Editorial:
Privatisation — the enemy

We are told about "competition", "choice", "efficiency", "paying off the 
public debt", but not about the deaths and injury resulting from profits 
first and relegating safety to a minor consideration. These issues have 
come to the surface again following the lethal British rail crash a few 
weeks ago.

British Rail had been built up as an integrated, publicly owned  rail 
system for more than a century. But it took the "economic rationalists" 
only a few years to smash it up and sell it off.

In 1994 it was divided into 25 Train Operating Companies, three Rolling 
Stock Leasing Companies, Railtrack which owns the track and signals, and 
three Train Freight Companies. There were also three engineering service 
companies. This nightmare is further complicated by more divisions within 
these companies.

This was Margaret Thatcher's doing but the British Labour Party, although 
talking about re-nationalisation, has done nothing about it and, before the 
most recent crash and fatalities, was about to privatise part of the London 
Underground and the air traffic control system. These have now been put on 
hold at least.

And why did the accident happen? We are told that one of the drivers went 
through a signal light on red. But where were the fail-safe systems which 
exist but have not been installed? There are automatic systems which put 
the brakes on if a train goes through a red light. Furthermore, there had 
been complaints going back years about the location of the particular 
signal light where the accident occurred, but the complaints were ignored 
by management.

Thatcher's Tory Government thought the cost of $1 billion for the safety 
system might stand in the way of their privatisation plans. The Labor 
Government which followed, didn't insist upon it either.

Following the most recent accident (and this was not the first at the same 
signal point) the British Minister of Transport has come out in favour of 
the computerised safety system but the Government wont pay and the private 
operators would put up charges to pay for it.

So privatisation has created a maze of different companies — the  
companies which operate the trains do not own the railtracks or run the 
signals system. Other companies operate the freight and passenger flow. 
Different companies again operate the engineering side of things.

What does all this amount to? In anyone's language it is plain stupidity or 
to be more accurate — criminality. The real culprits are those who, 
pursuing their mantra that "private is best" created such a monstrosity out 
of the formerly publicly-owned, integrated system.

A Financial Review article (14/10/99) reveals that Britain's rate of 
rail-passenger deaths was three times those for Italy, Belgium and Spain in 
the ten years to 1996 and higher than those in France and Germany. And what 
is the difference? In these European countries the rail systems remain 
publicly owned and they have installed the already developed and available 
safety systems.

Have Australian Governments learnt from these lessons? Apparently not. The 
Victorian Government privatised the Victorian rail system, also slicing it 
up into segments.

The Federal Labor Government privatised National Rail and the NSW Labor 
Government is hell-bent on privatising and fragmenting the State Railways -
- a process which has already commenced. But the opposition to 
privatisation is growing. In NSW the Government's proposal to privatise the 
electricity network was thrown out — at least for the time being.

The NSW Labor Council has strongly opposed the privatisation of the rail 
system. Labor Council President, John Whelan said "this is a big campaign, 
against the tide of economic rationalism, but it has our highest priority."

A Council report showed that fragmentation would lead to inefficiencies, 
fewer jobs in rural areas, contractors would have little interest in 
training apprentices or improving employee skills and this would have an 
impact on safety. The present process of "contracting out" has already led 
to the creation of about 3,000 separate contracts requiring a large 
bureaucracy to manage them. They would multiply under further 
privatisation. 

Public transport provides a service while privately owned transport gives 
priority to shareholder profits. Services go down, prices go up and safety 
become a poor relation.
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