Time for a rain check on the Snowy float

Story by Stephen Mayne of Crikey.COM

As Morris Iemma sprints towards his treasured June budget boost Advertisement courtesy of the $3 billion Snowy Hydro float, it is worth considering a few key issues that need to be resolved.

Firstly, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks no doubt remembers that Gippsland East MP Craig Ingram was one of the three independents who delivered him government in October 1999. The price of Ingram's support was a written commitment from both the Victorian and NSW Governments to increase the long-term flow down the Snowy River to 28% or 330 gigalitres.

At the time it was running at less than 1% or just 9 gigalitres, but this has now risen to 6% and all sides have agreed that a target of 21% will be reached by 2012. This means the key issue remains the compensation that will flow to a privatised Snowy Hydro in achieving that final increase from 21% to 28% after 2012.

Whilst Snowy Hydro is owned by the NSW, Victorian and Federal governments, such an increase in flows is merely another political decision, albeit one that might reduce profits and dividends returning to the government shareholders. However, once it's privatised, the profit-motivated listed company would have to seek compensation under the terms of its secret 72-year water licence which requires nothing more than 21% by 2012. Surely a publicly available water licence for no more than 25 years would be more appropriate to retain some long term flexibility for public policy planning.

Craig Ingram has every right to feel that he's being sold down the river on the long term commitment to hit a 28% flow and the Bracks Government would be wise to seek his input into the prospectus. After all, a legal challenge is the last thing the sellers would want but Ingram is clearly fired up over this issue.

Ingram received a primary vote of 24.79% in 1999 and 41.33% in 2002 and he'll get plenty of oxygen over the Snowy float to boost his chances of winning a third term at this year's poll. In fact, the new proportional representation voting system in the upper house could see Ingram back his own candidate and deliver a like-minded independent to share in the balance of power with minor parties, most probably the Greens.

Privatising sensitive assets without consulting key stakeholders is exactly the sort of thing the Kennett Government used to do. Country voters hated the arrogance, yet the most powerful political journalist in Victoria, The Age's Paul Austin, delivered this stinging critique last Friday of the Bracks Government's own Kennettesque record on parliamentary accountability.

The Sunday Age also claimed that it's actually Treasurer John Brumby who runs Victoria and he's certainly the one calling the shots on this wall of secrecy surrounding the Snowy Hydro float. Maybe it's time the Premier took an interest after his latest overseas trip and started by having a chat to Craig Ingram.

Story by Stephen Mayne of Crikey.COM

Selling Off The Nation

By Alan Ramsey = SMH April 8, 2006

VARIOUS governments - state and federal - have sold at least $82 billion of Australia's public assets over the past 20 years. Something like half has gone to foreign buyers. The three most prolific sellers have been the Howard Government, Victoria's former Kennett government and federal Labor's deceased Keating government.

None of this is contestable. In December 1997 the Reserve Bank published the details of the first 10 years of what is coyly called privatisation. That is, politicians selling what the nation's taxpayers collectively own.

The Reserve Bank at the time put the value of the sell-off in the first 10 years, from 1987 to 1997, at $61.3 billion. It included the first chunk ($14.2 billion) of the Howard Government's piecemeal sale of Telstra in 1997. Since then, the second chunk ($16 billion) was sold in 1999. So, too, was Sydney Airport (for $4.2 billion) in June 2002. Plus various smaller plunderings. There you have your total: $82 billion.

Next, at a sharemarket near you, three governments, in collusion, are selling their shares of Snowy Hydro Ltd, the corporatised version of what used to be the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme, one of this nation's two greatest engineering achievements. No NSW government has yet been game enough to try to flog the other, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Give it time, though, should Labor be in office.

Meantime, taxpayers lose Snowy Hydro.

The deal has been done. NSW's Iemma Government, with its 58 per cent share of Snowy Hydro's ownership, is desperate to get the sale at least on the books before the end of June. It needs $1.7 billion (hopefully) to make its coming budget balance before next year's March election. Labor is terrified of a bad budget figure and, thus, a possible downgrading in the state's credit rating.

So the Snowy has to go. NSW announced its unilateral decision last December. The Bracks Government in Victoria, with 29 per cent ownership, and the Howard Government (13 per cent), have acquiesced, with some reluctance. So, too, has federal Labor. It is Kim Beazley's gift to his NSW Labor mates not to make a fuss. He needs NSW's electoral favour as much as does the besieged Iemma Government.

Oh, how they both need it!

Yet some things have not gone as smoothly as some would like. Senator Bill Heffernan, the Junee farmer who is one of John Howard's most vigorous pot stirrers and news makers, was on the phone this week, his words as quotable as ever. He is unhappy about the way some people have gone on about the Snowy Hydro sale. He is just as unhappy about the confusion and anger among "real" people, especially in the bush.

