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INFRASTRUCTURE * Australia - Nats add Pacific Highway to regional porkbarrel
Templestowe,Australia -Crikey (subscription), by David MacCormack -10 October 2007: -- The Federal Government's expected announcement today of funding to upgrade the Pacific Highway is a massive handout to two of Australia's most lavishly rewarded interest groups – regional communities and the trucking industry... No one will be caught dead criticising it though. A dual-carriage Pacific Highway is up there with motherhood in the Australian political lexicon – one of the reasons why it has been announced and re-announced so often in the last 20 years... When John Anderson – who unlike his successor, actually has a brain – was Transport Minister, he flagged the possibility of using tolls to accelerate the upgrade of the Highway, particularly for heavy vehicle and tourist users. This would have made eminent sense, permitting faster construction while requiring users to pay for the expensive infrastructure they were travelling on, and enabling some attempt to capture the massive externalities inflicted on the community by motorists and truckies... The toll idea has now apparently vanished - it doesn't make for good Daily Telegraph headlines, and the road transport companies would object. So it's taxpayers – yet again – who will paying for the noxious effect of the National Party on Australian government... (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images: On average 44 people die each year on the Pacific Highway)Labels: infrastructures
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