LETTERS TO THE EDITOR by Ralph Provan

‘Unbelievable’’ best describes Australia’s domestic electricity and gas supply shortages in one of the richest resource-endowed countries on the planet. How has this been allowed to happen?
This downhill slide to tragic shortages, unreliability, plus ever-increasing costs has occurred after privatisation of our state and Commonwealth-owned essential services.
Electricity, water, rail, Telstra, air and sea ports — all of which provided service reliability to Australians while at the same time planning for expansion of these same services — have been sold off.

The philosophy of privatisation of public assets — paid for in our rates and taxes by all Australians — to transnational corporations, overseas banks and foreign governments smells like treason.
These examples beg the question: Who do our party MPs actually represent?
Parliaments state and federal appear to be expensive puppet shows with the strings being pulled by transnational corporations, international bankers, including the Macquarie Bank, and foreign governments.

The latest proposal to enlarge the Snowy Hydro Scheme (which has been classed as the eighth engineering wonder of the world) smacks of hypocrisy for it was less than 15 years ago when political parties were pushing to privatise our iconic Snowy Scheme.

There appears to be no accountability or duty of care.
The political parties have ruined the Westminster system of government in that one party, the financial party — banks and multinationals — backs all the favourites in the political race.
Our prime minster, an ex-banker, rejects a Royal Commission into the banks and banking system.

In Australia as in most Western countries, more than 90 per cent of the money in circulation is created by the private trading banks as an interest-bearing debt in the form of credit (try printing $100 notes; you will — if caught — be charged with counterfeiting).
It appears that the private banks do achieve the equivalent of legally creating money by credit creation in multi-story offices 24/7.
It is any wonder the big four banks individually make $10 billion to $12 billion per year profit?

Australia has just experienced a mineral boom and sold off the majority of its public assets, and privatised $30 billion worth of public assets in Victoria alone, mainly our electricity and gas, yet we still owe trillion of dollars.
Either we continue to borrow credit from private and foreign creditors, or we cast off the shackles of the private monopoly and create our own credit, as the Constitution allows and as was so successfully done in the past. (emphasis-ed)