How will they spend your $30 Billion?

JOHN BRUMBY will next month deliver the biggest budget in Victoria's history. He will have more than $30 billion to spend.

Do you think it will be allocated to re-election bullshit or what the people need like health - transport - water - rural assistance - and most important a change of government.

It's your money people - and it's your election - hard as it may be with little to non opposition.

Hospitals - Farmers - Miss out on ALP Election Policies

ALP in Victoria lays it out - and exposes it's inefficiencies in government at the same time.

Greater use of public transport, replacing hundreds of old school buildings and legalising abortion would be priorities of a re-elected Bracks Government.

Its draft party platform reveals it would also promise public interest statements on all future public-private partnerships, including a value-for-money comparison with full public funding. It would consider payroll tax exemptions as an incentive to employers to offer 14 weeks paid maternity leave and push for two weeks paternity leave.

In almost 200 pages, Rising to the Challenges, the Victorian ALP's draft platform sets the direction of a third-term Labor Government.

Nuclear energy would be banned, and Labor would accelerate the development of renewable energy technologies.

The new schools commitment makes no mention of full Government funding, and leaves the door open to public-private partnerships to rebuild old schools. Likewise, the platform allows room for more toll roads.

While ruling out tolls on existing roads, it said tolls would be considered where "budget circumstances" were tight. The platform commits Labor to maintaining a minimum budget surplus of $100 million and to closely managing "recurrent expenditure".

It signals the Government's long-awaited transport and live-ability statement, concentrating on outer suburbs.

"Victoria can no longer build its way out of congestion," the platform states.

"The need for a quantum leap in funding for public transport is pressing."

Under health, the platform commits the Labor Party to reducing waiting times for emergency treatment, elective surgery and dental care.

In the foreword, Premier Steve Bracks says the platform would "set out the values and priorities".

The draft will be debated by the party's state conference in May. The Government would then "develop the specific election commitments it will put to Victorian voters at the historic first fixed-term election" on November 25, 2006, Mr Bracks wrote.

From the Melbourne AGE Newspaper

Bracks Closes Hospitals To Fund Party

Steve Brack's Labor government has spent $450,000 celebrating the opening day of the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. In the North-East of Victoria, Chiltern's local residents had very little to smile about. Last month their 14 bed hospital was closed and 28 of its 30 employees were sacked. Chiltern and district health has been forced to borrow $180,000 to pay out staff redundancies and creditors. The Bracks government needs to take a reality check and realise that Victoria's boundaries extend past the end of the city tram lines. While this is happening doctors are continuing to leave Victoria in droves for better paid positions in NSW and Queensland. It's about time politicians were made personally responsible for wreck-less spending of taxpayers money.

John McLeish Wodonga

Adolf Bracks - The undemocratic Premier

By Paul Austin April 21, 2006 The Melbourne AGE Newspaper

The contempt with which the Bracks Government treats the Victorian Parliament is something to behold. Trouble is, so few Victorians actually do behold it that the Government seems to believe it can get away with it.

The list of this Government's offences against the Parliament is long: it ensures the Parliament sits infrequently; when Parliament does sit, the Government seeks to ensure that the political "news" of the day happens elsewhere; and the one period of each sitting day when the public and press galleries are likely to be well populated, question time, is treated by the Government too often as its plaything and too rarely as a means of seriously reporting to the people on the activities of their representatives.

The list is hardly unprecedented, but the point is that Steve Bracks promised something better.

During the 1999 election campaign, Bracks, taking the usual licence of opposition leaders, said of Liberal premier Jeff Kennett: "If he could pass a law to outlaw elections, the premier would do it . . . If he could close down the Parliament completely, rather than the least number of sitting days he has now, he'd probably do that as well. Imagine if he is re-elected with a big majority and what he'll close down next - not only no debates, probably no

Parliament." A year into his term in office, Bracks was still talking up the ideal of a rigorous Parliament. Issuing a policy in October 2000 on "ensuring openness and probity in Victorian Government contracts", Premier Bracks said: "We believe that government is only doing its job properly if it allows the Parliament, the community and the auditor-general to scrutinise its activities and hold it to account."

But, as so often with this Government, the fine words were not matched with firm actions. In the election year of 1999, when Victoria was ruled by that anti-democratic Mr Kennett, the Parliament sat for 37 days. In this election year of 2006, with Victoria ruled by that champion of democracy Mr Bracks, the Parliament will sit for 38 days. Opposition Leader Robert Doyle, unsurprisingly, accuses this Government of paying lip service to parliamentary democracy. But his argument is backed by figures showing the Parliament sat for 15 fewer days during the first six years of Bracks than it did during the last six years of Kennett.

A "sitting week" for the Victorian Parliament means Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday only. A "sitting day" can be so short as to leave you wondering whether it was worth turning on the lights: on April 4 this year, the upper house convened at 2pm and adjourned at 5.23pm.

