If you missed it, the Financial Review‘s Phil Coorey had one of the more remarkable political stories of recent years on Friday. He revealed why the government is about to pump at least $1 billion into the Melbourne-Brisbane Inland Rail, a boondoggle that has been spruiked by the Nationals for 20 years or more, and which the government itself admits, even under optimistic assumptions, will barely produce as many benefits as costs. According to Coorey, funding was to assuage the Nationals who were upset because regional aviation to Sydney is likely to be forced out to the new Badgerys Creek Airport, whenever that gets going.
Regional aviation is a huge problem at Sydney’s main airport in Kingsford Smith; small regional flights take up slots that could be used by much larger aircraft on domestic and international flights, dramatically increasing the costs of congestion at the airport. Worse, regional aviation doesn’t have to pay full price for slots, meaning they’re cross-subsidised by the rest of us (you can bet the gouging, rapacious Sydney Airport Corporation makes sure of that).
The Nats know that once Badgerys Creek is built, there’ll be no excuse for allowing regional aircraft to use up the slots of commercial aircraft at Kingsford Smith. But the old white men of the Nationals hate the idea of having to travel from Badgerys Creek into Sydney. Indeed, efforts to expand Bankstown Airport (the second-biggest airport in Sydney after Kingsford Smith) used to be opposed because of complaints about having to travel from there — so Badgerys Creek is far worse.
So, because the Nationals don’t want to have to sit on a train or drive on the M7 into the Sydney CBD in the 2020s, the government is going to waste $1 billion on a train line to nowhere. It could be the most absurd piece of pork-barrelling in the sordid history of that practice in generations — quite a feat.
And while the government is wasting $1 billion on stroking the Nationals’ sense of entitlement, it is returning to the scene of one of the major defeats of the Abbott government: its higher education “reforms” that failed to pass the Senate and gave Labor and the Greens ammunition for a remorseless attack on “$100,000 degrees”.
[Super for housing: the latest example of our war on the young]
Education Minister Simon Birmingham is going to have a go at attempting what predecessor Christopher Pyne failed to do — although unlike Pyne, Birmingham won’t be springing changes as a complete surprise on the sector like Pyne did. After heavily foreshadowing another go in recent weeks, Birmingham will today reveal a cut-down version of the same package: funding cuts for universities (to be termed an “efficiency dividend” — remember when Tony Abbott insisted cuts to the ABC weren’t cuts, but an “efficiency dividend”?), higher fees for students and a more draconian student loan repayment regime. Universities, we’re told, are rolling in money and don’t need any more.
How much will be saved? It’s not yet clear, but one figure in the media is around $1 billion. It’s possible that the government’s attack on higher education will be effectively paying for the inland rail boondoggle.
What is clear is that next week’s budget looms as a continuation of this government’s war on young people. They will face higher education fees and higher education loans debts, receiving an education in more poorly funded institutions the government sees primarily as degree factories for the valuable export of international students (who, coincidentally, make for a great source of exploitable labour). And what was once to be the centrepiece of the budget, housing affordability, has been shelved except for, perhaps, the restoration of an unsuccessful Labor program to encourage saving and transferring yet more money from young people to baby boomers by allowing the use of superannuation for housing. Meaningful reform, which even if the government rejected negative gearing changes, could involve reductions in the capital gains tax concession for housing investors, looks to have been ditched.
Instead of housing affordability, infrastructure is now being sold as the budget centrepiece (there’ll also be the now-standard “welfare crackdown”, the fourth or fifth of this government alone; crackdowns on the poor, like the poor themselves, will apparently always be with us).
The inland rail route has long been touted as “visionary”. Likely, that word will be dragged out again in relation to any PR for the wasting of government funding on it. But the vision at the heart of the budget seems, for young people, a quite different one: a future in which they carry high five-figure or six-figure education debts into their careers, then need to take on seven-figure debts to find somewhere to live even vaguely close to economic centres where they can use their skills. This is an economic war on our youth, and one they should never forgive us for.
The baby boomers have the power, the economy is struggling, so they need to find another group of people to squeeze and have chosen Millennials as their victims.
