Essential Services - Global Action International

GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) holds that certain services are vital to the well-being, national security, safety and economic viability of Australia and must therefore be regulated, administered and sometimes operated under the direct control of government. Such government control removes the motive for blind profit and unnecessary cost cutting, returns service and financial benefits to the community on an ongoing basis and minimizes concerns about foreign influence or control.

The traditional criticism of government run enterprises has revolved around comments like "the dead hand of bureaucracy" overstaffing and hidden inefficiencies and to an extent that was true.

However those comments were leveled before the era of privatization, cost cutting, down sizing and - ECONOMIC RATIONALISM and formed part of an orchestrated campaign of deceit by big business, foreign investors, the G7 the World Bank and the rest of the "one worlders".

Now the community has had a chance to see what private enterprise does when it gets its hands on these former government instrumentalities and service providers.

The results have not brought the cost and efficiency savings the Economic Rationalists trumpeted, in fact all that has happened is that the public has seen the growth of a range of protected private monopolies who are free the rape and pillage their customers on a daily basis with higher prices, reduced services and an arrogance towards their customers that almost beggars belief.

Ask yourself what benefits have the people seen from privatization? Even many of the small shareholders of Telstra were burned.

GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) believes that the pendulum has swung too far towards privatisation and that this has not been to the benefit of the Australian people - the consumers - the customer.

GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) will examine the activities of all privatised instrumentalities and those that do not or have not brought benefit to their customers will be required to drastically improve their game or face the possibility of direct government control or a return to government ownership.

Traditionally the greatest reason for lack of incentive and motivation in the public sector has been the lack of any real or tangible mechanism by which workers or management could advance themselves. There was no profit motive, no strong appeal to the worker to get of his/her backside and do better. A public service job was considered comfortable, cushy. There was no need to worry, no need to hurry. Serve out your time and collect your weekly pay packet, your super, your gold watch! No incentive to work smarter or harder or "God forbid" provide the customer with better service!

This is the very set of attitudes that gave the Economic Rationalists their window of opportunity to shake up the establishment. They would use good old fashioned capitalist "profit" as the big stick with which to beat efficiencies out of everyone they could control - but they would give the game a new name - ECONOMIC RATIONALISM.

In the past there was much wrong with the way the public service and government instrumentality's went about business and in many ways they were inefficient. But this sort of mentality and the mentality of the economic rationalists just represent two very distant ends of a wide spectrum of attitudes toward getting the job done and providing service, which after all, is what we are all trying to do.

Over the last few decades we have seen both systems in action and both have failed to optimally deliver the goods to the customer, the people, the nation.

While Economic Rationalism is correct in using profit as its prime motivation, it is drastically flawed in giving that profit to just one group - the owners and shareholders.

When the Economic Rationalists then create private monopolies as both the Liberal Governments and Labour have allowed competition and incentive are again dead and the benefits and profits flow just to a small group of shareholders and big investors while to rest of the people - the customers and the community at large are the losers.

The solution to the dilemma about how to provide a balance between government and private enterprise control is not to be found in simplistic government control of everything or in privatisation of everything. The people want neither.

What the people want is the best deal for them - not for bureaucrats or for shareholders. GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) will always side with the people, the consumers, the community and will act as the umpire between all parties.

GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) will fight to turn back the tide of economic rationalism, break up private monopolies and create real financial and performance based incentives for the public service to strive for efficiency.

GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) sees certain services as ESSENTIAL to the people and the nation. These include obvious traditional services include defense, customs, etc.

                                        a.    Telstra
                                        b.    The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
                                        c.    The entire Prison Service - as connected to Prisons, Policing, Justice and
                                               the Courts.
                                        d.    All Electric Power Utilities
                                        e.    Coastal Air Patrols
                                        f.     All Water Utilities

As a result of the madness of world wide Economic Rationalism, privatization has over the past few years marched into areas of government administration in which it has no business. The results have been predictably disastrous with little cost saving being achieved, dwindling service standards, and other added costs being lumped on the community at large.

When in power GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) will return some the above services to the public sector if they cannot drastically improve their performance and investors may therefore consider themselves forewarned.

Under GLOBAL ACTION (AUSTRALIA) utilities will be properly funded but strictly audited to keep the costs of operating those utilities and their charges to consumers to a minimum. Surplus funds (after provisions) will returned to the community to be spent on publicly declared projects that will benefit the community (not disappear into the black hole of general revenue).