Hear, hear and well argued sir! The fully paid for and income earning referenced Snowy Mountains Scheme, demonstrates how one can use visionary future planning and "affordable debt," to build a nation.

Unfortunately all the (it can't be done, we can't afford it, we must live within our means) experts we've been saddled with in recent years, have used their visionary abilities just to win and hold power, and while holding it, spend like drunken sailors, creating unrealistic expectations and welfare for the rich, just to hang on to it?

We unlike most other comparable nations, have yet to use thirty year self terminating bonds, to finance projects that will do two things and a must!

#1, Stimulate the economy, and when complete, #2, earn enough income to, like our Snowy Mountains Scheme, pay off the entire debt burden over time and then earn a nice profit!

[And economic illiterates(quote, unquote) like John Howard wanted to sell it!]

Such projects might include a long overdue rapid rail system along our eastern seaboard, a range crossing in southern Q'ld. And a visionary inland shipping canal, that can provide an inexhaustible source of water that opens up our arid inland to equally visionary economic development.

Yes sure they're very big ideas, but do we have even one visionary leader with the capacity to think them and then having thought through all the possibilities replace the endless talk fest with can do action.

Our super funds are apparently over two trillion and there is comparable money sitting in various corporate coffers just waiting on visionary projects and safe haven government guaranteed investment opportunity, to get to work for us and indeed our very own economic growth/sovereignty.

It's beyond time!
Rhrosty.

You know John, if you try being honest, & you may gain some credibility. Spinning as hard as you are in this bit of bumph, you just dig a hole, & burry any value in the article, before you even air it.

Mining royalties are a minor part of the economic benefit of the mining industries, & if you don't understand this yourself, it is no wonder you can talk such rubbish. It is not only wealth collected & spent, [wasted] by government that is of value to us all. I know this may be hard to understand for academics, paid from the government coffers, but true anyway.

Of course anyone who claims that the fuel used in any industry is subsidised by not having road tax added is pretty loose with the truth. This spin just confirms that your article will be a concoction of mistruth & spin.

There may be some good in your article, but the intelligent reader is so jaded after the first few paragraphs, that it is hard to see.

Rhrosty yes the Snowy was great, but it is people like John who have led to its usefulness being drastically downgraded. Much of the useful water is now wasted down the old snowy river, or used to fill an artificial water sky lake in South Australia, at the systems mouth, at the instance of the Johns of this world.

As for your other schemes, good or bad ideas they may be, but it is people like John who would fight tooth & nail to stop them being developed

I have no time for Dr John Tomlison - I hope the taxpayer is not paying him a salary at ANU - but even less for Richard Denniss. It is fitting that one should endorse the other.

That said, Denniss may be right, or at least I may agree with stuff in his book, but it would be accidental..

"I wish I had had this book when teaching social policy"

So you could have in your hand the complete collection of half truths and lies that Labor uses to justify its hare brained schemes?

The book has no credibility. Two example: 1. The mining industry does not receive subsidies from the Australia taxpayer. It receives a refund of fuel tax paid on fuel that is not used on public roads, which is entirely fair and reasonable when you consider that the fuel tax was introduced as a way of paying for building and maintaining public roads.
2. While only a small proportion of the $7 billion earned by the coal industry is paid by the mining companies as tax,the vast majority of this vast amount is paid to employees, contractors and service providers who end up paying substantial amounts of tax to state and federal governments. One economic analysis said that 82% of all mining income from commodity sales ends up in the government's pocket as tax.

The rest of the book is a biased diatribe against a political/ economic system that the author and reviewer clearly do not want or like. Neither the book nor the review have any merit.