Of course, they don’t realise that in a decade or two, we’ll be deciding the weight of their pensions. Methinks reverse mortgaging your pension will become a VERY popular policy proposal around that time.
I know of plenty of baby boomers who are doing it as tough as anyone (try getting a job at 56).
Put the blame where it belongs – on government policies.
Enough of the “inter-generational warfare” bullshit.
More like class warfare…
Exactly. Government policies (CGT discount etc) clearly favour the capital owning class at the expense of everyone else.
A scathingly wonderful piece Bernard.
Bang on target. Bravo.
It’s not about soaking the kids.. (after all, the same well-to-do parents benefiting from the transfer of housing wealth will be able to afford THEIR kids’ educational expenses). It’s simply a continuation of the age-old story of limiting opportunities, reducing class mobility and entrenching wealth amongst those that already have it. Unfortunately entirely consistent with pretty much everything this government of “why not just buy each of your kids a property?” stands for.
Good comment, BU!
The upcoming budget sounds like just another version of 2014…hope it meets the same treatment in the Senate as the former one.
It is about entrenching privilege like everything these idiots do. However I will give you a big serve about the inland rail link as you are clearly clueless. I am sick and tired of having garbage transport systems and everything being spent on coastal roads. You could build the whole bloody thing for what is being wasted on West Connex. If we want industry inland we need to service it. There is no decent rail or road link from the central west to Sydney. We cannot double stack containers, rail to Melbourne has to go to Sydney first. Likewise Brisbane. The Newell Highway is a nightmare of 110kmh B Doubles. We have most of the main junctions there and a good bit of the corridor. It is only a boondoggle if it is spent in regional NSW apparently. I think, Bernard, you need to get out of the office more
OGO has it spot on – the urbanoids just have no idea what life is like west of the GDR and therefore what it could be with the population ratio AND rail links of the 19/20thC.
Have a look at the fine old station & post office buildings – Mudgee (1877) is a real heart breaker, now a tat’n’wank shoppery – all over the Inland, no longer in use.
The utter insanity of Mel-Syd-Bris as a rail route is beyond ridicule and, as OGO noted, the Newell is lethal with zonked truckies hauling containers that should be on rail.
I’ll assume “cuts to the ABC weren’t cuts, but an “efficiency divided”” was a typo but nonetheless wildly apposite.
Recently Dunnuttin asked (not rhetorically though he wouldn’t understand the concept) re the Manus armed assault “Why would people take the word of the ABC over the government?”
Gee, that’s a tough one. Just guessing but…maybe coz the ABC is consistently ranked the most trusted institution in the country and politicians are rolling around in the mud at the bottom along with used car sales & lawyers?
A child is born and completes life’s journey in, let’s say, 75 years. Over that journey, it will receive a variety of financial incomes. The journey will take that child through a jungle of financial predators who will use every tool available to gouge as much of that income as they can from the traveller.
Be they child minding centres, education, the housing system, medical, financial, pharmaceutical, nursing homes, funeral companies, or any other organisation, the traveller will have to run the gauntlet of these financial predators and do their best to get through in reasonable shape.
Nobody minds a business making a reasonable profit. But any business that simply rips people off, shreds the victim’s wallet apart, shakes them until the last dollar drops from their pocket, is the business type which is wrecking the economy of the world.
Wealth is now flowing at a greater rate than ever from an increasing majority to the filthy rich few at the top end. And this is mainly due to decades of gullible governments empowering these financial predators.
If this flow is not contained and roped in, then very soon we will all be . . . . . Well, you work it out for yourself. But it’s not looking good.
Back to education. If education was free, then the nation would maximise ALL its children’s potential which would benefit the nation and its future. Anything less is impeding our nation’s future development by not maximising ALL our children’s potential.
And if you think our children’s education is too expensive for our government to pay for, then work out how much their ignorance would cost us.
A cartoon on expensive education . . . . . . .
https://cartoonmick.wordpress.com/editorial-political/#jp-carousel-948
Cheers
Mick