Facing defeat on the floor of parliament over electricity privatisation last Thursday, the NSW Government adjourned the debate and is expected never to raise the legislation again.

Instead, the then NSW Premier Morris Lemma called an emergency Cabinet meeting that afternoon and declared his intention to implement regulations that would see the sale of the retail sector of the NSW Power industry as well as generator development sites – a much watered down policy than the one that he originally adopted.

Days later, Iemma dumped Costa but it wasn’t enough to stop the Labor Caucus dumping him.

AMWU NSW Secretary Paul Bastian, who has been at the forefront of the campaign against privatisation, said that the Government had paid a heavy price for attempting to force a situation that was an absolute betrayal of the democratic process.

"The people of NSW have consistently voted against privatisation, the rank and file of the ALP has voted overwhelmingly against privatisation and the NSW Parliament does not support privatisation.

"The Premier had absolutely no mandate for privatisation, and it was ultimately his undoing."

"He didn't have the numbers to get his own way in the Parliament so he tried to bypassed the parliamentary process. In the end, it bypassed him."

Bastian said that the Stop the Sell Off Campaign had been compared to the Rights at Work Campaign when it began, and the result had been the same.

"The whole saga underlines the importance of unions and communities working together. In the past 12 months we’ve had two Government leaders’ brought down by bad policies that were effectively challenged at the grassroots level."