Re: Alice Springs to Darwin line, but wait, there is more.!

["< Tell >" <telljb@OZozemail.com.au>]

"Bill Miller" <backtran@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
> Most of the taxes you mention are revenue collection exercises that ALL
> businesses pay. To say that the road industry is short changed by not having
> all the 15.5bn put back in would be the same as a factory owner claiming the
> government should build his factory for him simply because he pays taxes. To
> compare this to the 150m on the rail excise is simply not comparing equals.
> 
> If trucks have road user charges then these (and only these) should be put
> back into roads. The balance of tax is a burden everyone should bear and
> goes into consoldated revenue.


OK, where do we start Bill.?

Please advise what you would charge and how you would
arrange for collection.  The road transport industry is
so encompassing from local, country, interstate and
long haul.  How about trucks that cart where there has
never been rail and never likely to be.  The same
vehicles could bob up in a road near you, minus a few
trailers of course.  An army of public servants could
not administer this. 

I guess what a lot of you folks miss, is the fact that
the States have already spent untold $BILLIONS on
railways since way back when.  ......It has failed.
Latter day politicians, apart from election time, could
not give two hoots about rail and neither could the
majority of Australians.  Sad but true.  

My guess is, that rail has to get a lot smarter than it
has been in the past.  NRC have the opportunity, after
all it was given to them on a plate by a previous
Federal Government.  BUT we have the age old problem of
States and their "rights" and NRC have found what the
previous Commonwealth rail operators knew all along.
  
----Terry Burton
Alice Springs NT
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