Public Ownership Policy

Principles

The Greens NSW believe that:

1. Greater public ownership will increase the scope and functions and strengthen the influence of both the public sector and community involvement in decision making;

2. Public assets are in some cases undervalued and sold off too cheaply;

3. Public ownership contributes to higher employment and enhanced working conditions;

4. Public ownership maintains state, and thus community, owned assets in public hands, and hence allows community control over the asset and the services from the asset;

5. Public ownership allows high quality services, for reasonable prices, to be provided;

6. Public ownership can guarantee adequate services, for reasonable prices, in remote areas;

7. Public ownership ensures national control over key industries;

8. Public ownership best promotes high safety standards;

9. Public ownership works against the creation of private monopolies;

10. Public ownership safeguards against a focus on short term profit, and allows for more investment in research and development (for example technology, to reduce greenhouse gases);

11. Public ownership prevents disadvantaged groups and the environment from suffering by applying the principle of cross-subsidisation;

12. Public ownership enhances the government's capacity to pursue important goals such as security, justice, equity and environmental objectives and community services obligations;

13. Public ownership enhances the ability of trade unions to represent workers and thus helps to protect workers from inadequate remuneration and deteriorating working conditions;

14. Public ownership works against the creation of a powerful new set of economic forces and private owners of public utilities that would be able to exercise undue political influence (for example, a privately owned electricity industry would be able to deliver large campaign donations to political parties with a view to being given preferential treatment to avoid greenhouse gas targets);

Goals

Electricity

15. The Greens NSW oppose privatisation of any aspect of the electricity industry and support continued public ownership because privatisation would:

• 15.1 Threaten to increase costs to consumers and reduce quality of supply for an essential service;

• 15.2 Place at risk jobs and the quality of employment within the electricity industry;

• 15.3 Compromise opportunities to improve the environmental performance of the electricity industry, especially with respect to reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and

• 15.4 Reduce the economic benefits to the state that can flow from the electricity industry.

 Water

• 16.1 Further deterioration in water quality such as an increase in the levels of Giardia and Cryptosporidium, further compromising the basic health of our society, which is dependent on good quality, affordable water;

• 16.2 Rising consumer prices;

• 16.3 Loss of jobs;

• 16.4 Harm to the environment, especially in catchment areas;

• 16.5 Secrecy and loss of transparency and accountability to customers and the general public; and

• 16.6 As community expectations increase, loss of government control over water provision services will make it more difficult to require those services to be upgraded.

Human (Welfare) Services

The Greens NSW:

17. Oppose the increasingly common application by governments of market mechanisms to the financing and delivery of welfare services, amidst pressures to cut social expenditure, maximise efficiency and reduce the size of government;

18. Oppose the trend towards privatisation of human services. Individuals and families do not have an equal capacity to purchase the goods and services they need, and for this reason government intervention is important;

19. Believe human services are fundamentally different from other types of business and production, and this needs to be reflected in the way in which governments fund and deliver human services; and

20. Support the ACOSS position on the role and responsibility of government with regard to governments retaining a direct role in human services. This position is:

• 20.1 Citizens have a basic and universal right to services;

• 20.2 The service is entitlement based, with defined eligibility criteria;

• 20.3 The service has a statutory or social control function;

• 20.4 There are efficiency gains in the service being delivered by government; and

• 20.5 Government intervention is needed to rectify market failure for disadvantaged people or localities (Keeping sight of the goal: the limits of contracts and competition in community services, ACOSS, 1997).

Competitive Tendering and Contracting Out: Local Government

The Greens NSW:

21. Believe that only public ownership and control of core services can deliver these outcomes, and hence do not support the contracting out model. Therefore, the Greens NSW are opposed to compulsory competitive tendering and the voluntary contracting out of core and regulatory local government services;

22. Are opposed to private certifiers introduced into the development assessment process through recent changes to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979);

23. Are concerned that compulsory competitive tendering and contracting out of core and regulatory local government services leads to:

• 23.1 Negative impact on employees including the loss of jobs and job security, reduced wages and conditions and the alienation of certain sectors of the workforce including women, disadvantaged employees and those from non-English speaking backgrounds;

• 23.2 Reduced democratic control over service provision;

• 23.3 Increased power to managers at the expense of elected members and employees;

• 23.4 Negative re-organisation of services which will lead to complexity and confusion for the public and increased alienation for users;

• 23.5 Loss of in-house service expertise;

• 23.6 An absence of major financial savings to local councils;

• 23.7 A decline in the quality of services;

• 23.8 Reduction in access to information (for example limited access under the Freedom of Information Act due to the commercial in-confidence exemption);

• 23.9 Disadvantages to consumers because the quality and quantity of services would decline and they will be unable to pursue their concerns against service providers; and

• 23.10 Negative impacts on youth services particularly in light of the experience in Victoria.

Sale of Public Airspace

The Greens NSW:

24. Favour appropriate public transport-oriented development, however we strongly reject the sale of public lands that could serve other community applications and, in particular, we oppose the sale of airspace over railway stations because the development of such airspace will:

• 24.1 Foreclose on any future expansion options, which will be increasingly important as the necessary shift from private to public transport modes develops;

• 24.2 Reduce the amenity of public transport, thereby encouraging a modal shift to private vehicles;

• 24.3 Drive inappropriate over-development of the surrounding areas which are often low-rise residential. The use of planning precedents to justify construction which exceeds the planning instruments is common place in NSW and can lead to significant loss of amenity for local residents;

• 24.4 Destroy, through airspace development, the significant heritage value that many stations have; and

• 24.5 Remove the inalienable right of all citizens to access to the sky.

Sale of Public Land

25. The Greens NSW oppose the sale of any public land including public schools, transport corridors, hospitals and car parks.

Sale of other Public Assets

26. The Greens NSW oppose the sale of public assets such as mineral rights, electro-magnetic spectrum etc. Private access to these assets shall be restricted to leases.

Detail

The Greens NSW will:

27. Seek to put back into public ownership key public industries, services and assets that have been privatised;

28. Introduce legislation prohibiting privatisation and the contracting out of core and regulatory local government services;

29. Oppose any legislation which seeks to promote or lays a foundation (such as corporatisation) for the later privatisation of any public utility, essential service or infrastructure;

30. Oppose any legislation which seeks to introduce compulsory competitive tendering;

31. Encourage local councils who engage in contracting out to revert to in-house services;

32. Seek to repeal the private certification provisions of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979); and

33. Seek to legislate to stop the sale of public lands and airspace for development, including the airspace over railway and bus stations.

Follow this link for The Greens NSW Public Ownership Policy Summary.