HOLDING CORPORATES TO ACCOUNT CAN BE LIKE CLUTCHING AT SMOKE
Last week I had the great privilege to Chair a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into power outages across the far-west on NSW back in October 2024. The Committee travelled to Broken Hill, Menindee, Wilcannia, White Cliffs and Tibooburra. What a beautiful and interesting country we live in. The great distances really do make you feel like the opportunities are limitless.
The travel itinerary for the Inquiry itself was deliberately designed to provide as much opportunity as possible, for communities large, medium and small, to have their say. Some people had pre-booked sessions with the Committee, while others could simply walk into an open town-hall style forum. In addition, larger agencies, corporates and organisations also had the chance to present their views to the Committee too.
Once upon a time, when Governments owned the electricity production and delivery across NSW (and Australia), if a matter like a power outage were to come to pass, then it would clearly be governments responsibility to take responsibility for it, and to fix it. But those times have certainly passed.
These days, electricity production, transmission, distribution and retail sale is owned by all manner of corporates and a sprinkling of ongoing Government agencies. In simple terms of course the corporate drive is to maximise profits will still providing a reasonable service so as to not do damage to the brand. And brand control is a mighty powerful driver.
As part of the Inquiry it has become clear that Company A thought that Company B and Company C had responsibility for X, Y and Z. Meanwhile Company B thought that Company A and Company C were responsible for those same X, Y and Z deliverables. And finally, it will come as no surprise that Company C thought that it was most definitely up to Company A and Company B to take responsibility for X, Y, Z and any other matter.
Welcome to the privatised and corporatised world of NSW Pty Ltd.
So, by the above description, you can imagine what the committee was tasked with. Talking to individuals about their own personal experiences it was clear that the system had failed those same individuals, the smaller communities and the small businesses trying to earn a dollar. Some of the situations described to us were simply unacceptable for a modern country in the year 2025. As one example, calling 000 in case of an emergency was not an option for up to a week or longer.
After Governments spending more than a century trying to make sure that each home had access to electricity and telephones, in 2025 the corporatised model of delivery is now questioning the value of that.
I am the first to admit that freak storms and weather events do, and will continue to, at times take down our ability to deliver electricity to homes and businesses. Ditto for our, largely electricity based, telecommunications. And for this reason we need to have in place contingency plans, back-up systems, work-arounds and safety nets. Working through power outages won’t always be delivered in a perfect or seamless manner.
But underneath all of this should always be the ability to know who exactly should be doing what and taking responsibility for which outcomes and deliverables. The home-owner doesn’t really care about corporate and Government lines of responsibility, they just want their power back on. Increasingly Governments are stepping into the void.
Right now another terrible weather event is unfolding on the north coast of NSW. Governments are already doing as much as they can to prevent the worst of the damage and impact. No doubt a significant amount of funding will be injected from Governments, to assist those affected by the weather events. That is of course tax-payer dollars. But to spend the tax-payer dollars most carefully and cautiously it is indeed important to know whether the various corporate entities are doing what they said they would, when they took over a Government business to deliver services.