'Political immorality' or an engineering solution: resolving the electricity crisis in postwar New South Wales

The reliability of electricity supply was at the forefront of political debate in postwar New South Wales. Government-mandated power restrictions, load-shedding, and the resulting blackouts were increasingly frequent and widespread. Sound technical recommendations to resolve the effects of a fragmented industry had floundered on a lack of a political catalyst to establish central ownership and operational control of the industry. By 1950, an ineffective energy policy, ageing equipment that was unable to supply the increasing demand, inadequate maintenance, and wartime restrictions on the availability of new plant, contributed to a 30 per cent shortfall in electricity supply. Combined with a looming state election, these factors provided the political catalyst for the government to implement an energy policy to centralise the industry in May 1950 and resolve the crisis by late 1953. Resolution of the New South Wales (NSW) postwar energy crisis and the south-east Australian energy impasse of the twenty-first century were, and are, reliant on an appropriate political response and the appropriate management of technology. In the 1940s, the central problem was the lack of generation capacity; in the twenty-first century, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources is the core issue.