I dont think you are taking the full picture on expenditure and revenue by
all Governments. According to the latest issue of "Network" all Govt's
collect about $10 billion from road users through rego payment and fuel tax
and spend $15 billion on road infrastructure (possibly your figures relate
purely to the feds). Conversley rail pays $150 Million in fuel excise, some
of which is required to be used in road funding (it is not a normal tax).
: Whilst road may appear to get a hugely higher amount in real terms than
does
: rail,its about the same on a percentage basis.
Percentage of what? If it's done on tonne-km (the total freight task) of
freight carried then they are about equal.
: The feds had to find approx $2 billion to bail out AN to remove its
losses so
: that it could be made a saleable entity,so its not true to suggest that
there
: isnt money going into rail.
This $2 billion seems to me to be a furphy. It is merely an admission of
existing liabilities that AN had. They had this liability before the
announcement and whould have had to fund it sale or no sale eventually. It
is not "new" money. The Gov't is merely paying AN's debts before selling
it. All companies usually have some level of debt, it' just that AN
probably did not have the cash flow to service it.
Not one cent of this supposed $2 billion is going into improved
infrastructure.
: In reality the Railways in the States are solely and wholly the
responsibility
: of the State Govts, there no requirement that the federal Govt fund state
: railways.
: I ,like most rail fans would like to see a much greater share of Federal
: Funding going to rail,but lets be realistic, the federal Govt isnt going
to
: fund railways it has no responsibility for,and neither it should.
Anything that affects the National interest of the country as a whole
should attract federal attention whether they own it or not. Rail certainly
falls into this category. The feds don't own the roads they fund but they
still fund them!
: If the States cant or wont fund their own railways,they should give them
away
: as did Don Dunstan with the old SAR, then it would be the federal Govts
: responsibilty to fund them.
:
:
: One of the reasons that road gets a larger share of funding is that
: in the case of the trucking industry it is a powerful lobby group,and
speaks
: with one voice for the whole of the industry across all of the
country.Can we
: say the same for rail, I think not.
The Australian Railway Association has been set up for this purpose, lets
see if they actually affect anything.