A time to build — not balance

Australia is giving every indication of a country coming apart at the seams — an endless drought that has many farmers seriously contemplating their future on the land; raging bushfires devouring lives and property, and the prospects of more of the same, and worse, for months ahead.

Never has there been a greater need for leadership, but leadership is in short supply. Instead, name-calling and the blame game are in top gear, insults and accusations are being hurled across the ideological divide.

Never have politicians seemed so helpless, and hopeless; so completely lacking in answers.

Yes, emergency aid is forthcoming and eventually the shock and mourning will begin to subside, but increasingly Australians are demanding there should be something more than Band-Aid solutions.

Firstly there should be an end to the debate over whether climate change is real. Those that have the view that current weather patterns are just a blip on the radar, to be endured and then forgotten when everything returns to normal, should be respected for their opinions (it’s a free country) and ignored.

Australia simply does not have the luxury of continuing this discussion. Time is running out — and I am not talking about a far-off date in the middle of the century. Some areas are running out of water now. Deserts are on the march.

Secondly, it should be accepted that while Australia’s contribution to what is a global problem is minimal, this should not be used as an excuse for doing nothing. Australia’s climate change crisis and a determination to tackle it must set an example for the world.

Some research suggests that Australia may be the worst affected by a warming climate over the next decades — all the more important that it should be seen to be doing more than anywhere else to combat it.

Dams need to be built, research funded and infrastructure planned, all with the aim of reducing the country’s emissions beyond the modest targets currently set. Above all there is a need to think big, to inspire and lead.

One major project that could fall into this category is high-speed rail, outlined by the Chief Executive of the nation’s largest property developer, Stockland’s Mark Steinert and others.

Steinert believes the Federal Government should commit to funding a Sydney-to-Canberra high-speed train and other rail projects as part of a major program of fast-track infrastructure spending.

“A high-speed rail service between Canberra and Sydney would have a significant, positive impact on productivity given the frequent travel between, and national importance of, these two cities,” he said.

High speed rail would easily be the most efficient method of moving goods and people around the nation, reducing the need for pollution-emitting heavy vehicles and cars on the roads.  

That network could already have been in place had former Prime Minister John Howard not listened to a barrage of dry economic advice in the 1990s after he proposed it as an ambitious nation-building project.

Unfortunately that thinking still dominates the current Government and its obsession with ‘balancing the books’ to prove its ‘sound economic management’.

One wonders how much inspiration the public will draw from black figures in the Treasury’s balance sheet in contrast to a sustainable infrastructure program that would boost economic activity through jobs growth, productivity gains and increased mobility.