Power for the People by Sandra Darroch

Author:Sandra Darroch [Darroch, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Social History, Social Science, Popular Culture
ISBN: 9780994309617
Google: 0pU7EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: The Svengali Press
Published: 2015-05-01T02:51:26+00:00

Chapter 11

THE UNSETTLED SIXTIES (1960-1970)

THE SIXTIES, for Australia, dawned inauspiciously, with a mini-recession. It almost cost the Menzies Government the 1962 election, the ruling Liberal-Country Party coalition getting back to power in Canberra by the skin of its teeth, courtesy of, somewhat ironically (given its predilection for “kicking the Reds can”), Communist Party preferences. The SCC suffered, too. What was euphemistically called “the credit squeeze” hit its electricity sales heavily in the opening years of the new decade. The SCC annual report for 1960 reported a deficit of £354,758 on sales of over £32 million, and this despite an increase in tariffs (and a drop in the price paid to the Electricity Commission for its bulk supplies). In 1961 the value of sales of electricity fell 6%, mainly due to the economic downturn. But the setback was brief. The following year the economy picked up again, and sales rose to a new high of £7,891,194, producing a surplus of £350,166 - a gratifying turnaround. The SCC felt confident enough about the immediate future to cut its tariffs. The Sixties appeared to be looking rosy for the SCC. Appearances, however, were to prove deceptive.

The curse that had dogged the Undertaking almost from its inception returned to strike once more. This curse was, in essence, the entity that ran it, politically – originally the Electric Light Committee of the Sydney Municipal Council, and now the councillors of the Sydney County Council. Although the SCC might have freed itself from - directly at least - the corrupt thrall of the City Council’s aldermen, it was now the creature, certainly not of the interests or the people of Sydney, but of a small clique of councillors elected - but in effect nominated - by “constituencies” made up of area-groupings of the “County’s” component suburban councils, plus the City Council (which nominated three of the now nine SCC councillors). And thus at any moment the authority could become, as it had been so often in the past, little more than a political football to be kicked this way and that by the muddied oafs of political interests and Tammany opportunism.

It is an iron law of politics, going back to Lord Acton, that power tends to present opportunities, and absolute power presents a lot of opportunities. As a result of the customary re-gerrymander of inner-city political representation that traditionally followed a change of State government (increasing local-government representation on the SCC board from five to nine) the Labor representation on the SCC’s controlling body found itself in 1960 in a gratifyingly-secure, opportunity-presenting 7-2 majority. Of course, there had been gerrymanders before, on both sides of politics. The conservatives themselves had contrived to maintain control of the authority’s management board from the post-Jock-Garden 1930s into the 1940s by dint of manipulating the franchise in favour of “their” candidates. Senior management of the authority, the top staff - still engineers of the Forbes-Mackay ilk - knew the peril they were in from political and sectional interference by their “elected” masters.

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