He states that: "Any suggestion that Essential Energy would be 'forced' to cut staff is political scaremongering."

How he can extrapolate this from a 27% cost cutting exercise over five years which includes operating costs is beyond me when the bulk of these costs are wages.

To cross check this took me a couple of seconds on Google to find a media release by Vince Graham the Chief Executive Officer of the combined electricity distributors Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy dated 21 January 2015.

In this release Mr Graham states clearly: "The AER's Draft Determination would require immediate job cuts of 4600 employees, or 37% of the workforce across these three networks."

In the case of Essential Energy this would mean approximately 1500 employees or 10 each from 150 towns across rural NSW and not employing apprentices.

Mr Graham goes on to say "The AER's draft decision, if implemented, would seriously compromise our obligation to provide safe and reliable services to our customers."

Scaremongering? You have to be kidding. This is about small towns across NSW losing around 10 substantial wages along with the flow on impact to schools, police, apprenticeships for local kids etc.

Mr Mailler suggests that small businesses have been cruelled by electricity prices. Well he needs to decide what they would prefer, electricity prices as they pretty much are and pegged to CPI or lose at least ten customers from 150 towns along with their families as they head off to Queensland or Victoria to pursue their chosen trade or profession and no more local apprenticeships?

Debra O' Brien and Adam Marshall on the other hand demonstrate a sound comprehension of the implications of privatisation of the electricity networks and the AER determination. So do the Shooters and Fishers, The Greens, The Labor Party and The Christian Democrats.

The LNP understand but could not care less as they focus entirely on lining the pockets of their private sector mates at the expense of the electorate.

The 20 billion dollars that Premier Baird claims he will get for the sale is another porky. This price includes the 2 billion asset recycling subsidy from the Federal Government which the Senate won't pass and about 5 billion interest on the Treasury estimated 13 billion assets price.

There are some whoppers in this lot, to get the money from the Feds which doesn't exist anyway and never will you have spend the sale proceeds on infrastructure which is mostly targeted for Sydney.

So how do you get 5 billion interest on money that you have already spent? Investment bank UBS puts the total price at 11 billion tops, that is almost half of the government propaganda claims.

If NSW proceeds with the sale it will effectively be selling a stable, recurrent revenue stream in order to produce new assets with recurrent liabilities attached to them. It is akin to selling a well performing rental property to by a nice car that costs money to run and produces no income.

Labor's infrastructure plan based on 10 billion of funding with out privatizations is looking not only believable but entirely sensible as it preserves the 1.7 billion income received from the electricity industry that funds hospitals, police and teachers across the state.

Premier Baird consistently fails to address where this income is going to come from if he flogs the companies that make it. New taxes anyone?

It is a shame that Adam Marshall's National Party does not support his concern for his electorate and stand solid for rural communities.

Adam takes the time to discuss the issues with electricity workers and unions alike as does Debra O'Brien who is working tirelessly visiting communities across the electorate at a grass roots level.

Mr Mailer claims to represent farmers and regional Australians but with uniformed statements about important issues like this he appears more and more to be a supporter of the shallow right to the detriment of those that work for wages.

He does a great job challenging the woefully unbalanced LNP alliance but would be far more effective if he got his facts straight.

Robert Walker

Inverell