On the days when the Parliament does sit before lunch, Bracks often absents himself from the building during the morning to make the Government's good-news announcement of the day at a TV-friendly location. Then, during question time from 2pm, he arranges for a Labor backbencher to ask him a "Dorothy Dixer" question about said announcement so the Premier can bring the Parliament up to speed.

As for the idea that ministers should account to the people via the Parliament for the allocation of public money and the good governance of their portfolios - well, sometimes the very concept appears foreign to this Government. Space permits only one example, but readers inclined to trawl through Hansard (www.parliament.vic.gov.au) will quickly find others.

During question time in the lower house on April 4 (the same day as the upper house sat for a little over three hours), Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey referred minister Bronwyn Pike to "reports that the Wangaratta area manager of Rural Ambulance Victoria was allowed to resign after it was discovered he had forged signatures to get jobs for unqualified mates". Shardey specifically asked Pike: "Why has this man still got a car owned by Rural Ambulance Victoria, and why are Victorian taxpayers still paying to put petrol in it?" Pike's "answer" occupied several minutes, but not once did she mention the area manager, or his car, or who was paying for his petrol. Even the (Labor) Speaker had to ask Pike after she resumed her seat, "Has the minister completed her answer?" Pike: "Yes."

It did not seem to occur to Pike that, while giving a brief summary of the recent history of the RAV and talking up the investment her Government had made in the service, she might have also said words to the effect that the questioner had made an allegation about serious misuse of public money and the minister would have her office or department investigate immediately and would report back to the Parliament at the first opportunity.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the Bracks Government is happy to belittle the Parliament. After all, this Premier has shown few signs that he regards the lifting of standards in public life as part of his brief.

Last month, when The Age revealed that Police Minister Tim Holding (among others) had been using his taxpayer-funded, chauffeur-driven ministerial car in a Labor Party preselection battle, some political observers thought this might be the subject of a rebuke, or worse, from the Premier. Not a bit of it. Asked his response, Bracks said through his spokeswoman, Alison Crosweller: "Ministers, along with opposition leaders and their deputies, have access to a driver and a car which can be used at their discretion (emphasis added). This is the case in all other states and the Commonwealth Government." In other words, don't expect the Bracks Government to seek to set a good example on the use of ministerial cars, and don't expect Bracks to enforce higher standards on his ministers.

Steve Bracks doesn't lament the declining relevance of the Victorian Parliament. He contributes to it.

Paul Austin is state political editor.

The 4th Reich At It Again

FINES of $105 for water wasters underpin a new government strategy to slash Melbourne's water usage by 30 per cent over the next 15 years. The on-the-spot penalties will apply to people breaching already strict water restrictions that effectively ban garden sprinkler systems during daylight hours.

The Bracks Government devised the draft strategy after studies discovered the city faced a 53,000-megalitre water shortage by 2030.

The state Government has also dramatically expanded a corporate water-saving strategy to involve the top 1000 corporate water users instead of the top 200, and threatened to back it up with fines for non-compliance.

Part of the water saved by the hardline new measures will be sent down some of the state's most degraded rivers, including an extra 20,000 megalitres for the Yarra, which runs through central Melbourne.

Environment Minister John Thwaites said the fines would replace the previous "educational" approach that had resulted in 2200 warnings but no fines issued for water wasters.

"We have had a dry start to the year and conserving water is more important now than it has ever been," he said. "We must all play our part in using the water efficiently and securing sustainable supplies."

Mr Thwaites said the strategy relied on reducing consumption and recycling more water rather than taking it away from irrigators.

Opposition environment spokesman David Davis supported the fines, but said the Government had bungled the enforcement of the current restrictions in not fining anyone despite many breaches.

He said the extra water for the Yarra amounted to just 2 per cent of its flow and would not fix alarmingly high E.coli bacteria levels seen in the river recently.

"This will do almost nothing to help with contamination of the Yarra, which is a real problem," Mr Davis said.

Bracks Put Business On Its Knees

Melbourne Age Newspaper ========================== BUSINESS red tape, Easter Sunday trading bans and union "interference" in the workforce would be abolished or significantly targeted by a Robert Doyle-lead Liberal state government.

The State Opposition Leader unveiled his plan to seduce the Liberal Party's small business heartland yesterday with fighting words for Labor's traditional union strongholds.

In a document titled "A Fair Go for Small Business", Mr Doyle said government must "get out of the way" and "out of the pockets" of small business.

"We've identified at least 10 laws or regulations that need to be repealed to make life easier for small businesses; the best example I can think of we've just had - the ridiculous restriction on trading on Easter Sunday," he said.

Mr Doyle said the new tax on long-term inner-city car parking was turning shoppers away and hurting small business, while exorbitant land taxes were merely being passed on from landlord to shopkeeper.

