This turned up in the Inbox yesterday.
It seems that the Motorists Action Group has joined those sending Morris Iemma a message about his planned privatisation of NSW electricity supplies.
Draft Media Release
Government Bonds Not Selling-off Assets To Fund New Infrastructure
The NSW Government has been asked to re-issue once popular government bonds to fund new road, rail and services infrastructure projects instead of selling-off publicly owned infrastructure such as the electricity generation network to pay for such works.
Richard Talbot, President of the Motorists Action Group (MAG) & long serving NRMA Director said: "A once off sell-off of publicly owned assets to pay for new infrastructure is not the way to go. Nor is handing over new infrastructure projects to merchant bankers who create debt ridden financial models to hoping they can on-sell these financial basket cases and exit the scene to make a short term profit.
"Good government is about providing long term, sustainable and user affordable solutions to this countries growing and changing needs. Government bonds were a traditional way previous generations have funded many road, rail, water & electricity projects. They were very popular with mums & dads investors as a safe way of saving for their retirement as they were government guaranteed. Importantly they were a relatively cheap way of the government gaining access to a large pool of funds without having to go through a middleman.
Government bonds were phased out of existence when the economic rationalists took the helm of successive state governments and conga lines of private sector lobbyists became regular fixtures at expensive political party fundraisers.
"We should learn from the mistakes of the past with a number of infrastructure funding failures such as the Cross City Tunnel, Lane Cove Tunnel and the Airport Rail Link. The new transport initiatives such as the North West Rail Link and M7 Extension (from Blacktown to Kariong) can all be funded by giving the public and superannuation funds to directly invest in the projects. Additionally other already built projects can be bought back through such an investment method.
"Selling-off the silver wear then handing it over to privateers to extract short term profits is not in the best interests of residents and taxpayers. Gaining the support of the people who'll be using the final product by giving mums & dads a chance to invest in their own infrastructure is in the best long term interests of both governments and consumers".
Richard Talbot has written to the NSW Government urging the re-introduction of State Government Bonds.
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