Bipartisan blindness. You’re not wrong, Nicholas.

Both major parties are hooked into very rapid population growth and hence into rapidly increasing the pressure on infrastructure and the demand for new stuff!

This is mindlessly daft, given the constant struggle we have to keep infrastructure up to scratch, let alone significantly improve it.

We are spending zillions on the constant duplication of infrastructure for evermore people and on trying to stop existing infrastructure from becoming degraded and overburdened.

We’re losing this battle!

And yet our mongrel political masters continue to impose ever-more stress on our infrastructure, not to mention all manner of services and resources, and the environment!

If we really want to start improving infrastructure, we need to greatly lower the immigration rate and head straight towards a stable population.

But of neither of the major political parties can see this.

Bipartisan blindness indeed!

< As the election furore and political coverage recedes from the media cycle, many wait in anticipation of what our self-proclaimed 'infrastructure prime minister' will do to revitalise our slowing economy.>

If Abbott really wants to be taken seriously as the ‘infrastructure prime minister’, then the first and most significant thing he should do is to significantly reduce immigration in one hit, and then progressively reduce it each year until it reaches net zero.

He could very easily explain why we need to do this. His explanation would centre on the fact that it is just screamingly absurd to continue to rapidly increase the pressure on all manner of existing infrastructure and the demand for new stuff, and that we absolutely need to spend our money on upgrading existing infrastructure for the current population, rather than spending a great deal of it on duplicating everything for ever-more new residents.

I’m sure that this sort of message would gel very well with the general community.

But then, it wouldn’t go down at all well with the big end of town. And therein lies the big problem… as both the Coalition and Labor are in bed with their all-powerful big-business buddies!

As far as revitalising the economy, we never hear about the demand side of the equation. It is always only about increasing the supply of everything.

'We need more economic growth! We need to stimulate the economy by growing it in every way we can!'

Well..... no we don't!!

There is never a thought that if we actually addressed the demand side, and strove to stabilise the demand instead of allowing it to ever-rapidly increase, then we wouldn’t eternally need to be striving for evermore economic growth!

So, lowering the immigration rate has got everything to do with the overall economy, not just with infrastructure, services, resources and environment!

Sheesh, if Abbott really wanted to become the infrastructure PM, he would embrace population stabilisation.... and become our first sustainability PM.

Heaven knows; this is what we desperately need.

Bipartisan blindness is most apparent when it comes to govt guaranteed, thirty year, self terminating bonds? There is this constant cry, we need foreign investment capital!
But when the one instrument, used so successfully overseas, is raised as a prospect, there is this deafening silence! Thirty year self terminating bonds, would provide all the foreign capital, without the price gouging, tax avoiding, foreign control, we could possibly ever need; and, give our own super funds a much more reliable instrument, other than our already massively overvalued housing, to invest in!
The fact that they are thirty year bonds, allows things like very rapid rail to be invested in, and other income earning infrastructure, off budget!
While rapid rail my be limited to around 5% returns, as rolled out, it is enough to almost break even now, and more than servicing the debt structure of the bond instruments ten years down the track!
But particularly, if some of the resumed land in the new rapid rail corridors, were to be carved up and resold for urban development,(new towns or cities) around or near future proposed rail stops.
Proposed corridors could be a 2-3 miles or more wide, which would then allow the proposed profitable redevelopment, and the return of affordable housing, once a surveyed rail line were finally settled on!
Well, not immediately apparent bogs, swamps or marshes aren't the sort of ground, rapid rail or virtual any other publicly owned infrastructure ought to be built on!
This is the best of all possible infrastructure development mechanisms, even those that just break even initially, and therefore are avoided by the short term, private, debt laden, debt servicing, private investor, but are just the sort of projects that support thirty year self terminating govt guaranteed bonds.
Some of those projects could be, can't lose gas or oil wells, thorium, rare earth mines, and cheaper than coal thorium power stations; and, biological energy projects that set us up for a very prosperous future, indefinitely?
The safe haven investor puts up all the funds, and the public is the ultimate win/win/winner!
Rhrosty.

Hi Nicholas,
<< Most experience these inadequacies in the form of traffic congestion on a daily basis, with the climate and water-scarcity at the forefront of the minds of many >>.

Traffic jams? OK. Climate and water scarcity? No Nicholas.

Bipartisan? Meaning what precisely?

Do you mean that the ALP had 3,285 days to fix this and the LNP has had 55?

Then rather than blame the ALP we quickly switch to an episode from “Little Britain” with Ah but, yeah but, no but ‘cos it is a global problem see?

It may be of emotional interest to you that the OECD estimates the cost in “Trillions” as potentially the next “global alarm mantra”. Just so that we don’t miss your alarmism you give us an extra helping with << $57,000,000,000,000 >> . Well that would scare the bejesus out of anyone.

Many of OECD nations have stuffed their economies with disastrous Social Democratic policies. Most Australians don’t give a stuff about the OECD and the LNP even less.

<< One OECD report put the annual price tag of required, yet presently unmet infrastructure investment, at a cool $1 trillion. >>.

Nicholas, would this be a similar $1 trillion that OECD nations have pulled out of their own economies to fight the “climate change” you threw into the mix earlier?

Mmmm? Thought so.

This is one of the clumsiest attempts to tar the new government with the same brush as the previous. Just a suggestion, could you give the new government the same amount of time please?

Can you get back to us in 3,230 days? Many thanks

Nicholas

The MFP numbers you quote are poorly presented. The percentage data are growth rates, not “levels”, and you give no indication of the time period covered, so they are virtually meaningless. Frankly, it looks like you’ve snatched some numbers in the hope they will support your argument, without understanding what they actually mean.

Likewise, any estimate of a global infrastructure shortfall (itself a highly questionable exercise) tells us precisely nothing about what’s happening in Australia.

I agree that private money is essential to developing the infrastructure we need. And superannuation funds are indeed interested in infrastructure investment, but on their own terms. They are looking for stable, consistent, low-risk returns that support their members’ retirement incomes. So they are far more interested in buying established and proven infrastructure than making risky new investments. If they invest in new projects, it is usually only if the returns are virtually guaranteed – for which, read that risk and cost is shifted from the owner to the taxpayer or captive consumer. In social terms, this can be a worse outcome than government funding and providing infrastructure itself directly. That is why it’s so hard to actually harness the pool of superannuation money for productive new investment.

Instead of sneering at the “myopia” and “lack of vision” of policymakers, perhaps spend a bit more time looking at why they make the decisions they do. The world is less straightforward than you seem to think.