Re: Privatisation of Australia's railways

[mauried@tpg.com.au (Maurie Daly)]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000 21:49:25 GMT, pdwyer@my-deja.com wrote:

>In article <3a1a6da0$0$19413$7f31c96c@news01.syd.optusnet.com.au>,
>  "Tezza" <tezza2000@dingoblue.net.au> wrote:
>>
>> "Dennis Maddock" <drjmaddock@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
>> lbtS5.40388$SF5.720753@ozemail.com.au">news:lbtS5.40388$SF5.720753@ozemail.com.au...
>> > To all,
>> >
>> > I am not very impressed that the State and Federal Governments are
>all for
>> > privatisation of the majority of  our rail assets. Looking at
>recent media
>> > articles, the government seems to only look at short term profit
>and not
>> > long term losses of revenue.
>>
>> Except that I think most of them are actually losing money.
>
>Is the NRC (the grand experiment) losing money?

Afraid it is .(losing money that is.)
It also depends a bit on what you mean by privatizing the Railways.
To me , privatization means selling the Railways to someone else, a
bit like the privatization of the Commonwealth bank or Qantas.
But this isnt happening.
All thats happening is that the Govts are selling the rollingstock /
locomotives etc , but are keeping the track,and in some cases leasing
it to private companies.
In my view , this is the worst outcome possible as a private operator
who only owns rollingstock ,but not the track will not spend any of
their own money to upgrade the track, but will simply use it and rely
on the track owner to upgrade it , which as we all know means relying
on Govt funds for track upgrades, (not very likely).

If privatization has to be a reality ,then it would be far better to
actually privatise the whole lot ,(a la the US arrangement).
At least then we would get some private investment into improving the
railways.

MD