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A natural resource lieing solely in the hands of profit-driven private companies. Take a moment to reflect on the potential risks this poses for the average con

A natural resource lieing solely in the hands of profit-driven private companies. Take a moment to reflect on the potential risks this poses for the average consumer, the consequences of placing profit above all. Will you entrust your well-being to CEOs and boards whose sole priority is relentless growth and maximizing profits, regardless of the consequences? Laws can only do so much to prevent vital resources from becoming unaffordable for the very people who deserve them. These companies, with no regard for your, the citizen's, vote or input, prioritize profits above all else. To them, it's just another business move, leaving the consequences behind as they move on to the next venture. You can argue and consider other ideas, but the higher risk in the private side is always there.

Grimburger 3y ago
> These companies, with no regard for your, the citizen's, vote or input, prioritize profits above all else. And they are easily reigned in by the Australian Electricity Regulator, while governments owned businesses are not. We recently had a price cap put on coal and gas prices, private companies had to eat a massive loss, government owned generators huffed and puffed until they got billion dollar bailouts from the rest of the nation for their coal guzzling power plants that should have been shut down years ago had they not been taxpayer liabilities. There's simply no evidence of these things driving up prices. We have a huge government owned pumped hydro power storage project underway that has blown out from $2b to $10b in the spacce of a few years, if this was privately owned it would have gone bankrupt, instead more and more cash from electricity users will eventually have to be paid to fund it. It's costing 5x more than simply putting grid scale batteries in the cities and the government has sunk cost fallacy that it can't walk away from. This is the problem with government ownership of electricity assets in Australia, politics gets completely in the way of good decision making and projects that should have failed long ago. As I said before, where's the evidence, because all I see is ideology. This is what happens when governments run electricity projects: > He assured the electorate it would cost $2 billion and be up and running by 2021. > By April 2019, a contract for part of the project was signed for $5.1 billion — and that doesn't include transmission costs, which will cost billions more. > Who will actually pay for transmission is still being decided. > "Someone's going to pay for it," Snowy Hydro CEO Paul Broad told 7.30. > "The taxpayers will pay for it through your taxes, or you pay for it through your bills. The current cost is $10b and the project has blown out to the end of the decade. No one is admitting how far they've dug or the status of meeting targets. The transmission bill is still up in the air but will likely be an additional $5b added onto household bills. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-14/snowy-hydro-2.0-expensive-and-wont-deliver-energy-expert/11594768 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-14/snowy-hydro-2.0-expen...
- jussij 3y ago
  Snowy Hydro 2 was a scam from day one. It was created by a LNP government so that it could convince voter it cared about climate change. Once that leader was ousted the truth came out and the real LNP climate denial was there for all to see. Also, the LNP have proved time and time again they can't build any public infrastructure. Their Inland Rail project is another total disaster, a project wasting many more tens of billions and achieved absolutely nothing. And how can anyone forget the failure that was the LNP re-design of the National Broadband; a design that moved away from fiber optic to instead use copper wire.

Grimburger 3y ago

> These companies, with no regard for your, the citizen's, vote or input, prioritize profits above all else. And they are easily reigned in by the Australian Electricity Regulator, while governments owned businesses are not. We recently had a price cap put on coal and gas prices, private companies had to eat a massive loss, government owned generators huffed and puffed until they got billion dollar bailouts from the rest of the nation for their coal guzzling power plants that should have been shut down years ago had they not been taxpayer liabilities. There's simply no evidence of these things driving up prices. We have a huge government owned pumped hydro power storage project underway that has blown out from $2b to $10b in the spacce of a few years, if this was privately owned it would have gone bankrupt, instead more and more cash from electricity users will eventually have to be paid to fund it. It's costing 5x more than simply putting grid scale batteries in the cities and the government has sunk cost fallacy that it can't walk away from. This is the problem with government ownership of electricity assets in Australia, politics gets completely in the way of good decision making and projects that should have failed long ago. As I said before, where's the evidence, because all I see is ideology. This is what happens when governments run electricity projects: > He assured the electorate it would cost $2 billion and be up and running by 2021. > By April 2019, a contract for part of the project was signed for $5.1 billion — and that doesn't include transmission costs, which will cost billions more. > Who will actually pay for transmission is still being decided. > "Someone's going to pay for it," Snowy Hydro CEO Paul Broad told 7.30. > "The taxpayers will pay for it through your taxes, or you pay for it through your bills. The current cost is $10b and the project has blown out to the end of the decade. No one is admitting how far they've dug or the status of meeting targets. The transmission bill is still up in the air but will likely be an additional $5b added onto household bills. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-14/snowy-hydro-2.0-expensive-and-wont-deliver-energy-expert/11594768 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-14/snowy-hydro-2.0-expen...

jussij 3y ago
Snowy Hydro 2 was a scam from day one. It was created by a LNP government so that it could convince voter it cared about climate change. Once that leader was ousted the truth came out and the real LNP climate denial was there for all to see. Also, the LNP have proved time and time again they can't build any public infrastructure. Their Inland Rail project is another total disaster, a project wasting many more tens of billions and achieved absolutely nothing. And how can anyone forget the failure that was the LNP re-design of the National Broadband; a design that moved away from fiber optic to instead use copper wire.