarities may be drawn to the Inquisition: only the degree of one’s adherence to the dogma may be questioned, but not the dogma itself.
What of our esteemed Fourth Estate? Again, basic questions of democracy elude the Sydney Morning Herald: eschewing the obvious broad themes, it instead dwells on the minor legal details of holding the parliamentary enquiry after parliament is prorogued, preferring the stenographer’s role of simply repeating what was said or written elsewhere to the journalist’s role of placing the complicated policies of government within a context that lets the public understand them, and so govern itself.
Meanwhile, at Sydney’s other daily newspaper, the wider context of the legal wrangling was actually explained with some quotations from Barry O’Farrell, presumably because such explanation would serve the Daily Telegraph’s ongoing campaign to elect the Liberal party. Barry O’Farrell was quoted saying:
“Besides the obvious contempt of Parliament issues involved, there’s an overriding public interest for Kristina Keneally to stop harassing this inquiry,” he said.
“The community’s right to know the facts of the power sell-off and whether it will see electricity bills rise even higher.”
We need not even examine the Liberal Party’s actions to determine if this newfound love of democracy and reverence for the public interest is genuine; even their other rhetoric contradicts it. John Howard himself proudly described himself as “not poll-driven” whilst ignoring massive public opposition to Australia’s participation in the second Iraq war, demonstrating his attitude to both public opinion in general, and his view of its proper role (i.e. none) in governing Australia. A review of the history of the Liberal Party shows that the Howard doctrine is nearly universal, while the O’Farrell apostasy is an aberration, only to be used where political exigencies make it desirable or necessary.
The public are, as always spectators, not participants.
All the above are not sophisticated questions; they should be obvious to anyone with even a sophomoric understanding of democracy, and the ability to observe the world around them. That our free press ignores them, time and again, illustrates where in the power structure they sit, and where we do outside it.
