Even though I am an Australian of the Melbourne persuasion, events in Sydney have stirred an angry response from within me, and my anger is firmly aimed at the one group of people that I have always defended; unionists.
For those of you not familiar with the state of New South Wales – whose capital city is Sydney – the head of government, Premier Morris Iemma (pronounced Yemma), has a monumental fight on his hands. He wants to privatise the electricity assets of the state, as he believes that in the very near future, the state government will not be able to fund the electricity needs of the nearly 7 million residents of New South Wales on its own.
Now this is not simply a ‘let’s sell off the state’s assets to make a quick buck’ approach. Mr. Iemma has sat down, crunched the figures, and genuinely believes that the only way he can ensure effective supply into the future is to privatise. He believes passionately in this solution, and is willing to go against his Labor party conference delegates, who voted 702-107 against the proposal at their conference this weekend in Sydney.
Not only am I impressed with Mr.Iemma’s strength of character at this tough time, but I am also disgusted in the union thuggery that I am seeing coming out of the conference. I have been a union man in my time, and intend to be in the future. I believe in the existence of some sort of employee body to make sure employers don’t work us from dawn till dusk and pay us peanuts. But what I have never been a fan of is left wing thug union bosses who will send the boys around with a baseball bat if you don’t agree with them. It’s criminal, it’s wrong, and it holds no place amongst decent people who believe in a fair go for workers.
Mr. Iemma has faced a few of these ‘thugs’ since making the decision to go against his party and follow his logic on this issue:
Russ Collison from the Australian Workers’ Union urged Mr Iemma to back down.
“In no uncertain terms – no uncertain terms – don’t you dare, and you do it at your peril,” he said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/04/2234724.htm
That is pure threat, and it sickens me to my stomach. What’s this Mr. Collison going to do, get his meatheads to give Mr. Iemma ‘a little talk’? Guys like Russ Collison give unionism a bad name, and the action that should be taken by the Labor party in New South Wales is to black ban Russ Collison and anyone who thinks like him.
Simply being left wing does not necessarily mean being ‘communist’, ’socialist’ or ‘a bit Bolshi’. That’s usually reserved for those at the extreme end of the left. The Labor party members in New South Wales need to be grateful to Morris Iemma for keeping them in power after the retirement of former Premier, Bob Carr. Iemma won them the unwinnable election. Bob Carr has weighed into the debate, saying Iemma should stick to his guns on this issue, and he has cited similar reasons to me in regard to the ‘rank and file’ of the New South Wales Labor party:
“I think the Labor rank and file – and I love them like brothers and sisters – are very attached to an old fashioned, even Soviet-style model of the Government electricity monopoly producing all the energy we need and distributing it.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/04/2234724.htm
The reason why people hate the left is because some of us still have our heads in this very communistic style of thinking. If I was Morris Iemma and a union boss threatened me like that, I would have three very simple words to say to him: “Bring…it…on!”
If Iemma does not follow through with this proposal, and bows to thuggery and intimidation, then in 2020, when the government cannot fund electricity, and therefore cannot guarantee supply, the citizens of New South Wales will jump up and down and say “Why wasn’t anything done all those years ago to stop this happening?”
Well, something was, and you voted it down.
Enjoy your day.
