It is true the the PPP model for transport is proving unsuccessful.

The obvious solution is to increase fuel taxes so that users pay pro-rata the real cost of cars on society. The more kms they travel and the bigger the vehicle the more the pollution, congestion and accident aggressivity impacts. For the same reasons accident insurance should also be levied on fuel, not one-off with the vehicle license.

That way, not only better roads but more importantly better public and bike/ pedestrian transport, can be covered by the users (polluters), along with the health and nuisance costs of cars.Additional congestion levies could be levied on fuel at metropolitan fuel outlets only, as is being considered for the city of Auckland in NZ.

Australia, US and Mexico are laggards in this; all other OECD countries have much higher fuel taxes than our 42c/ Litre. e.g. NZ 58c/L and most European countries including the UK 80c- $1.00 per L.

(Many developing nations actually have no fuel tax or subsidize fuels - their worsening congestion, pollution and accident rates are the results).

There is a paradox.

Scaremongers use the threat of increasing taxes to help pay for such projects.

Yet neglect to mention the use of tolls or other private industry levies that are used to milk money out of peoples wallets.

Look at the deal Kennet made with City Link that means the tolls increase faster than the rate of inflation.

The Private electrical companies are prices gouging by gold plating the network.

Wake up! The only reason for new infrastructure is to grow populations with immigrants. The only people who benefit are governments with GST takes and votes, AND the rich who need more immigrants to get bigger market share.

In a REAL world the politicians and bennefitting businesses MUST be levied 10% of their profits to pay for the infrastructure that allows them to get richer.

OR

Make all new immigrants pay a $300k levy, paid like HECS. The Feds could apportion those funds to CITIES like Sydney based on the flux of migrants to each city.

To make established citizens pay for the rich & powerful getting richer and more powerful on the back of immigration, while the public carry all the infrastructure, violence and gridlocking costs is a betrayal of Democracy. In time I expect this public betrayal will attract UN crimes against humanity charges for individuals and corporations.

Making immigrants pay for their own infrastructure demands is the right thing to do. Otherwise why are we making our kids pay HECS when migrants walk in and get everything free because some politician is getting his rocks off on it.

Make immigrants pay THEIR HECS for being "educated" in Democracy in a decent democratic system that wishes at its core to remain democratic and NOT a Gothic Greineresque nightmare.

A nightmare with no end as the absolute power our politicians are now bestowing on themselves using privatisation models will corrupt them ABSOLUTELY to the detriment of Australia as a nation with 200 years of proud history.

As things stand this is the theme song for Privatisation in NSW

I wanna make a POnzi scheme
Just like Barry OFarrell
I wanna BUild a Ponzi city like Sydney
Paid for by NSW
I wanna make migrants castles
And treat all the citizens
To big fat TAX, fish&Chip shop air and diseas-ed desal water
Just like dirty rascals.
Da Dah Da dah dah dah!

Keap:

A very emphatic post! Ya see, every morning we awake to another Julia Gillard nightmare. Today she appears to suddenly realise her citizens are struggling with the difficulty of paying power bills: Her solution is predictable though...blame the States! The blame-game may now roll on endlessly, while her citizens "roast" under scorching power bills.

The real question is not altitudinous power bills and how the citizen pay them...that is simply a political diversion: No, the real question is, how the citizen gains control over an evasive, unaccountable self-centered irrelevant mess Canberra has descended into.

Tristan we are collecting plenty of tax, just spending it in the wrong areas.

Your lot throw massive amounts into bureaucracies, which become so bloated they actually inhibit infrastructure development. A glance at what Howard had to do in Canberra, Kennett in Victoria, & now Newman in Queensland should show anyone where the problem is.

You can't throw money at every squeaky wheel, trying to buy a vote, without running out before you actually do anything productive.

Rosy, now there's a useless idea, if ever I saw one. We are paying so much tax on our fuel now, the price is practically all tax, but none of it ever gets past the bureaucracy to actually spread any bitumen.

Doubling, or even quadrupling the fuel tax, won't get a penny spent anywhere near those it's ripped off. As long as it takes a dozen degree educated public servants to manage one worker, the private developer is our only chance. Until we get rid of most of those road blocks called public servants, we have no chance of getting any worthwhile work done.

Finally, someone who gets it! When more of our often fixed incomes, pensions/wages/salaries, are shelled out to pay formerly un-imposed profit margins, taxes, shareholders dividends etc, there is less discretionary income to spend in local business houses!
Ditto energy provision and or rental charges, housing costs etc!
All of which also impact negatively on local small business!
Name just one instance of privatisation being followed by lower charges?
Foreign investors just love investing in infrastructure and utilities, given the captive consumers/market and the virtual rivers of gold that then flow from them, all of which impact negatively on small local business.
We've invested our tax dollars in quite massive and largely unneeded bureaucratizes, endless duplication or empire building bureaucrats. When in fact, what we need is a finally at long last, rationalisation, downsizing and the end of buck passing by bureaucrats.
We need to jettison incompetent dept heads!
Incompetent nincompoops, invariably self identify, with their apparent dependence on 2 or more super efficient much lower paid assistants, any one of who could more effectively run their dept?
We need quite massive tax reform and vast simplification; and, a return to the pragmatism of yesteryear, that saw us as the third most prosperous nation on the planet and a creditor one at that.
It should come as no surprise that that period of unprecedented prosperity, was one where all the utilities were publicly owned and managed.
Why, Telecom was handing over around 7 billion per, even as Howard was hell bent on privatising it? Ditto CBA?
No sane business operator would sell off his/her most lucrative investments, just those operating at a loss!
[Now we have a structural deficit!]
[Well, pre-election pork barrelling as practised by The Coalition, costs lots of money?]
The only problem with public ownership was the monopolies and consequent union control they created?
Most of which could be easily addressed, by rolling out service provision, by competing for market share and survival, incorporated duopolies!
Rhrosty