Contracts reveal NSW public ripped off by Liberals’ energy privatisation

Documents released following a Greens motion in the NSW Upper House have revealed the 2015 sale of Vales Point power station leaves NSW exposed to potentially billions of dollars in liabilities.

Gladys Berejiklian, Treasurer at the time, charged Trevor St Baker and Brian Flannery just $1 million for the right to operate Vales Point. Yet St Baker and Flannery valued Vales Point at $730 million in 2017. At the same time the community has suffered increased electricity costs of around 60% and the State retains the cost of cleaning up the site.

This Government tried to justify the $1 million price tag by reference to the amount of liabilities transferred to the purchasers on ‘sale’. These documents reveal that those liabilities were limited to $68 million at most – a trivial amount for St Baker and Flannery, given that they apparently cleared $90 million in their first year of operation.

Abigail Boyd, Greens MP in the NSW upper house and a former corporate and finance lawyer said:

“Once again we see that while companies profit, communities are left to pay.

“The Government has effectively sold off the income stream generated from the power station while leaving the public on the hook for potentially billions of dollars in rehabilitation and clean up.

“This is just the latest giveaway to private investors - we now know that the State is also responsible for rehabilitation and clean up in relation to Eraring, Bayswater, Liddell and Colongra power stations.

“Just this week, a report by Environmental Justice Australia highlighted how the lack of regulation of toxic coal ash waste is risking community health and wrecking fragile environments.

“The Berejiklian and Baird Government’s privatisation agenda has been a disaster for NSW communities while making no real improvements to the State’s finances.

“The public deserves to know exactly how much it will cost to clean up the mess caused by decades of contamination in and around these power station sites.

“Claiming an $800 million surplus is a bit silly when you are simultaneously failing to account for billions of dollars in future liabilities.

“This Government is showing once again that it’s all smoke and mirrors when it comes to their financial management of our State,” said Abigail Boyd.

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

NSW is missing out on tens of billions of dollars. By introducing a progressive coal royalty structure similar to the one in Queensland, we would have raised an extra $20 billion last year.

The NSW Government owns and controls, on behalf of the people of this state, the rights to the minerals and materials that naturally occur in NSW land.

Huge fossil fuel companies are only able to extract and sell these commodities with the consent of the State. It’s time they paid a fair price for that privilege.

The fossil fuel industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their cosy relationship with governments. Granted permission to extract and sell coal, these large multinational fossil fuel corporations pay just over 7% in royalties back to the people of NSW – keeping the rest as mega-profits for themselves. These companies have a track record of taking more than their fair share and leaving communities suffering and stranded with poisoned groundwater, devastated landscapes and a stranded workforce when it suits their business models.

Globally, the hyper-inflation of fossil fuel prices driven by price-gouging opportunism and war profiteering from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delivered record windfall profits to these already obscenely wealthy corporations. In the last year, NSW coal exports totaled over $70 billion dollars, but the people of NSW will only see about 7 cents in every dollar, or about $6 billion dollars of that amount.

Rather than going toward schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, billions of dollars went into the pockets of multinational mining corporations. The Greens believe there should be more money for schools and hospitals and less for mining billionaires.

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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Contracts reveal NSW public ripped off by Liberals’ energy privatisation

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

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