Like many others, Tamworth’s Mark Rodda doesn’t like the higher costs of streetlighting proposed by Essential Energy and is calling for politicians who will stand up and say “We’re for egional NSW”.
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I commend The Leader’s excellent editorial titled “Costs to bleed regions slowly” (Wednesday, July 23) regarding a proposal by Essential Energy to massively increase street light charges on local councils with the cost inevitably passed onto ratepayers.
We’d probably be getting to the point where councils should tell Essential Energy “switch the street lights off, we’ll install our own”.
We’ll start our very own county council to administer TRC’s and others street illumination just as the Tamworth Municipal Council led the way in 1888 and tell the state government where to go.
The new county council could be called “Peel Cunningham County Council’, but the problem is, the government would probably legislate and appropriate it like the 1995 Carr takeover.
We are seeing the slow and agonizing death of rural NSW and it will probably be up to local government to thwart this trend.
Sadly state governments of both sides from as far back as the 1970s to the present have aided and abetted the decline of rural NSW by endorsing economic rationalist privatisation policies.
The reward to MPs that have supported privatisation has been an appointment to a board at the end of their parliamentary career.
When Transgrid jobs go from Tamworth (because they are not quarantined from the proposed sale), so too will the wages those employees spend here, which represents more than $5 million annually.
This will have a profound effect on our economy.
When the other side take control of the treasury benches, probably in March, 2019, the temporarily- protected Essential Energy will be sold too. This is the folly of the
Liberals and Nationals proposed 49 per cent privatisation agenda.
By agreeing to the sale of the largely metropolitan poles and wires, all energy retailers will end up being privatised.
Gone will be the $3 billion in annual revenue to the state government, driving up taxes while cutting services and employment positions.
Of course in the meantime Essential Energy is providing insight into the future of post-
privatisation assets retained by the government by doubling the cost of the service they provide.
NSW taxpayer’s will not benefit from electricity competition either in terms of the price of electricity, services provided, or jobs and we see the example in Victoria where a privatised electricity distributor,
SP AusNet, is to pay more than $3.5 billion in compensation to the victims of the Black Saturday fires because that company neglected the maintenance of the poles and wires. Victorian taxpayers are to throw in the rest.
Of course, no one would be under any illusions about my thoughts on electricity privatisation; my own proclivities are well known.
The Essential Energy streetlight tax is just another kick in the guts to the people of regional NSW.
On top of exorbitant water prices in the Peel Valley, which affect more than 40,000 ratepayers, it is also another slap in the face to the people of our region by the NSW government and there is little wonder why every few elections a redistribution takes another seat away from our region and why, for a considerable period of time in the electoral history of this region, independent MPs flourished.
We need the party that declares “We’re For Regional NSW” to stand up, be independent and be counted and reject further water and electricity price rises and the proposed streetlighting charges.