Monday 6 March 2017

John Quiggin on re-nationalising the electricity grid

John Quiggin has written a typical thoughtful paper on re-nationalising the electricity grid.
I had this in Around the Traps on Friday.

I support his argument. electricity is an essential good and therefore a public good.

Quite clearly the private market for electricity is not working. There are huge problems with the inter-connector ( a reason for not one but two blackouts in South Australia.)
The regulator AEMO is not up to task at all. They imposed yet another blackout on south Australia through their incompetence.

I agree with john that it is only by the State government's owning their electricity assets that all aims of electricity can be gotten.

Privatising these assets were very problematic at the time and in retrospect can be seen as simply disastrous. If the public sector holds assets that are easily traded in the marker then by all means privatise but when those assets are clearly public goods leave them well alone.

It is a shame this argument was never made when these assets were privatisied.

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