Australia: the consequences of privatised infrastructure

The following is most crucial: Under privatisation most citizens pay much more in their capacity as consumers than they would in their capacity as tax payers with public finance. Privatised infrastructure is bad for equity purposes – with the increased cost structures flowing on to business as well as consumers. The consequence of this is that infrastructure privatisation is bad for capitalism in addition to being bad for equity.

We need only look to the costs of energy infrastructure privatisation in Australia to grasp the consequences of infrastructure and utility privatisation for a spiralling Cost-of-Living. Private investment in new energy infrastructure is being passed on in the form of consumer charges that have largely seen energy prices in Australia rise by 40 per cent over the past five years.

For decades progressives and social democrats have been on the back foot when it comes to privatisation. Within the ALP there is even scepticism with regards reform of tax and meaningful extension of the welfare state and social wage.

Even on the ALP Left there is an 'ideological drift': a loss of a sense of perspective and purpose as the substance of democratic socialist policy is increasingly seen as 'unspeakable' even in internal forums.

Without being regularly reinforced through a vigorous and participatory counter-culture traditional Left ideals are fading. Liberalism is filling the void. By while liberalism is part of the answer, it is not sufficient to meet the 'social question' which provided the original source of inspiration for Labor. Privatisation – insofar as it relates to Cost-of-Living pressures – is part of the modern 'social question' faced by progressives.

There has been a steady line of retreat since the 1980s on the Left - from a perspective favouring economic democracy, to a rearguard action in defence of a robust mixed economy, to neo-liberalism and a minimal public sector sustained by some residual 'natural public monopolies' – and finally now the almost absolute expunging of the public sector from even those sectors of the economy where it is in capitalism's own interests to contain its cost-structures via public ownership.

We need, now, to return to the theme of the democratic mixed economy: in a sense to 'save capitalism from itself' – not necessarily because all facets of capitalism are worth saving – but to prevent the human suffering that comes in the wake of capitalist contradictions. And over the long term we can still aspire to the extension of political, social and economic citizenship – culminating in a qualitatively better social order.