Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Broadband - No water????

How come we can announce a Broadband Roll Out with no feasibilty study or Public Acceptance document in place. We can happily say we do not know who is going to invest and equally state that the blow out is in essence inevitable and normal for Government Projects.
We can liken it to the Snowy Mountains Authority Scheme and still we tell the Australian Public it is to expensive to pump from Northern Rivers into the Murray Darling Basin.
The Murray Darling Basin is one of the largest contributors to the GDP of this country and we have been "screwing" it up for decades.
If we simply pumped from the Northern Rivers while they were in flood and managed more strongly the allocations along the River we could - a) Create Jobs, b) protect an existing and growing portion of this Countries GDP, c)demonstrate responsible government in managing the environment.
In those three items alone surely the answer from Government that it is simply too expensive seems to be a very holey argument. In these time of Governments injecting money into the economy this makes a whole lot more sense than setting up a Broadband Network that Private Enterprise will roll out anyway as the need requires.
Enough talk more action.

Monday, April 6, 2009

The Silence is Deafening

I recently drove to Sydney and I have to say it just makes me cross. As you drive through the Riverina and witness the massive open Irrigation Channels you cannot help but think of the evaporation and seepage waste that goes on in this system. To witness out of date irrigation systems is so frustrating.
And then there are the floods in the Northern Rivers and remember the plans that I have seen for flood mitigation to be directed to the inland rivers which will simply assist in making the whole issue go away and the blood begins to boil.
Can anyone tell me why in this time of economic restructure that a Government sponsored redevelopment of these old and out of date systems cannot be seen as a very worthwhile way of setting Australia up for the future.
I am frustrated that we have heard nothing for months from Senator Wong who seems to have forgotten this is her portfolio as well as an elected representative of the people of South Australia who are suffering so badly.
The silence is killing us all - Did anyone here the penny drop?