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Bad Politics Makes Bad Policy: The Case of Queensland’s Asset Sales Programme *
Author(s) -
Quiggin John
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
economic papers: a journal of applied economics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1759-3441
pISSN - 0812-0439
DOI - 10.1111/j.1759-3441.2010.00056.x
Subject(s) - restructuring , government (linguistics) , asset (computer security) , politics , competition (biology) , business , public policy , presentation (obstetrics) , finance , market economy , economics , political science , economic growth , law , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , computer security , computer science , biology , medicine , radiology
On 2 June 2009, the Queensland Government announced a programme of asset sales projected to realise $15 billion. In this article, the public case for privatisation put forward by the Queensland Government is shown to be wrong and, in important respects, deliberately misleading. It is argued that the presentation of a spurious case for privatisation has contributed to poor policy decisions regarding the choice of assets to be sold, the failure to restructure the rail industry to promote competition, and the adoption of inferior methods for sale.