Everald:
What you can't fund you can't build! And without question, there are competing priorities.

Popular everywhere else but here are self-terminating thirty-year investment bonds. And an absolutely perfect vehicle for our 2.5 trillion super fund! Which is invested offshore in the main (80%?) Where it earns neither income nor contributes to tax revenue (ours)!

This then begs the question, why not create our own self terminating thirty-year bonds and make the interest payments tax free to encourage them back onshore and begging for projects like a properly panned from point A to point B inland rail, and rapid rail up the east coast as a starting point.

Followed by MSR thorium power projects and deionisation dialysis desalination projects and affordable potable irrigation water wherever we can pipe it! Plus water and waste recycling projects!?

Last but not least, Graphene Highways that allow electric cars to travel the length and breadth of the nation without ever stopping to recharge, just for the driver and passengers to rest! And the recharge paid by the same methods as tolls are now collected, electronically!

The only absolute criteria! They must earn income!
Alan B.

Thanks Everald, you've made a great business case (though much more could be said) for why we should never spend a cent of taxpayers' money on your white elephant.

If it's a commercially viable project, let the market pay for it. If it's not, it would be just another drain on taxpayers.

calvest,
If it benefits the average citizen then it will ultimately benefit the Govt via Taxes, so Govt should contribute !