Disempowering Australians: Electricity privatisation (begun by Jeff Kennett) is a disaster

Was Jeff's decision to sell off the SEC's assets one of the dumbest moves in the history of Victoria? I remember at the time calculating that the money paid, which was used to pay off Victoria's debt at the time, was equivalent to about $1100 per household. (It's been a long time since I did the calculation; but it was something like that.) The business was broken into smaller, arguably sub-economic, pieces. The power generation components were sold complete with unlimited access to free coal. There is several hundred years' supply available and no financial incentive to reduce consumption of this zero cost consumable. Of course the carbon tax would have increased the cost of supplying electricity to consumers, but the consumers - not the generators - would pay. So still no incentive for the generators to reduce consumption. Jeff laid the foundation for businesses that were paid a Regulated rate of return on the value of their assets. Hence they had an incentive to GROW the size of those assets to GROW the return. I'm not sure of the exact details, but the return was somewhere between 5% and 7%. Singapore Power now owns the transmission infrastructure. They had a vested interest in expanding it, given that their cost of capital overseas was far less than the Regulated Return. But hang on. We have PV Solar and a need for distributed generation using alternative energy. This will reduce the demand on the transmission infrastructure at the same time as the private businesses that now own it want to AUGMENT it for their vested interest. So that one off payment of $1100 per household has sabotaged responsible planning of this essential component of social infrastructure. Thatcherism Australian style. Conceptually absurd vandalism from start to finish..................??