Government Assets Sale – BROCHURE DECEPTIVE
Friday, 13 November 2009 09:12
The Government has circulated a brochure trying to justify their fire sale of State assets to every household in Moggill electorate. They have spent $2 million of taxpayers’ money statewide on this brochure and it is nothing other than downright deceptive.
· Government claim they will raise $15 billion from the sale of Qld Rail, Port of Brisbane, Gateway Bridge, Logan Motorway, our State’s Forestry plantations and Abbott Point Coal. They claim that the $15 billion will save them $1.8 billion a year in interest.
Budget papers show the Government pays around 7% interest rate. To save $1.8 billion they would have to be paying nearly 12%interest rate, a ridiculous proposition. This claim is just deceptive
· They claim that these assets are “only” earning income of $320 million a year but that the private sector will pay them $15 billion whilst at the same time agreeing to barring efficiency gains from job losses and having prices fixed.
Queenslanders know this is not how things work. It’s ridiculous.
· The loss of $320 million per annum of income will put pressure on future deficits, which are debt funded.
· The Government’s record on privatisation is disastrous. Their bungled privatisation of the State’s major coal loading port resulted in a standoff between exporters and the port owner who refused to increase the amount of coal it could put through unless there was a massive increase in port charges. This prevented the expansion of Daylrymple Bay and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars lost as fifty to sixty coal ships sat permanently anchored off the port unable to be loaded. This one badly handled privatisation cost the State billions.
The privatisation of Energex was done with the promise it would decrease electricity prices but was almost immediately followed by massive increases in electricity charges.
· The Government claim that the $15 billion in assets is only about 7% of the Government’s assets and suggest it is hardly relevant.
Again this is deception with a large amount of the alleged assets they claim will remain in public ownership being completely non-commercial assets that are on the books for accounting purposes such as billions of dollars worth of land that has roads built over it or billions of dollars in State schools, hospitals etc.
In reality the Government is selling a large proportion of the public assets that are generating a return.
It is only a few years ago that the Government was spending hundreds of millions of dollars of Queensland taxpayer money to buy commercial businesses that did not even operate in Queensland such as rail freight forwarding businesses in SA and Victoria. Extraordinary now that they are claiming they cannot earn worthwhile returns even from outstanding Queensland assets.
· When it comes to the privatisation of publicly owned assets one of the more important distinctions to make is whether that asset is a monopoly asset or not. Privatisations of assets that operate in competitive markets such as the Commonwealth Bank or Qantas are a far cry from selling monopoly assets that have pricing power not kept in check by competition. Assets such as the Port of Brisbane that are enormous assets with hundreds of hectares of yet to be developed land, not just around the airport and the port, but as far round as Hamilton and even Redcliffe are vital to the economic development of the State. They are without any competition and would have a devastating effect on business in this State if we see a repeat of the Daylrymple Bay fiasco where capacity is not expanded when it is needed or user charges are doubled, or even worse both.
· The government say this is not a fire sale. That is garbage. It followed shortly after a credit rating downgrade and the desperate move of having the Rudd government guarantee Queensland’s borrowings. This was the only way debt funds could be raised by the State.
Only a few weeks earlier the Government denied that they would be making these sales. It beggars belief that this is a ‘timely’ sale of so many unrelated businesses at the same time.
Make no mistake this is an urgent fire sale response to the debt crisis that caused our State to be the only one in Australia to suffer a credit rating downgrade.
As a taxpayer you have paid $2 million for this piece of deceptive propaganda. Don’t be fooled.