Thursday 1 May 2008

Public or re-public? - That is the Question
Considering that the adherents of a republic rarely know what they want instead of the Monarchy and have they hardly ever wasted a thought on what “republic” really means. The origin of the term is “res publica” or the "common cause".

Now have a look, what our republicans are doing: They sell the common good and privatise public property. To be more precise: They privatise the profit, but socialise the deficits.

The public transport in Melbourne is a good example. Transport Minister Lynne Kosky, I am sure a life long republican just like the present Prime Minister, publicly said she is not interested in running the public transport system in Victoria. Her recent tour of public transport in Europe was about private deals not public benefit. In fact the much praised public commission model for transport in Zürich was rejected out of hand by Mrs Kosky. Far better to do deals protected by “commercial–in–confidence” secrecy.

Do you recall Mr. Iemma, the man who would sell The Man from Snowy River? (He was behind the plan to sell off the Snowy River Power scheme). Now New South Welsh Premier, Morris Iemma, despite promising before the last state election not to privatise the NSW electricity system, is in a tussle with the NSW union movement who actually expected him to keep his promise. This has put Emperor Kev I in a difficult position, caught between the powerful NSW right wing and the equally powerful NSW union movement. Oh! as for the public ... they don’t even get a look in.

Mr Iemma and Mr Rudd may be republicans but they cannot privatise public assets fast enough. More deals to be done behind closed doors … even the promise not to privatise the power system was made behind closed doors between the Union and Mr Iemma.

The public were never and are not part of the discussions in any way.

PPP = private profit preferred …

If you cannot trust the public service and the public assets to the politicians, why would you give them total power by making one of them president of a republic? To whom would they sell the country?

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