Horror of horrors, a politician wants to use taxpayers money to fund infrastructure. This idea’s so crazy it just might work.

Sometimes it’s a good thing for government to run a deficit for the purchase of infrastructure. Government does not necessarily have to be run like a business- but if it is run like a biz, it should be run like a non-profit organisation.

One thing that really shocked me when I got to Aus in 1996 was the dismal state of roads and particularly motorways in NSW. The number of toll roads is a very effective barrier to trade, especially when the toll roads are owned by private companies which cannot as a rule be forced to charge fair tolls.

The US built their amazing interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s as a Defence Department project and financed it with public debt. The economic benefit to the nation has repaid the cost of building these motorways many, many times over.

Can’t see any difference with a proper high-speed network for Australia. It should be a public infrastructure investment, right up there with power grid capacity and water.

There is a long highway in Florida with eight toll booths in about 400 miles.

Floridians are lucky compared to Sydneysiders!

You can pay three tolls to get across Sydney… and Sydney’s the geographic size of Indianapolis (but with 4x the population)!

Sydney’s evil toll roads and tunnels in concert with blockages of previously existing local roads to prevent people from driving around the tolls are a topic of a grrrrrr post all by themselves…

Have you seen today’s age editorial cartoon by Leunig? Very on topic for your blog entry.

Thanks for that, Marcus!

Surprised that none of the toonies have picked up on Keating’s recent classic lines- I kinda expected Moir to do the all-tip-no-iceberg gag and Leunig to capture Howard as a dessicated coconut.

Well Keating vs Costello, there are some pretty clear comparisons. They were both good treasurers, but Keating had the balls to challenge the incumbent, go to the backbench and wait for his time. (shameless self promo, but theres more on this on my blog)

Costello didn’t have the balls and his strategy is failing. I doubt he will ever make PM. Perhaps it is this that is fuelling his increasingly hysterical rantings… He is jealous of Rudd because he knows if he was on the backbench he might have a chance to shaft Howard and contest the election. But he isn’t and he won’t.