We will float all the concrete, steel and fibreglass for your wind turbines and all the aluminium and glass for your solar panels down "'interconnected network of protected land and water.."
Yeah that will work... now where did I put me stash....?

Jess, I’m with you all the way in principle.

However, there is an enormous omission in this article:

There is no mention of population growth.

This is critically connected to infrastructure, both grey and green!

With the current absurdly high immigration rate, we have a constant enormous demand for new infrastructure...in order to just try and keep up with population growth!

Existing infrastructure is becoming ever-more overburdened and in need of upgrading!

And the green infrastructure is being steadily impinged upon.

If Abbott truly wants to be our infrastructure guru, then he needs to address the demand side of the equation instead of just struggling to improve the supply side.

And it is just so easy to address! All we really need to do is progressively lower immigration down to around net zero so that it is taken out of the population growth equation. This would still allow us to have a significant immigration intake.

Unfortunately, and to my absolute bewilderment, the ACF has been terrible over the years on the population factor. It just does not compute!! In the face of continuous high population growth with no end in sight, this is the thing that the ACF should have been the most vocal about…. above all else!!

How can they possibly be on about healthy ecosystems and a sustainable society while effectively turning a blind eye to this all-important factor?

Yes the population growth is a problem, but so also is an aging population.
There is another economic model that doesn't require endless population growth and hugely overcrowded cities, just to sustain it.
But given that much more sustainable model quite massively narrows the the gap between the haves and the have nots!
Many are against it, for no other reason, than they fatuously believe, that in order for them to have overabundant lifestyles and privilege, others must have less.
Last night on Q+A, I heard one industrialist, lamenting the fact that our minimum wage was around $30,000.00, whereas, in the US it was around $15,000.00 per.
I wonder how people in Sydney would manage on an income of just $15,000.00, when the rent for a bedsitter, the most basic accommodation, is more than that.
With a few extra dollars in their hands, the poor will have little other choice than spend it, on things that have needed replacing or repairing for years!
One night a year of simply sleeping rough is simply not enough to create the necessary empathy, for the downtrodden and the poor.
If that were not so, the wealthiest largest economy in the world, would not be paying slave wages to the most vulnerable or disadvantaged!
Nor would the top 1% share more wealth than the bottom half. Its just obscene!
Moreover, we shouldn't need to stack and rack people in overcrowded cities, in a land the size of Australia.
And with a more enlightened govt at the helm, most if not all our infrastructure, can be buried underground. Along with the thorium power-plants and the bio digesters, we will need to power the truly sustainable and decentralized cities of the future!
Rhrosty.

Oh god, where do they find them?

Jess wants us "expanding, constructed natural systems such as urban green roofs". I wonder if he ever reads what he writes? I wonder how you get to construct "natural" systems, Oh I know, paint the roof. & what colour should you paint it, why green of course. That'll do it. Surely this is a spoof.

The greens are well & truly in decline. Their propaganda used to be much better than this bit of fluff.

The only honest green infrastructure is a hole in the ground into which money is poured and then burnt and buried.

The ACF, Greens and the ratbags of AGW have dominated economic policy in this country for too long. Look at Tasmania:

http://www.blackjay.net/the-sacrificial-state/index.html

Red is an appropriate colour for the green dreams of this author and the other idiots who live in cities and would be the first to yelp if the power went off, which it will if this author and her ilk get their way.

Infrastructure (noun) “the stock of fixed capital equipment in a country, including factories, roads, schools, etc, considered as a determinant of economic growth”
- Collins online dictionary

‘ "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." ‘
- Alice Through the Looking Glass

I’m sorry, but purloining a perfectly useful word and pretending it means something different doesn’t work on this side of the Looking Glass. By all means, let’s pay attention to environmental problems, but trying to paint this as an “infrastructure” issue won’t wash.

What fanciful ideas! It is too much to expect something beneficial from science and economics illiterate greens.

< So is there anything wrong with Tony Abbott's emphasis on roads, freeways, tunnels and bridges? >

Yes Jess, there certainly is!

The most critical and obvious thing… or what should be obvious but apparently isn’t to most people… is as I previously mentioned; to steadily reduce the demand for new infrastructure by reducing immigration.

Secondly; what’s he doing that is different?? It’s just more of the same old approach! We’ve always spent an enormous amount of the budget on infrastructure (and services). For as long as we have a rapidly increasing demand, this doesn't work!!

< Genuine progress towards a sustainable future for Australia depends on investment in green infrastructure. >

It depends first and foremost on stopping the demand for everything, and the pressure on our ‘green infrastructure’, from constantly increasing.

Abbott is completely on the wrong track here. Labor has the most excellent opportunity to present the sustainability-first, stable population counter-argument…. which if explained properly and genuinely, would be bound to resonate with the voters, and win them the next election… and finally set Australia on the right path towards a sustainable future.

Kelvin Thomson is the man to lead Labor’s charge. Bill Shorten most definitely isn’t!

THIS is something that the ACF should be taking a good close look at with a very high priority... and working out a lobbying campaign to try and make it happen!