4 July

One of the arguments for privatisation is that it saves the taxpayer money by shifting responsibility to private organisations. But the taxpayer ends up paying even more, in user charges. Driving is now much more expensive in Sydney, in the wrong places. A common argument used is ‘by having a private school (or road or hospital), it takes load off the public system’. Except it doesn’t, the numbers are absolutely clear. Somebody saying their private school is saving the government money could just as easily say if the government built them a home pool or private freeway, they’d take load off the local pool and local roads too. Yeh, nah. It’s enormously more expensive to build an entire new private hospital or school for some people, than it is to add them to existing hospitals and schools.