Well we could borrow some money if the terms we good enough? And use it to finance some income earning infrastructure, like a long overdue range crossing that's sure to earn big bickies and very rapid rail down our eastern seaboard; and given chinese expertise.

Make it a VLT and get them to build it, always providing every chinese tradie has at least one Australian apprentice learning about the functions of a very high speed VLT!

None of our indigenous electricians have any experience in this field whatsoever, and therefore can't argue against the essential foreign involvement.

And given indian success in building a working 300MW thorium powered generator this year, ask them to come here and build a couple for us, to power it.

Which as a desirable outcome, would make the whole energy dependant project, far more profitable!! And we need to be assured of profits during the life of the project in order to service the borrowings.

And, we just can't allow the usual union intransigence/moral blackmail to blow out the budget beyond what the finished projects can carry!

Borrow by all means, just be sure that the projects chosen will support it.

The eastern seaboard being one of the busiest air routes in the world, should therefore qualify; ditto a range crossing and the heavy traffic that would pay handsomely for a faster alternative, that saves lots of diesel, time and wear and tear on their livelihoods!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty, borrowing money from overseas would force up the short term value of our dollar, which with our current terms of trade would cause more problems than it solves.

We do need the investment, but we should be sourcing more of the money from the RBA and less from overseas.

Adian, our own funds have some two trillion dollars, if we were smart, we would coax most of this money here to work for us.

And if we put some sugar on it with very preferential tax treatment on the income earned, we'd hardly be worse off, given 50% of something is always going to be better than 100% of nothing!

What we get now from funds invested offshore?

We remain one of the few nations never to have never used popular elsewhere Government guaranteed 30 year self terminating bonds to get critical infrastructure built.

And there are thousands of self funded retirees both here and abroad who would welcome something superior to endlessly falling interest rates or roller coaster equity markets to fund their retirement.

In the case of foreign cashed up self funded retirees. They'd need to qualify as economic migrants with substantial cash assets!
Apart from rapid rail and ultra busy range crossings, we could also, build numerous low rent residential concrete towers and give the tenants the option of purchasing the same with some of the rent forming a deposit?

Concrete reaches its maximum strength in around 80 years and given the world to chose from, would be very nicely fitted out for as little as $29,00.00. And refurbished again in say 30 years, when the thing had paid itself off!

And if you made sure that the lower levels were commercial, doctors, chemists, lawyers convenience stores, cafes and child care places etc?

And the top floors luxury apartments, you'd eliminate the possibility of no go ghettos, where the criminal element take control and rule?

And encouraging tenants to become owners, would make it even more difficult for the usual criminal element to gain a foothold, given that would destroy the value of private assets.

Moreover making folks mix like this on a daily basis would expose workers to potential employers and visa versa.

As for chinese money, one of those things that I find attractive, would be low cost venture capital funding for employee owned manufacturing co-ops.
Rhrosty.