The privatisation of the Dalrymple Bay coal port by the Queensland Labor Government found an unlikely critic in none other than the Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, himself, as was reported by ABC Radio National's AM program on 19 March.

Dalrymple Bay has been in the news lately because a recent surge in demand for Australian coal has resulted in unprecedented delays in the loading of coal ships. Queues of up to 50 ships have formed. It has r been the cause of heated controversy and buck-passing between the Federal and Queensland State governments, each blaming each other for the loss in potential export earnings for the country.

(Disclaimer : Given the widespread fear of global warming, which has resulted from the unprecedented rate of burning of fossil fuel, and the even more alarming recent news that runaway global warming may have only been averted, for now, by the global dimming phenomenum, many may regard this bottleneck as not altogether bad, in spite of the loss of export earnings. However, for the purposes of our argument, we will accept Peter Costello's and Terry Mackenroth's premise that coal exports are a good thing ¹.)

The Queensland Government had owned and operated the port, but, more recently, leased the port to Prime Infrastructure. Prime Infrastructure had wanted to build a new coal loader to cope with the anticipated increased demand for Queensland coal, however, it couldn't reach agreement with the coal companies on how much to charge them to build it.

The Queensland Competition Authority intervened 20 months ago. Its final decision on how much the coal companies will have to pay for the new loader has taken well over a year, but is due to be finalised next month. Of this dispute, Peter Costello said:

The Queensland Government sold off the lease on Dalrymple Bay, and boasted that they were doing it so they wouldn't have to invest. Now we've got a stalemate over the investment and Australia's number one export is suffering.

When asked if the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had the power to intervene, he said:

Well, in the final analysis you can bring the ACCC in, but why should we have to do that? Why can't this have been solved earlier than 20 months in the Queensland Competition Authority? Why can't it be solved tomorrow? Why can't the parties come to an agreement? This is Australia's number one export!

So, Peter Costello is essentially bemoaning the fact that the parties to the dispute each sought to look only after their own respective bottom lines, and were prepared to sacrifice the interests of the wider community in order to do this. Had the wider comunity to which the Queensland Government is utimately accountable, retained control of the coal loading facilities, then perhaps a mutually beneficial settelment could have been arrived at much earlier.

It has also been argued that Australian taxpayers stand to be spared the expense of investment in infrastructure if Telstra were to be privatised. For example, in 2002, in a submission to the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry often refered to as the Estens Inquiry, the Chamber Of Commerce and Industry Western Australia (CCI), argued :

... the extent to which taxpayers are risking their investments in an activity that can be undertaken just as effectively by the private sector is questionable. A privately owned company has shareholders who voluntarily risk their capital. Taxpayers have no choice if the government chooses to invest their money. The only justification for a government undertaking that risk on behalf of taxpayers is evidence of clear public community benefit, which CCI does not believe is the case in this particular sector.

The experience of Dalrymple Bay seems to blow a few holes in this argument. Withholding spending on the expansion of necessary infrastructure for 20 months is hardly 'effective' investment practice. As the public stood to gain enormously from the additional coal loading facilities (that is, of course, disregarding the global warming question as discussed in the earlier disclaimer) it is unlikely that many taxpayers would have objected to the 'risk' being taken on their behalf.

In a similar fashion, Telstra has also been dragging its feet in regard to rolling out its fibre optic cable broadband network. As reported on the 15th and 16th of February in The Australian IT section, Telstra had been witholding spending, which it claimed would reach $30 billion², until it obtained the necessary regulatory guaranteees that it would receive what it regards as an adequate rate of return on its investment.

This delay again shows how the public interest has missed out because Telstra, like Prime Infrastructure, is required to operate on a business model which is only concerned with its own bottom line, regardless of the enormous benefit that the whole Australian community stands to gain from earliest possible rollout of Broadband. Full privatisation, and the consequent complete loss of any control by the Australian public, can only make matters worse.

In 2002, Telstra and the residential development company, Bovis Lend Lease, failed to reach agreement to share the costs of providing broadband connections before the completion of the construction of apartment blocks at Jackson's Landing near the Sydney Central Business District. Evidently, the customers had assumed that some capability to access a broadband Internet connection would have been provided as a matter of course, given that these apartments were priced at around AU$1,000,000 each.

However, to their surprise and dismay, they learnt only after they had moved in, that they could only connect to the Internet through slow dial-up connections on pair gained lines. They were, in fact, worse off, in this regard, than many Sydney residents who lived in older and far less expensive apartments, but who were at least able to access ADSL through their own dedicated copper line connections.

Of this debacle, perhaps Peter Costello might also have asked, "why (couldn't) the parties (have) come to an agreement?" and perhaps he should explain why he doesn't anticipate further such problems if Telstra were to become fully privatised.