Bushfire testimony on tragic cost of electricity privatisation

Testimony presented to the Victorian royal commission into the Black Saturday fires indicating that powerlines sparked several major bushfires has been virtually ignored by the media. The silence is in marked contrast to the frenzied reportage immediately following the February 7, 2009 fires of allegations that many blazes had been lit by arsonists.

An article on the World Socialist Web by Meg Rees form the 17th May outlines how the Royal Commission has heard evidence that several of the major fires on Black Saturday including the Kilmore East Blaze which killed 119 people were caused by powerlines owned by private companies.

According to the article

"Victorian power line maintenance was so inadequate that counsel assisting the royal commission, Jack Rush QC, told the hearing that, “If the aircraft industry worked on that sort of basis, we would have aircraft falling out of the sky.”

The article continues

"The principle motivation of successive state governments, Liberal and Labor, has been to ensure that nothing interferes with the profit of the companies that took over the generation, transmission and maintenance of electricity in 1995.

The private providers have been able to boost profits by drastically cutting line maintenance costs. According to official records, Powercor and SP Ausnet underspent on their operations and maintenance budgets in the seven years to December 31, 2008 by $105 million and $95 million respectively"

Both the ALP and the Liberal Party have followed a slavish neo-liberal pro-privatization policy for decades and the corporate press are covering up the deadly consequences of this policy. When combined with the fact that it is the privitisation of the electricity market which is currently preventing a sane and quick transfer of our electricity sources in Victoria to low carbon alternatives the arguments for re-nationalisation of the power grid grows even stronger. It is time the environmental movement placed demands for re-nationalisation at the top of their agenda.

Read the full article here