Fencing wire and mirrors: the world of the National Energy System

Exactly. We have all been disenfranchised.

Some constitutional lawyers, including most (but not all) of the official ones, think this is legally OK. Some don't. There's been no High Court case to test it yet. But don't let us get confused. Whatever the lawyers might say about it, we - you, me, all of us, even the South Australians - have been dudded on democracy. Do you think they would use this malarkey for, say, a national child care system, or a national medical scheme? Of course not - the mums and dads would be in the streets. But in as crucial an area of policy as energy, they use it because they think it's too technical for the punters to notice.

Another way?

What if, one day, the government of South Australia changes and won't play ball, or another government decides there is something it doesn't like? What if, when Professor Garnaut walks in with his report on what is to be done about climate change, the Commonwealth decides that it is really going to set up an Emissions Trading Scheme and do other things to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? The energy laws and the NEM will have to be changed, and generators and networks and retailers will have to do things differently, and we all might have to pay more. There'll be many ructions. Are we all going to sit on our hands while whatever is needed is debated and perhaps passed in South Australia?

Don't get me wrong - if anyone is going to make up my mind for me I couldn't imagine anyone better to do it than a South Australian. But you get the point, don't you? We've been disenfranchised. Full credit for ingenuity to the legal eagles, the sparks engineers, the hard men of the public service who got the system up. This is no way to run a national energy system, or a nation.

Is there some alternative? For several years, governments have been moving towards what they call national regulation whereby, under co-operative arrangements between the states, territories and Commonwealth there will be central bodies administering all the laws and running the market.

At present the individual jurisdictions still decide on quite a lot - what bills you pay, for example; but, under what is proposed, the central bodies will run the NEM completely. Some lawyers think that, now, following a fairly recent decision of the High Court, it wouldn't be too difficult legally for the Commonwealth, under the corporations power of the Constitution, to take over those bodies, and policy, and thus the whole caboodle.

The Feds wouldn't own the assets, of course, but many, including the states, would regard it as a power grab, no pun intended. You can see the headlines now. But at least then we would have the national power system we need, the issues would be debated in Canberra for everyone to hear, and we'd all get a chance of voting on them when the Federal elections came around.