Businesses suffer rage blackout

In the wake of the Sydney CBD’s second blackout in less than a week, city business leaders are pointing their fingers squarely at the incompetence of the Government.

Not five days after last Monday’s power shortage that crippled parts of the city from Pyrmont to Bondi, Sydney blacked out again, for approximately an hour, on Saturday morning.

“Sydney CBD has been plunged into the dark ages because of a failure in policy and political leadership,” said Patricia Forsythe, Executive Director of the Sydney Chamber of Commerce.

President of the City Partnership, Stephen Taylor, said frustration was rife through the city.

“It’s a no brainer. If you’ve got a shop and you’ve got your staff in there…Or if you’ve got a café and you’re trying to make food and you’ve got no power…
“There’s 11,000 retailers in the city.

We’ve got serious problems with our infrastructure. We’ve got to ask ourselves why. It’s the financial hub of Australia and we’ve got two power outages in the space of a week,” said Mr Taylor.

After what he was told would be a ‘one-in-a-million’ chance of happening again, Premier Nathan Rees delivered a second apology to Sydney-siders following Saturday’s blackout.

19 Tabcorp betting outlets in the area were also affected for up to 80 minutes, causing the organisation to suffer on Golden Slipper Day, the biggest day on the autumn racing calendar from a turnover perspective, said a Tabcorp spokesperson.

More than 50,000 homes from the CBD to the eastern suburbs were without power, with police directing traffic at 40 of the140 sets of failed traffic lights.
Darlinghurst Business Partnership President, Andrew Duckmanton, said that businesses in the area had lost total confidence in the Government to aid them.

“It was just chaos. The biggest thing is that people cant come in and use Eftpos facilities in the shop.

“The problem is that we haven’t just given up on the Government, we’ve given up on the opposition, also.”