local correspondent on nsw state issues

Brian Bigg has had extensive experience in Media and Politics. He is currently deputy editor of the Northern Star. These are some of his editorials.

government puts profit ahead of service

DURING the election campaign a sign went up at a Sydney school as a protest against the Howard Government – “This is a country not a company.”
It was making the point that the decisions of the government should always be for the people, not profit.
The same applies to the NSW Government’s proposals to privatise our electricity supply. At some point in the past few years our governments, from both sides of the political fence, have evolved from being loose spending, over-borrowing, crazy? people; to tight-fisted misers who won’t get out of bed unless there’s a user-pays profit at the end of it. Some balance needs to be brought back into the system. Vital things such as water and electricity need to be paid for with the taxes we already pay.
Government departments are by their nature slow, unwieldy and wasteful, but where is the evidence the community benefits from privatising public services?
Sure, multi-millionaire Sol Trujillo will argue a privatised Telstra is better for shareholders, but Telstra costs go up every year for the rest of us.
Older readers may remember the Commonwealth Bank as a nice place to earn interest from your savings. Not any more. But shareholders are undoubtedly ecstatic with the bank’s record profits. The same will happen with electricity. The Government will have one less thing to do, the smart crowd will make a quid and the rest of us will face ever steeper power bills.
The government’s job is taking the money we pay in tax and providing services for us. It’s not its job to show a profit.

Battlers battling to get a 'fair go'

THERE are gaping holes appearing in the idea of a fair go for everyone in this country.
For a perfect example, look no further than the news that a middle-ranked RailCorp executive who pushes paper around his desk just got a $77,000 pay rise to take his salary to $379,000 a year.
That's more than $1000 a day for a moderately-achieving government employee.
On the same news page there was the revelation many police officers (also government employees) are forced to get second jobs as taxi drivers or security guards, just to supplement their meagre wages.
These are people who face danger and death every day, and whose daily shift involves dealing with some of the stupidest and most dangerous people in the country.
And further down the news page there was a report that Telstra (whose chief executive earns more than $10 million a year) is being
investigated for allegedly pressuring its workers to sign AWAs which lock them out of pay rises for up to five years.
It doesn't seem right.
We love our children and want them to get the best start in life possible, but we continue to under pay the teachers who we insist help our little darlings achieve.
And it's only when we are on the bed, plugged into the machines, that it occurs to us we probably should recognise the value of our nurses more than we do.
Under our free enterprise system our wages are determined by supply and demand. The more valuable we are, the more we earn. There seems to be something completely out of whack with that at the moment.

It's no joke if banks decide to hike rates

IT WOULD be like an old joke except for the fact that it's not funny.
"I've got good news and bad news, which do you want first?"
The Reserve Bank yesterday decided to leave interest rates where they are at the moment - at 6.75 per cent - which is fantastic news for all of us in the lead-up to Christmas.
The Reserve has raised the rate 10 times in the past five years, and rates are at an 11-year high already, so to leave them alone for the present is a great relief.
But then the banks wiped the smile off our faces. They say it doesn't matter the Reserve Bank has been nice to us. They'll likely be putting up our mortgages in any event.
They say it is because of the cost of borrowing money overseas has gone through the roof due to the credit crisis in the US.
Sure, the US financial crisis is a bad thing, but how come our mortgages go up again because of unwise investment decisions by the banks? Our families will have to tug the belt tighter this Christmas because the self-regulated banks can't do their own jobs properly. These, by the way, are the same banks which have all made record billion-dollar profits every year for the past half dozen years.
These are the same banks which have this past week already sent us a rate increase from the last time the Reserve lifted rates. Why don't they try and suck up a bit of the pain for us?
So when you go to the mailbox and see a letter from your bank in the next few weeks, don't expect it to be a Christmas card wishing you all the best for a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.