Politics
A political campaign began, which aimed to increase the water flow from 1% to 28% of its original flow from the dam at Jindabyne. An independent candidate from the East Gippsland district, Craig Ingram, was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1999 and re-elected in 2002 and 2006, on a platform to increase the flow of water in the Snowy River.
After Ingram was elected to office, rather than attempt to increase water-flow, he became instrumental in the corporatisation of the Snowy Scheme, swinging the Victorian Government to sign the legislation. Although the Victorian, NSW and Federal governments promised that corporatisation would not lead to privatisation, in November 2005 they announced their intention to sell Snowy Hydro through a public float. Community groups rallied to stop the sale of Snowy Hydro and by June 2006 the Australian Prime Minister withdrew the Commonwealth's intention to sell Snowy Hydro.
Read more about this topic: Snowy River
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The politics of the exile are fever,
revenge, daydream,
theater of the aging convalescent.
You wait in the wings and rehearse.
You wait and wait.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“One might imagine that a movement which is so preoccupied with the fulfillment of human potential would have a measure of respect for those who nourish its source. But politics make strange bedfellows, and liberated women have elected to become part of a long tradition of hostility to mothers.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)