Economics is a profession where you can be wrong most of the time and still have a job...good now we have that out the way.

Decentralisation is the best answer for Australia, do we really want two or three mega cities and the rest of the country just about empty?
If only we had compete pollies.

First question: are Ms. Tomtit and big spruikers on decentralisation prepared to move to the sticks themselves? Second question: if governments won't improve the infrastructure in cities where there has always been a need, will they spend much, much more to establish satellite cities from scratch, particularly when there is nothing there to justify such expenditure? How many industries and job providers are calling for a brand new city to establish a base? Melbourne has what? About 4 million people? Londoners, New Yorkers and the Japanese in Tokyo would laughing their heads of at this bleating. Country towns are dying. People are moving to cities. In a time of economic downtown which shows every chance of becoming permanent, the thought of spending money that we don't have on decentralisation is ludicrous.

Where do I start? Around 70% of our economy is generated around the green coastal fringe, all of which could be underwater in the foreseeable future, if seal level rises inundate the coastline? And if a fresh water lake in Antarctica, is released by virtue of a none to reliable or stable wall of ice melts and cracks releasing millions of tons of water?

Enough we're informed (ABC doco) to raise the sea levels of the world by as much as 3 metres? Now that may never happen, we may get an accord that not only deals with climate change but reverses it in the life time of folks already extant on the planet?

City folk produce 2.5 times the carbon of our country cousins. You only need a centre with a permanent population of 30,000 to support all the businesses and amenities folks need.

Moreover, strangers stick out like a sore thumb, whereas they can disappear into the human morass, that are our gridlocked and overcrowded cities.

Any centre that grows beyond 100,000 folk becomes self sustaining and the place for smart investors to park their positively geared real estate investments. the problem with satellite cities usually is, they are in the main just dormitory suburbs.

But add in new CBD's and industrial estates and in time the traffic might even go the other way? a really big and visionary idea, would be to invest the nation's super into an inland shipping canal and then use proven large scale (base load capable) solar thermal to power (dutch innovation) new age desalination that produces up to 95% potable water and for quarter of the cost of traditional desalination!

Meaning, this new eternally reliable source of water is economical enough to support (underground applications) irrigation and the opening up and development of our vast underpopulated inland to the millions and economies of scale it could actually support?
Alan B.

TTBN if you decentralise then you actually don't have to spend large sums of money on tunnels and overpasses that speed up travel time by a few minutes for a few years.
BTW I do live in the bush, and I despair at some our state and fed government decisions. Our local hospital's air conditioner is controlled by someone in Adelaide 400km away. All of it's admin staff are in Adelaide and travel to the hospital as required. They don't work on any other hospitals just a lifestyle choice that we are all paying for with out tax dollars.

It use to be you got paid extra for working in regional and country areas, now you get living allowance for capital cities.

Successful decentralization requires high speed rail. I'd be happy to move out to the sticks if I were able to access multiple capital cities quickly, conveniently and reasonably cheaply.

Great idea.
More people, more Environmental and habitat destruction.
The sooner Homo Sapiens disappears from this degraded wasteland of a planet.
Sadly though we will take too many other species with us.

Aidan if you like high speed rail, you'll like the new loop thing being currently trialed in the USA?

IT apparently zips along at or just under or just over the speed of sound, and goes from nought to a hundred in 2 seconds?

The boffins are laying out a (vacuum sealed?) tunnel to apparently reduce or remove friction as a speed limiting factor?

Given an electric rail gun the motive force? Potential top speed, just under the speed of light.

In any event this new system would get you from Brisbane to Sydney in just 40 minutes.

The cost of energy is the limiting factor! Oh for the days when we the people owned all the operation, generation and distribution!

Even now the cost of a kilowatt hour of energy at the power plants is just cents. Then you need to add on things like debt servicing, shareholder's demands, distribution losses, around a published 64% transmission line losses, around a published 11%, licence fees corridor acquisitions, maintenance, repairs and tax, all grabbing their share?
For mine we should investigate cheaper than col thorium. These things would need to be buried in bedrock to overcome any real danger or negative anxieties.

The Indians would seem to be well down the road to producing a working 300 KPH example or prototype as early a this year?

And given they need minimal maintenance for the life of the project, can be sited directly below the transit corridor to provide the cheapest possible energy.

Putting the train in a tunnel even one laid out above ground, like a pipeline, makes sense to me, given the possible speed. As does a one way loop and matched speeds! Stops and stations needing a separate exit and entry siding.

Somewhere in the back of my ancient mind is a memory of a theoretical ion drive placed in the nose cone to eliminate some of the friction?

I don't know how that might work unless it actually punches a hole in the air just immediately ahead of the projectile?
Cheers, Alan B.

Correction, it's distribution losses that are 64% with the 11% applicable to transmission line losses? I seem to have (online)company ( a key logger?) that's editing what I write to make some of it come out as nonsense? Or force a retype? [W 10 take note, the unhackable system may be being hacked at the keyboard?]

@ ateday lead by example.

Alan B,

"if you like high speed rail, you'll like the new loop thing being currently trialed in the USA?"
The Hyperloop? I don't think it's at all practical at the moment. If high speed rail between two large cities reaches capacity then it may be worth considering, but even then I think another HSR line is more likely to be the best way to supplement the first one, with the intermediate option of an untubed Maglev also preferable to the Hyperloop. Construction costs are just too high.

If the Hyperloop is suitable for anything, it will be connecting pairs of large cities nonstop; it won't be much good for decentralization.

And where did you get your 64% figure from?