NSW not for sale

The Communist Party is opposed to the privatisation of the people's 
assets. Whether it be our parks, roads, schools, libraries, hospitals, 
trains, buses, ferries, electricity, water, fire, ambulance or police 
services, our infrastructure and essential services rightfully belong to 
the people of NSW.

They have been built up over the years with public money and the labour of 
working people. It is our responsibility to look after them for our 
children and their children.

Apart from the invaluable services it provides, the public sector is an 
important source of jobs and security for a large section of the 
population.

In addition the income from profitable public utilities and enterprises 
funds health, education, housing, transport and community services.

Compared with the other States where Coalition Governments have been madly 
privatising, the NSW public sector remains relatively intact. Although the 
people of NSW have lost their State Bank, Government Insurance Office and 
TAB, unlike in other States, they still retain ownership of many vital 
services such as electricity and public transport.

That does not mean that the privatisation whiteants are not at work.

The privatisation process has been proceeding in NSW by less direct means 
such as the breaking up public utilities and then contracting out or 
selling off the parts bit by bit. Services that have been broken up include 
water, electricity, rail and hospitals.

Water treatment and filtration; water testing laboratories; electricity 
generators; Freight Rail; cleaning and maintenance services for public 
hospitals, schools and the State Railways; and much more have been 
privatised either through contracting out or direct sale to the private 
sector. Public land, including hospital sites and schools, and historic 
sites have been sold to private developers at cheap prices. Parks have been 
leased to private operators.

Remaining public assets are being corporatised in readiness for 
privatisation.

It is easy to see collusion between the State Governments and big business 
to make quick easy profits while stripping the public of its collective 
wealth.

Australia has privatised more public assets than all of the 29 
industrialised countries in the OECD apart from New Zealand.

No public assets are safe from privatisation with governments competing to 
prove their economic rationalist credentials. 

In this election, the NSW Coalition, the Liberal and National Parties, have 
fallen so low, attempting to buy votes in their bid to privatise fully NSW 
electricity. This is after the Carr Labor Government has continually failed 
to convince the public and most ALP members about the privatisation of 
electricity.

People first or profits first

What difference does it make if private enterprise does take over? Won't it 
be more efficient? NO

Privatisation means that the prime purpose of the service changes from 
providing a service to making a profit.

This means the quality suffers and the price rises as profit margins are 
added on.

Access to services (e.g. hospitals) and the quality of service depends on 
ability to pay. Services to rural and regional areas are either cut or cost 
more.

The CPA fights to defend and extend the public sector, to create jobs and 
provide cheap and equitable services for all.

A strong, democratic public sector can:

* provide good quality services at cheaper, affordable prices;

* offer universal access to services, for regional and rural Australians as 
well as city dwellers;

* create jobs, in particular for apprentices and young workers;

* help maintain and set improved standards in workers' wages and conditions 
and encourage trade unionism;

* can minimise environmental abuse and set good standards for pollution 
control;

* can reduce corruption, which has been exposed in endemic proportions in 
the contracting out and tendering for services;

* where profitable, act as an important source of revenue for the 
government which assists funding of other services and community needs.

In addition the public sector is far more accountable to people and their 
needs while private enterprise ("commercial in confidence") is only 
accountable to their major shareholders — the big financial institutions. 

The CPA calls for:

* pubic ownership and control of all essential services and infrastructure.

Put public need before private greed

Vote Communist

A vote for the Communist Party is a vote for a secure future