• A key part of the Coalition’s water plan released yesterday is ‘real action’ on on-farm irrigation infrastructure. “We will commit an additional $300 million to invest in rural water infrastructure,” the Coalition announced, which is “a crucial step in saving water for the environment”. This comes on top of billions of dollars already allocated to irrigation infrastructure upgrades under the current government. Perhaps the Coalition should have checked first with the Productivity Commission (it seems to have forgotten that it is abolishing the PC and establishing the ‘Productivity and Sustainability Commission’). It plans to ask the PC to conduct a review — yep, because there won’t be enough reviews from either side in the aftermath of the election — of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. While it is doing that it could ask the PC what it thinks of irrigation infrastructure funding as a way of saving water for the environment.
  • “The Australian Government may pay up to four times as much for recovering environmental water through infrastructure upgrades than through water purchases,” the Commission found in a recent report. The Commission says there’s nothing stopping irrigators paying for infrastructure themselves where such investment makes economic sense, because the benefits from irrigation infrastructure investment mainly go to irrigators. It looked at every single argument about flow-on effects, and market failure, and difficulties accessing capital for irrigation infrastructure, and found they didn’t stack up: “Funding irrigation infrastructure upgrades is generally not a cost-effective way for governments to recover water for the environment.” Your taxpayer dollars at work.
  • So what did last night’s activity at Rooty Hill tell us, apart from the fact that some polling companies have an interesting idea of what ‘swinging voter’ means? Not a great deal. Given Wayne Swan and Joe Hockey had a good debate last week and could usefully go another round, here’s a proposal. Let’s have a four-way debate between the prime minister, the treasurer, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. The four most important people in this election, in the same room. If the government believes it has a strong story to tell on how it saved the economy and has its priorities right for the future, let Gillard and Swan make their case. If Abbott and Hockey seriously believe in their rhetoric of debt’n’deficits, let’s have it. After his stoush with Wayne Swan, I reckon it’s a good bet Hockey would be up for it. If Abbott thinks he performed well last night, he should be game.
  • It had to happen eventually: a political party has simply declared it won’t cooperate with the Charter of Budget Honesty election commitments process. If it serves as a step toward junking the whole process, then Andrew Robb’s move is a good one. Labor didn’t dare go quite that far in 2007, but came as close as possible, by submitting many of its policies at the death. Now the Coalition, who proudly invented the whole system, have gone further. But Robb’s excuse, that he’s worried about leaks, is dog-ate-my-homework stuff. It would have been a better look, and a rare moment of honesty, for Robb to be upfront and admit the process as set up by Peter Costello is biased in favour of governments and that therefore the Liberals won’t be cooperating any more with it, and would overhaul it or get rid of it in government.
  • What is the point of Infrastructure Australia? While Commonwealth investment pretty much anywhere in urban infrastructure is to be welcomed, the process surrounding the Epping-Parramatta rail link in Sydney is completely opaque. “The NSW government will be required to work with Infrastructure Australia, which will assess the project and assist in its effective delivery,” Labor’s press release said yesterday. But, um, wasn’t the purpose of Infrastructure Australia to assess such projects against other infrastructure investment before politicians made any comments, and advise which projects should get scarce taxpayer funding? What if IA “assesses” the Parramatta-Epping line and concludes other infrastructure in Sydney is more pressing? While politicians will never surrender the final decision on major infrastructure investments — entirely appropriately in a democracy — Infrastructure Australia was supposed to at least provide transparency and objective advice.
  • Abbott, who has enthusiastically chased the xenophobe vote for much of this election campaign, should be commended for declining last night to succumb to the temptation to join in criticism of foreign ownership of residential property, despite his shadow treasurer’s willingness to try to exploit the issue. It’s a pity his reasoning — that any sort of crackdown might lead to lower house prices — doesn’t stack up. How about something like “given we’re desperately short of housing stock, any investment that drives new residential construction should be welcomed with open arms”?