Thieves In The Night

By Sharon Beder

Electricity privatisation and deregulation has failed to deliver and no-one ever really wanted it in the first place.

In the wake of blackouts, gridlock and ENRON, is public ownership back on the agenda?

Blackouts have been experienced from California from Buenos Aires to Auckland. They have been experienced in South Australia and predicted in NSW. Government bailouts of electricity companies have been necessary in California and Britain. Electricity has had to be rationed in Brazil and has become too expensive for millions of people from India to South Africa.

Dozens of governments have embarked on the pathway to electricity deregulation and privatisation since the mid-1990s. It is referred to as 'liberalisation' by its advocates, who use the term to disguise what is in essence a massive shift of ownership and control of electricity from public to private hands. Beder sums up the history of the general moves to deregulation and privatisation, before looking in more detail at specific electricity sell offs and, consequences for people and the profits for the companies who do the deals.

It is clear that the majority of people in each country where the sell offs have gone ahead are victims not beneficiaries. Jobs have been lost, prices have risen, service and reliability have fallen, pollution has increased and taxpayers have had to bail out private electricity companies.

(ARENA Magazine, no. 67, October-November 2003)