The debate over electricity privatisation has now been reduced to one of union influence versus the ‘good of the people’. It takes no account of environmental concerns and therefore misses the point entirely. Surely it’s obvious that government regulation is the only way to reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. No business would ever voluntarily increase its production costs.

The best hope of avoiding a climate change catastrophe is for people in all countries, especially the mega-polluters like us, to prevail upon their governments to enforce emissions control on industry. Whether it’s carbon trading, a tax, offsets or whatever, if the level of carbon emission does not fall each and every year, well into the foreseeable future, all our gooses are cooked.

As the football commentator said: “This is not rocket surgery.”

One argument in favour of privatisation is that it will provide incentive for investors to build another one, or maybe more, coal-fired power stations to meet our future energy needs. Economic growth is always wheeled out as the panacea for all ills when it’s actually what is making us sick. Alternative energy and conservation strategies are continually ignored.

How about this as a scenario for the future?

Just suppose for a moment that a politician with nous grabbed the tiller and ordered the construction and installation of a few hundred thousand photovoltaic solar arrays for the rooftops of, say, western Sydney. What if the present installation subsidy of one third of the cost was increased to three-quarters? Consumers who wanted a more secure future for their children might well support such a scheme, especially if the remaining cost was spread over a few years’ power bills. They might even make a profit from feeding their excess power to the grid.

If then, the amount of electricity needed to be generated for domestic consumers dropped dramatically, would that be a win for everyone? Perhaps not, if you’d just forked out $10 billion of investors’ funds to lease a bunch of coal-fired power stations. This is the contradiction the politicians gloss over.

Regardless of who owns the electricity production in NSW, one thing is for sure. It will be paid for by you and me when the quarterly bill arrives in the mail. If Messrs Iemma and Costa succeed in pushing through with selling or leasing the power industry, whatever money they get will ultimately be paid by the consumer in electricity charges. Why else would anyone want to buy into power generation if it wasn’t a gilt-edged investment?

If the NSW Government is being held to ransom by minority interests, it’s not by the 702 ALP union and grass-roots branch delegates who held their hands high to show their opposition to privatisation. It’s not by the crowd who demonstrated outside the conference, or the people at home who worry about the future. Nobody I know feels like they’re able to hold this Government accountable, let alone to ransom.

So who is pulling the strings?