Comments on: Yes, we should nationalise Qantas — this privatisation experiment has been disastrous!

By: Bystander

Bystander — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 20:33:58 +0000

In reply to Mr Phullpot-Gardyloo. Well, I was around when Qantas (hate using the word) was government owned. It was brilliant and dearly loved by Australians. Now it's a shadow of its former self, detested and barely fit for purpose.

By: Bystander

Bystander — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 20:23:04 +0000

The best airlines in the world are government owned; the worst airlines in the world are publicly traded corporations.

By: drsmithy

drsmithy — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 14:33:53 +0000

In reply to Entropy. These are arbitrarily high regulatory costs though, no ? Not really the same thing as the fundamental physical limitations of train lines and roads.

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 13:27:15 +0000

In reply to Hoojakafoopy. Cf. fkn Robodebt; it's intentionally broken.

By: Hoojakafoopy

Hoojakafoopy — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 11:36:55 +0000

Editor..? You have the authors’ names for and against privatization the wrong way around.

By: Hoojakafoopy

Hoojakafoopy — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 11:35:16 +0000

In reply to Mr Phullpot-Gardyloo. The inoperability of Centrelink is clearly a deliberate, if hidden government policy.

By: Entropy

Entropy — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 10:02:29 +0000

In reply to drsmithy. The sky is neither free nor open, it's very expensive (below FL60 where civil aviation is confined for technical reasons). I agree about the extortionate parking fees gifted to airport operators.

By: Robert REYNOLDS

Robert REYNOLDS — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 09:48:23 +0000

In reply to Mr Phullpot-Gardyloo. No, Mr Phullpot-Gardyloo, if a publically owned instrumentality is not functioning properly then we take that issue up with its management and change the management if necessary. If the instrumentality is publically owned then the government can be held accountable and the matter, if serious enough, can become an election issue. You do not 'throw the baby out with the bath water' and pass the instrumentality off into the hands of the private sector robber barons who will use it purely to maximize profits and pay minimal heed to the need to provide a public service.

By: Robert REYNOLDS

Robert REYNOLDS — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 09:39:50 +0000

Margaret, I cannot thank you enough for your excellent essay in which you outline so many logical reasons that have, as their foundation, common sense and an understanding of human nature. You make so many points that to me are so intuitive and instinctive (at least to any rational, normal person who is not driven by greed and selfishness), that they really should not even need to be made.

If I may though, I would like to add a few additional points.

You begin with the statement that:

“The chickens are finally coming home to roost for the disastrous privatisation experiment.”

I would argue that those “chickens” began to make their presence felt the minute the outlandish decision to go down the privatization path was taken, let alone implemented. It just took some time for the late developers to catch on. Which brings me to the point that this debate should not only be about the re-nationalization of Qantas but it should also include discussion about re-nationalizing all of the other essential services which were sold off to the robber barons, greed merchants, and other assorted parasites in the private sector, for example, the banks. These essential services should be in public hands and operated in the interests of all citizens, not just in the interests of a small privileged minority whose only interest is maximizing profit.

When you say Margaret, that:

“Government ownership was assumed to be inefficient and introducing competition would improve industry performance, …..”

I would merely add that after being nationalized, Qantas, like all privatized instrumentalities, become much more efficient, but only in areas such as price gouging their passengers (oh, sorry, in this day and age of neo-liberalism that should be ‘customers’ shouldn’t it), for example, by selling tickets for flights that had been cancelled, treating their staff in an appalling manner (which did wonders for staff morale). Yes sirree, that sort of efficiency was what it was all about in Qantas in just the same way that it was in most, if not in every other organization that was privatized.

Integral to this was the deregulation of labour markets and the weakening of industrial relations.

The deregulation and weakening of the labor market was an integral part of the economic rationalist scam.
You observe, quite correctly that:

“Times of crisis for government businesses were conveniently seized upon to justify the sell-off of public assets.”

I would suggest that we will not see any meaningful steps being taken to reverse this free-market horror story until we see another crisis of government business or more specifically, a major economic crisis. I think that only then will we be able to ‘reinvent the wheel and have many of the positive economic reforms that were introduced following the Great Depression of almost 100 years ago and that were designed by forward-thinking people who did not wish to see a repeat of that terrible event again, reenacted. I think that if the Global Financial Crisis had taken a different turn some 15 or so years ago we might have seen some major reform at that time.

When this fantasy land concept of neo-liberalism was introduced by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, appeals to greed and selfishness were made in the form of promises of lower taxes and reduced government spending. With lower taxes came the inevitable problem of budget deficits and cuts to vital services such as in health and education. So, what do we do to redress this problem of budget shortfalls? As you say:

“Public asset sales were also used to fabricate an improvement of the budget bottom line, as Costello did by including asset sales in the budget, including Qantas.”

This risible approach inevitably raises the question, “What do we do once everything is sold off?”

Then you say:

“The privatisation of Qantas and other publicly owned enterprises has been accompanied by a massive amount of regulation. The tendency for only two airlines to be sustainable in Australia also called for additional regulation after privatisation.”

This compels me to ask, “In whose interests did these ‘regulations’ work”? Furthermore, I thought that in a (supposedly) idyllic free-market economy regulation was unnecessary because market forces ensure that all will be perfect. Self-regulation would save all that government interference in the free market, not to mention the cost of paying government-employed regulators.

Anyway, that will suffice on a system that is (like religious belief), simply “too silly for words.

By: Mr Phullpot-Gardyloo

Mr Phullpot-Gardyloo — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 05:10:52 +0000

Anyone in favor of nationalising QANTAS obviously was not around to experience Telecom in the days when the government owned and ran what is now Telstra.

Some idea of how this would pan out can be obtained by imagining QANTAS bookings, customer service etc run by Centrelink.

Just because QANTAS is on the nose doesn’t mean there is no room to make it worse. One characteristic governments of all persuasions share is an ability to create expensive, inefficient, ineffective and incompetent bureaucracies.