Re: Alice Springs - Darwin and funding

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

mauried@commslab.gov.au (Maurie Daly) wrote:
> 
> The obvious question here is on what basis were the Austral-Pacific Consortium 
> selected as the preffered bidder,if they dont have , or dont want to provide 
> enough finance to undertake the project.
> Theres no doubt that this project is extremely marginal without buckets of 
> Govt  money , indeed I suspect that it will eventually need all Govt money
> to get the thing rolling,but if we are going to pretend that the private 
> sector can finance the larger part of the project ,surely its prudent to pick 
> a bidder with sufficient capital behind them.
> Maybe I am missing something obvious.


It is so marginal that the private builder is not
prepared to go ahead without more tax payers money.
I agree Maurie, why should the bidder be looking for
more public money, if it was supposed to be a full on
private endeavor.

Truth is, it can never come close to recovering costs
unless Darwin becomes a major container port with
double stack containers running through to Tarcoola and
then spearing off West, East and South.

The Commonwealth for the last eighty years was not
prepared to build and subsidise it, even though it made
a "promise" when it took over the Northern Territory
from South Australia all those years ago.
  
The recent ALP Feds certainly were not, that's why
Hawke sent Hill from the SRA up this way when they were
still in power.  Keating & Co spent peanuts on the
National Rail Network.  
The Libs, have done nothing since.
   
----Terry Burton
[clear OZ in address for email reply]