Laws allowing unions automatic entry to workplaces would be repealed immediately should the Liberal Party cause an upset at the November 25 election.

"I'm happy to have the fight with unions about automatic right of entry to workplaces, it is outrageous," Mr Doyle said.

"Not just for small businesses, but for the over 180,000 people who work from home; they are workplaces, why should unions have automatic right of entry?"

The 13-page policy document included plans to set up a small-business chair at an unnamed Victorian university.

Mr Doyle said it would cost $2 million over four years, and be the first in Victoria and the second in Australia.

An annual $150,000 for young entrepreneurs to seek career advice would complement the university plan.

"They need some professional help, either in business planning or in career mapping or career planning," Mr Doyle said.

"I believe many young people are discouraged from starting a small business . because there isn't that support and help available to them."

Mr Doyle also promised a greater slice of government contracts for small businesses, with a pledge to put at least one person with a background in small business on the Victorian Government Purchasing Board.

The Bracks Government has come under heavy scrutiny from the Opposition over the past term of government for awarding 56 contracts to advertising company Shannon's Way.

The company was founded by Labor's former chief fund-raiser, Bill Shannon.

Small Business Minister Andre Haermeyer is overseas and was unavailable for comment on Mr Doyle's election policy.

Bracks Tripping Over - seas and WE PAY

Overseas trips need to stop: Doyle By Mathew Murphy and Farrah Tomazin - The AGE Melbourne April 19, 2006

OPPOSITION Leader Robert Doyle has attacked the State Government over overseas trips, calling it "arrogant and complacent".

As Premier Steve Bracks continues his five-nation, two- trip, Mr Doyle said previous Government trips had produced few results and that Mr Bracks needed to rein in his cabinet's overseas travel.

"I've been very careful not to play petty politics with overseas trips but I'm sick of seeing no return from these trip," he said. "I want to see some results."

Earlier this month The Age revealed that more than a third of the cabinet would take taxpayer-funded trips before the November election.

Mr Doyle said the trips had not amounted to anything since the Government said it would build a giant microscope in Victoria in 2001. "It's about time taxpayers saw some return for all of these ministers being away," he said. "Something like 40 per cent of the Bracks cabinet absent before the election, that's complacency and it's arrogance."

Mr Bracks said Mr Doyle's comment was a "cheap shot" and showed that the Opposition was not ready to govern. "I think it's a really easy political line," he said. "We had a great Commonwealth Games. Our reputation is enhanced and we'd be negligent if we didn't capitalise on that and make sure that we get investment and trade flowing as well."

Mr Doyle refused to say whether a Liberal government would have fewer taxpayer-funded trips.

Mr Bracks signed an agreement with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday to ensure aid was delivered where it was most needed in Sri Lanka's tsunami-ravaged areas.

Today he will announce a new multimillion-dollar housing project to assist families in Galle.

Aboriginal Heritage Bill

In November last year I wrote to local newspapers to alert the community about the Victorian Governments draft which I believed, threatened the rights of all private land owners in Victoria.

Radio broadcaster Neil Mitchell described the proposals contained within the draft Bill as."unfair, inherently racist and anti-development." and I agreed with him.

Tragically the Bracks Labor Government have failed to listen to widespread community concern about these proposals and have now introduced this Bill, without any significant changes, into the Parliament.

This legislation will take away the rights of private land owners.

Indeed under this proposed legislation any landowner who wishes to undertake any "activity" which is defined by the Bill as "the development or use of land" could be required by the Minister or the, yet to be published, regulations to have an aboriginal cultural heritage management plan prior to commencing their "activity"

Indeed any work on your property could be immediately stopped by an inspector under Clause 87 of this Act.

While these new laws aim to protect Aboriginal Heritage - something everyone would support - these proposals go completely overboard and could be used to stop people building a house, an extension or even simply digging a hole in their own land.

These proposed new laws will certainly add to the prohibitive costs, delays and mountainous red tape for anyone undertaking the most simple, basic development.

For example under these proposed laws registered "Aboriginal Parties" would have the power to accept or reject cultural assessments, giving them the power to veto over any activity which could range from building a fence, erecting your Hills hoist or a simple extension right up to a full scale housing sub-division and, the landowner's only avenue of appeal will be through the already unwieldy VCAT system.

It is of particular concern that the Minister in the Bracks labor Government responsible for drafting these new laws is Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gavin Jennings whose handling of the aboriginal rebels at the Kings Domain illegal camp has left a lot to be desired.

These proposed new laws are absolutely frightening for all landowners and for further progress in our great State.

I urge all Victorians to examine these proposals closely and have their say before they are rushed through the Parliament by the Labor Government.

Copies of the Aboriginal Heritage Bill can be obtained by contacting my office on 03 5562 8230

Yours sincerely, Denis Napthine MP Member for South West Coast