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| Mehreen Faruqi - public transport is essential. |
It should go
without saying that public transport is an essential service for our
community. Efficient, reliable and affordable public transport is fundamental
to our quality of life, and the sustainable movement of people and freight is
at the core of the relationship between society, environment and the economy.
Historically, government authorities have operated most mass
public transport in Australian states and territories as a single provider, and
as a bare minimum the government of the day is accountable to the public at
elections.
Read Mehreen Faruqi’s opinion piece on The Guardian - “Public transport, private owners – the unexamined trajectory of privatisation.”
(Climate change will force
us to re-think how we move about, how we personally move from place to place
and how we physically move our goods.
The bright light roaring
towards humanity is not simply the sun; it is more than that, for it is the
ill-informed change to the privatization of our public transport system, a
system that has always been about servicing the needs of the public, rather
than the rude concept of making profit at the expense of the public.
The idea of privatizing
what is public (a notion that presently has favour with governments of any
stripe who measure their success via the economic paradigm) contradicts the
urgency of the Paris agreement that calls on the world community to hold global
warming at as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a task
that will be difficult, if not impossible, and particularly the latter if
governments embrace the privatization of public services, and the pursuit of unbridled
profit – Robert McLean.)
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