Rising Tide Australia

As the community campaign against NSW electricity privitisation grows stronger, grassroots climate action group Rising Tide Newcastle has added its voice to the chorus of opposition to the proposal.

Rising Tide Newcastle has published a position paper on the issue on the its website today. The paper fully opposes the Iemma Government's plans to privatise the State's biggest source of domestic greenhouse pollution – stationary energy.

“Allowing private, profit-driven corporations to control our State's biggest source of domestic greenhouse pollution would be an unmitigated disaster for the climate”, said Rising Tide spokesperson Perry Brown.

“Private electricity retailers would have a financial imperative to increase demand for electricity, thereby increasing our state's greenhouse pollution. This is the exact opposite of what needs to happen.”

“We need a moratorium on coal fired power stations, and we need to start phasing them out. Phasing out coal, and cutting unsustainable energy demand, will not be driven by profit-motivated companies. It requires strong government intervention.”

As well as climate change, the Rising Tide position paper is opposed to many other problems with privatisation that have been identified by the community, such as worker safety.

“Private corporations are all too often willing to jeopardise the health and safety of workers in the pursuit of profit. Rising Tide pledges our support to the union movement's campaign against this privatisation.” concluded Mr Brown.

Members of Rising Tide will be at the anti-privatisation rally at NSW Parliament on Tuesday the 26th February, and have encouraged all members of the community to make the trip too.