Just received an email from Opposition Leader Steven Marshall introducing his grand vision for roads and transport around Adelaide. Get heavy transport off Portrush Road. Good idea, but they've been talking about it since I was a boy, and it's too late (and costly) now. Nice video, though, roads coming into and out of Adelaide. 'Thousands' of jobs. Lots of goods in and out.

One can't help thinking of the PNG cargo cults who, having witnessed aeroplanes landing in their country and disgorging goods, convinced themselves that if they carved out landing strips in in the jungles, 'planes would miraculously arrive with loads of goodies- all for nothing.

New number plates will say: "SA State of Superstition". It's not just Labor we are up against, it's the Liberal alternative, too.

Their full plan would be costly, but there are worthwhile parts that would be good value for money, such as the hills freight bypass railway.

Both major parties in SA have a cargo cult mentality to federal funding. But it's got absolutely nothing to do with superstition. It's because what the federal government has much more ability to fund things than the state government does, but what the state needs is totally different from what the federal government's willing to fund. So the state governments set their priorities not according to what needs doing, but according to what they can convince the federal government to fund.