Costa and Iemma : Dickheads. And That’s Official!

    MICHAEL COSTA stormed across the room – his face flushed, his hands clenched – towards John Robertson, the secretary of Unions NSW. “You blokes can get fucked,” he screamed. “You’re going to look like dickheads on Monday morning.”

Working families in NSW and their comrades in China’s Red Bureaucracy have been dealt a bitter blow with the withdrawal of State Gub’mint legislation to allow the sale of the NSW electricity system. Barking mad anti-Communist, nutty neo-con and former crackademic turned Newscorpse hack Imre Saluskinzky is Johnny-on-the-spot:

NSW Government withdraws electricity sell-off legislation
The Australian
August 28, 2008

THE NSW Labor Government has been forced into a humiliating retreat over its plan to privatise the state’s electricity industry. NSW Premier Morris Iemma withdrew the privatisation legislation from a special sitting of parliament earlier today, when it became clear it would be defeated by a combination of the Coalition, Independent and minor party MPs, and Labor renegades. The decision by Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell to vote down the $10 billion sell-off, announced this morning, ends a year of controversy around the proposal, which has split the Labor Party down the middle. Mr O’Farrell said this morning there was too much “current uncertainty in the energy sector” to justify a sale…

Alex Mitchell sheets home the blame for the failure to flog off state assets to the highest bidder to Iemma and ex-Trot turned chief bean-counter Michael Costa, but makes no mention of the revulsion expressed by labour movement activists and the majority of Morris and Michael’s own party (They break our legs / And we say “Thank you” when they offer us crutches, May 6, 2008).

NSW power privatisation dead: any life in Iemma?
Alex Mitchell
Crikey
August 29, 2008

…They had a golden opportunity to persuade the NSW ALP, Unions NSW, their backbenchers and the general public to support a plan to raise billions of dollars to help repair old infrastructure and start new projects.

Instead, they behaved like old-style political bosses issuing orders, cracking the whip, shouting down opponents and threatening them. Even with the Sydney media in full throat backing the Thatcherite “solution” to the state’s energy needs, they failed to sell their message anywhere outside the city’s Central Business District.

What gives today’s parliamentary defeat a seismic quality is that Morris Iemma and Michael Costa both placed their credibility on the line for privatization. They raised it to a matter of confidence in them.

Iemma’s premiership is now in ruins: it is completely lacking in credibility, and it is difficult to know how long he can continue in the job.

If Costa had any sense of the proprieties of public life and the Westminster system, he would be submitting his resignation later today.

Costa came to parliament with the specific intention of becoming treasurer and succeeding Michael Egan. He wanted to achieve power privatization where Egan failed.

In the next few days, Iemma will announce his much-postponed reshuffle. There is some evidence he take the opportunity to dump the widely unpopular and divisive Costa and replace him with Planning Minister Frank Sartor or Education Minister John Della Bosca who is coming back from suspension if, as expected, he is cleared of any offences arising from the Iguana’s restaurant fracas on June 6?

But if he is removed from the Treasury portfolio, Costa doesn’t have the personality to accept demotion. He’d rather move to the backbench.

He became a member of the upper house on November 21, 2001, and he is entitled to his taxpayer-funded parliamentary pension after he has served seven years — that’s in 11 weeks’ time.

He’s likely to stay in parliament until he is entitled to draw down his fully indexed lifetime pension which is estimated to be around $130,000 a year, and then head to the investment banking world where his former political patron, ex-premier Bob Carr, is esconced at Macquarie Bank. Maybe Babcock & Brown could pick him up or the Fairfax board?

The end game of this political drama is yet to be played out. Costa is a goner, but what will they do with Iemma?

Good question. Fortunately, the fruit-picking industry is screaming out for workers, and being a working class man in a party of, by and for the working class, the soon-to-be former NSW Premier is sure to examine this option very closely.

Just like Noel.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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