Re: Gunnedah shire pushes Melbourne-Darwin rail line

[Paul Blair <pblair@pcug.org.au>]

Ah, David, they're not as different as you think. Or you say you
think?

There is no such thing as a private project these days. Whether its in
the property, transport or (gasp) sporting domain, somewhere a
government is put on the spot to provide some sort of encouragement or
"lose" the project. 

It's nothing more than unsubtle blackmail.

It might be direct or indirect, but as we saw recently with Impulse in
Canberra, the companys always try to take a drink at the public
trough.  That's my money and your money, so we are underwriting 
some of these not very bright schemes. 

The trick with conning a government is to have a basic agenda (not
necessarily palatable/disclosed) tucked away under something else that
is politically imaginative (but not necessarliy useful) that can
attract concessions - land, tax, cross-subsidisation etc - and the
principals then arrange for most of the largesse to come their
way.When the project fails...well, the rest is history.

After 40 years in the world of major projects, I conclude that
building railways for no real value is obviously a subtle form of
theft - monetary or political.

Paul Blair


On Fri, 31 Mar 2000 07:29:52 GMT, dbromage@fang.omni.com.au (David
Bromage) wrote:

>Taliesin Walker (taliesin@chariot.net.au) won a Nobel Prize for literature by writing:
>> Surely it would make more sense to spend the $1 billion on upgrading the
>> Melbourne - Adelaide lines. Trains going from Melbourne to Darwin could go
>> via Adelaide. (Perhaps living in Adelaide makes my biased).
>
>Sure, but that would be public money. ATEC is a privately funded project, 
>and would include a gas pipeline along the route. I'm not saying one is
>better than the other, they're just different.
>
>Cheers
>David

-------------------------------
Paul Blair
pblair@pcug.org.au