Two decades ago, the then SA premier, John Olsen, defied a campaign promise and announced plans to privatise the state’s electricity industry. It’s been a high-voltage issue ever since.
Jenni Henderson, The Conversation and Josh Nicholas, The Conversation
Business Briefing: the business of prisons
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Prisons are big business in Australia. Companies not only run entire prisons but provide many of the services. But what does the research say about the impact?
No matter whether competitive tendering or negotiation is used, operators that do not meet clear and transparent service benchmarks should be shown the door.
Privatisation talk in South Africa shows how state owned enterprises are being used as tools for enrichment by the connected and less as key elements of development.
Almost half of eligible households haven’t connected to the NBN. New modelling shows the NBN needs subsidies if we want more people to connect and the economy to benefit from it.
Concerns about the privatisation of public housing estates should not blind us to the benefits of the transfer of public housing to the not-for-profit community housing sector.
Sir Robert Richard Torrens – the man behind Australia’s ‘Torrens system’ of land-title registration – was an economic liberal who might have approved of privatising title registries.
Estimated cost savings for rail and bus franchising from Infrastructure Australia and PwC will have government treasurers salivating. Problem is, the figures are almost certainly far too high.
The Victorian budget brought with it an increase in privatisation, which follows on from other state budgets, but the evidence for efficiency in this type of system isn’t there.
Long-term privatisation contracts, most of them closed to scrutiny, lock urban infrastructure into 20th-century formats unsuited for a climate-threatened planet.