In the space of less than two weeks, the central business district of Sydney—Australia’s largest city and financial centre—recently suffered three blackouts, causing significant disruption...
Last Saturday, the Rees government suddenly announced that $18 billion would be spent over five years to repair and upgrade the state’s electricity grid, and that $800 million would be set aside to build an extra level of back-up in the CBD by 2014...
However, the money will not come from the profits of the power companies, or the annual dividends that the state-owned companies have paid to the government. Nor will it come from the large commercial electricity users. Instead, household consumers have been told they will face electricity fee increases of about $130 a year. Household charges are expected to rise by 16 percent as early as July, followed by four annual hikes of 8 percent—making the total increase more than 50 percent.
Two decades ago, federal Labor governments, as part of their “de-regulation” and “national competition” agendas, began the transformation of the electricity network nationally into a market-driven collection of privatised or corporatised power companies. They claimed that the market would deliver cheaper and more reliable electricity.
The outcome has been the opposite, with ordinary consumers forced to pay ever-higher charges. At the same time, both the private operators and the remaining state-owned corporations have starved the electricity grid of the necessary resources for maintenance, repair and upgrading in order to maximise short-term profits and dividends...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/elec-a27.shtml
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