On the 14th October 1999 Senators and Federal MPs have been invited to attend a Parliament House Dinner put on by AusCID - which is the business front driving privatisation of public utilities in Australia.
The Guest of Honour is none other than the National Party leader, Hon John Anderson MP. So we can see for a start where the real interests of the National Party lie.
AusCID's declared role is to co-ordinate networking between business and government. As you read more of this document you will find your blood going cold when you see how they are re-defining the tax burden onto us; pushing privatisation of public assets with shonky press releases which get published by the mainstream media unquestioned and involve the same rat pack of big business accountants, banks and lawyers who are screwing up this country for their own personal profit.
The same elitist legal ratbags making a killing out of native title are plundering our Australia... the foreign owned banks like National Australia Bank, Morgan Grenfell, Merrill Lynch , Macquarie Bank and Deutsche Bank.... here they are straight out of AUSCID's pages.. but of course YOU are not supposed to know about it..
AusCID or the little known Australian Council for Infrastructure Development (AUSCID) is the subject of our expose today. But don't expect the link here to be live for long now that it has been discovered.
A few weeks back we exposed how the World Bank through the "Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency Agreement" (MIGA) is overseeing the global privatisation of public utilities... well the companies above are the traitors in our midst working for the World Bank. They would and are selling their soul for a few dollars.
Look at the legal firms - Allen Allen and Hemsley; Phillips Fox; Clayton Utz; Mallesons Stephen Jacques; Warburg Dillon Read... yuck!
This is the hidden face of privatisation in Australia - all the traitors are now exposed. These are the businesses who the media portray as good - because it suits Murdoch and Packer.
| John Caldon | President |
| Alan O'Sullivan | Tresurer |
| Graham Timms | Vice President |
| Tony Shepherd | Vice President |
| Michael Fitzpatrick | Vice President |
| Kim Edwards | President, Victorian Chapter |
| Graham Timms | AMP Asset Management |
| Don Green | Arthur Anderson and Co |
| Charles Mott | Baulderstone Hornibrook |
| John Talbot | Commonwealth Bank of Australia |
| John Caldon | Consultant, AusCID President |
| Greg Hoppe | Edison Mission Energy Holdings |
| Michael Fitzpatrick | Hastings Fund Management |
| Alan O'Sullivan | Infrastructure Advisers |
| Anthony Kahn | Infrastructure Trust of Australia |
| John Clarke | Infratil Australia |
| Bill Pavletich | Kinhill Brown & Root |
| Penny Bingham-Hill | Leighton Holdings |
| David Bartholomew | Lend Lease Infrastructure |
| Edward Sandrejko | Macquarie Bank |
| David Taylor | Malleson Stephen Jaques |
| Felicity Gates | Morgan Grenfell (Australia) |
| Alister McConnell | National Australia Bank |
| Allan Livingstone | Statewide Roads |
| Tony Shephard | Transfield Project Development |
| Kim Edwards | Transurban City Link |
Visit the Transfield or Macquarie Bank sites to obtain an insight into some recent private infrastructure projects, completed and under construction.
Government Support for Private Infrastructure Investment
The Commonwealth Government's 'InfrastructureBorrowing's' initiative until 14 February 1997 provided tax driven incentives through Develop Australia Bonds (to correct deficiencies in the AustralianTax Act) for private sector investment in certain classes of infrastructure:
Land Transport (Roads, Rail, Pipelines) Airports Seaports Electricity (Generation, Transmission, Distribution) Gas (Pipelines) Water (Sewerage, Wastewater)
As of 19 September 1996, the approximate value of projects approved or under consideration for certification of infrastructure borrowings was $29 billion, with project details available from Invest Australia.
On 14 February 1997, the Treasurer, Mr Costello, terminated the Infrastructure Bonds initiative due to concerns about an excessive potential cost to revenue if all projects then in the application phase were certified for bonds and proceeded, and about tax aggressive financing structures for investment vehicles which would drawn down unintended tax-driven benefits, adding to the likely cost to revenue. AusCID was dissatisfied with the termination mechanism and timing and said so in its 17 February 1997 media release. He undertook to provide a replacement scheme in the context of the 1997/98 Budget.
In the Budget of 13 May 1997, the Government issued a highly modified Infrastructure Rebate scheme which AusCID finds totally inadequate to the task of catalysing private sector investment in public infrastructure, particularly in regional Australia where projects are more likely to need some tax-driven support. Support now will be limited to land transport projects (road & rail) and will be subject to a reduced 'cap' on the likely cost to revenue - only $37.5 million in 1997/98 and $75 million annually thereafter for several years. These cap amounts leverage into about $1 to 2 billion of total rebate-supported investment. Yet there is an overhang of over $22 billion of unsatisfied applications for supportfrom the terminated scheme. AusCID considers that these overhanging project applications will soak up so quickly the support from the new scheme that new applications may well be futile. AusCID's response to the Budget announcementis set out in its 14 May 1997 media release.
Quote: Major institutional investors, in association with the Commonwealth and State governments have agreed to work together to implement the Institutional Investor Information Service (IIIS). The IIIS is managed by the Australian Council for Infrastructure Development (AusCID).
Quote:
funding to include a component to allow independent research on the status of Australia’s infrastructure quality and needs in the context of global competitiveness and on infrastructure policy and processes generally;
to bring to the attention of governments impediments to the provision and operation of efficient infrastructure;
to provide advice to governments in response to referrals on specific infrastructure matters, including identification of the appropriate roles for private sector, governmental and mixed funding for infrastructure opportunities;
Quote from executive summary:
There has been a paradigm shift this decade towards greater private provision of public infrastructure. Australia's tax system is, however, inclined more towards public ownership and funding of infrastructure. AusCID estimates that over $70 billion of Australian infrastructure is now in private ownership, with a total national infrastructure base of some $500 billion. The latter figure is about the same as Australia's GDP and the value of listed equities on the ASX.
Infrastructure is often different from other business investment because of project size and complexity, long payback periods and provision of parallel social and environmental benefits, the value of which is often not adequately captured.
These attributes are inadequately acknowledged by the present tax system, necessitating an increasingly complex and frustrating array of incentives and rulings to combat the absence of neutrality and, so far, an unwillingness to simplify and modernise in recognition of this new era of private infrastructure investment.
Quote:
The three Draft Tax Determinations released by the ATO in November 1998 adopt an unnecessarily restrictive approach to the operation of the Tax Offset Scheme. The ATO's desire to maximise revenue and to limit deductions is understandable but this objective should not be permitted to supersede the core policy objective of the Tax Offset Scheme - namely, to deliver the lowest possible funding costs to eligible infrastructure projects.
Quote:
This study is in this second tradition. Here, the case for privatisation is developed by examining the arguments for and against privatisation in the context of the current market environment of the New South Wales electricity sector.
The report's findings are that a strong case for privatisation can be made by a separate examination of each of the above criterion. When all criteria are considered jointly the case for privatisation becomes compelling.