Karnal wrote on Feb 9^th, 2022 at 5:24pm:


Put all the rag-heads and moaning Abos out there to do some real work..... building roads and rails and mighty dams etc instead of damning everything Australian .... the scheme to reunite Lake Eyre and the sea through South Australia requires a little tunnel work - the criminal and terrorist elements among them have the honour of breaking the last few feet in the tunnels...

This is why private industry doesn't do infrastructure projects and why infrastructure projects are not commercially viable for investors:

"After 56 years, the people of NSW finally paid off the cost of building the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1988. However, the toll was still be levied to pay for the under-construction Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Fast forward 30 years and the toll revenue is generally used for road projects across NSW.Jun 25, 2018"

The Snowy Mountains scheme is postulated to have a 'real' rate of return of 1.2% which would not qualify it as a commercial private industry project.

"Later, three major studies of economic doubt emerged (i) by Rose (ii) by Davidson using a critical discount rate of 7% (iii) by McColl. The solution to these doubts, after the experience of 50 years of the Snowy Scheme, is offered. There are two major factors. First, the installations show a longer life than nominally accepted, much longer than the 70 years set for repayment. Second, the art of cost–benefit analysis did not at the time incorporate inflation, so the critics were unable to take it into account. The inflation rate in 1949–1999, not large but monotonically increasing, is 5.8%. Thus Davidson's 7%, which is also the rate of Snowy repayment to government, becomes a “real” rate of 1.2%. Using these concepts, the Snowy becomes, ex-post, a brilliant investment."

John Smith wrote on Feb 9^th, 2022 at 7:24pm:


Australia, a nation of landlords thanks to negative gearing, a property bubble and a lack of decent investment options. Good idea, JS, let's look to Singapore, a nation of genuine home-owners. Put it down.

Laugh till you cry wrote on Feb 9^th, 2022 at 9:57pm:


That depends. TNT invested in a crappy monorail that slid around the Sydney CBD, empty most of the time. God knows how they cashed in on that.

The Sydney airport line charges $18 to go 13 km, it's money for jam.

The Sydney Opera House stages concerts at $200 to $300 a ticket. Massively subsidised, it never even breaks even. And yet, it gave Australia a soul. Who could imagine Sydney without it? Who could imagine the world without it?

Australia, a nation where builders labourers have opinions about architecture, and managed to conserve much of Sydney's heritage. Think big.

Quote:


Do we have that?

They could start by filling in a few potholes and grading the corrugations out of some roads for them regional folk.

Karnal wrote on Feb 10^th, 2022 at 12:32am:



There is nothing stopping wanna be landlords from buying property ... they just can't buy property set aside for first home owners.

The Australian grubberment is chock full of failures who could not organise a screw in a brothel.
It comprises mostly of people who have no chance of ever being half way capable in private industry and to who hard works are foreign words.

Everything that goes through any grubberment departments is made overly complex and overly beauocratic to the point of total structural failure.

Combined with the use of "consultants" which is to say other ex grubberment deadbeats playing games for cash.
And the significant propensity for internal corruption.
We have a series of non-functional, corrupt, incompetent deadbeats who suck money in and put very little back into infrastructure.

In any civilized country, they would build a huge gaol to house the entire bunch of corrupt, criminal and incompetent morons for life.
Personally I prefer the China option, but we would need a lot more bullets.