Toll roads, hospitals and museums reveal a deeper problem in New South Wales: after decades of privatisation, the state can still build major projects but has lost much of the ability to make it work.
The state government has had good engineers over the years. Unfortunately, they have been hamstrung by what Government ministers dictate. Many times at the expense of the projects and cost blow outs paid with the public purse. Contractors get away with a lot and rake in the money, taking advantage of the situation.
The Northern Beaches is a classic example of a population similar to the Gold Coast, but strangled by a single congested major road with buses, and without any rail network, unlike the Gold Coast.
And it’s not like the Gold Coast Railway is the gold standard. It doesn’t reach the Coolangatta Airport or Tweed Heads.
Also, the good burghers of Mosman Council and the Northern Beaches haven’t help by protesting every attempt for light and heavy rail. Oh, and how they hate the idea of a rail bridge across Middle Harbour.
Outsourcing government is Freidman economics. Read Shock by Naomi Klein or Disaster Capitalism by Antony Loewenstein
The state government has had good engineers over the years. Unfortunately, they have been hamstrung by what Government ministers dictate. Many times at the expense of the projects and cost blow outs paid with the public purse. Contractors get away with a lot and rake in the money, taking advantage of the situation.
The Northern Beaches is a classic example of a population similar to the Gold Coast, but strangled by a single congested major road with buses, and without any rail network, unlike the Gold Coast.
And it’s not like the Gold Coast Railway is the gold standard. It doesn’t reach the Coolangatta Airport or Tweed Heads.
Also, the good burghers of Mosman Council and the Northern Beaches haven’t help by protesting every attempt for light and heavy rail. Oh, and how they hate the idea of a rail bridge across Middle Harbour.
The Crisafulli government has bowed to the selfish naysayers and shortened the GC railway.
Many thanks for this ,David . Brilliantly well said . As to the way in which governments use taxpayer funds to pay millions of dollars
to “consultants “ , it most definitely does not pass the pub test as having anything to do with the public interest .
Waddá yá know…..Governments are useless and corporates take the money and run.
~The New Dark Ages~
The less the sweat the more the pelf
The public service serves itself
The bourgeois belt blames someone else
The prols in cotton-pickin hell:
Down at the base of the fiscal cliff
The poor are more than a little stiff
They slowly grow to get the gist
Then Scrooge McDuck prints more of it
Behind four pillars policy
There lies more pure Geometry
So obscure its clearly hid
Inside a one-eyed pyramid: