National Sustainability Policy

After the overall successes of the National Competition Policy to improve economic efficiency and governance across the country, it now makes much sense to expand this initiative to also include environmental and social efficiency and governance.

This could not come at a more crucial time. It should be hoped that the policy is well formulated and implemented. There is also an historic opportunity to integrate it with strategies to address climate change, such as an emissions trading scheme, and policies to improve the way our cities are planned, managed and function.

Congestion tax

Whilst a congestion tax could potentially work wonders for the inner city region of Sydney, caution must be taken. A congestion tax would disproportionately hurt people who have to drive into the city large distances every day, in part because there is no reliable public transport in many parts of Sydney.

There’s also the inconvenient fact that the CBD is still a transport vortex, sucking in almost every major highway in the city. With the rail system inhumanely overcrowded in the morning peak, this doesn’t leave most people with much of an option. The congestion tax would thus be a great revenue raiser, but without public transport improvements it wouldn’t help our problems.

Whilst the NSW Government has an opportunity to use the funds from a congestion tax to fund public transport, I suspect it would probably find other areas to spend these in. Add in all the exemptions and concessions they make before it’s implemented, and there will not be nearly enough funds to cover public transport needs. A smarter approach to transport planning is needed—and preferably one that looks at our long-term needs.

Qantas

As someone who is about to travel on an international flight with Qantas in the coming weeks—one that departs Sydney rather close to the curfew, and which also connects with another airline elsewhere—I am quite anxious and concerned about the recent stories of delayed and cancelled flights. When I booked my tickets, I was under the impression that Qantas was a reputable airline that was safe to travel on and would leave on time without trouble. I no longer feel this way. With delays becoming both endemic and ridiculous, and with the quality of aircraft maintenance compromised by a stubborn refusal to increase engineers’ pay by more than the inflation rate, surely it is just a matter of time before an irate international customer takes Qantas to court for failing to provide the service the customer paid for. After all, the recent delays are certainly not beyond Qantas’ control.

I'm excited

I'm off to Hobart in just over a week, and then off to Helsinki in just over two weeks. Time is flying by!

I'll try and update my blog with exciting (or not so exciting) random travel stories and snippets.

Energy provision

Western Australia’s gas crisis shows just how fragile our energy provision and infrastructure is. One explosion can throw an entire state economy into crisis and threaten the viability of many businesses. It may even hurt the nation’s export performance.

This is a concern, especially when almost our entire economy and society are at the mercy of electricity provision.

This should be another reason, alongside global warming, to switch to diverse sources of renewable energy. Had Western Australia had extensive solar, wind, tidal and geothermal energy systems in place, a single gas explosion wouldn’t be nearly as troublesome.

Grammar teaching

The minutiae of the grammar rules of proper English may be a matter of interpretation and opinion, but there is very little point in arguing over the difference between a preposition and a conjunction when most school children have no idea what any of these terms refer to.

If there is ever an appropriate time for national syllabus to replace the state systems then it is now. Plain English must be taught before postmodern critique; knowing the rules of basic grammar in the first place is more important than appreciating how authors creatively manipulate these.

What is the point of English classes if students aren't learning about language, and their teachers don't know how to teach it? Grammar must return to high school English across Australia.

Get a move on, Rudd

The last Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, was the main force behind floating the currency, deregulating the financial sector, cutting many tariffs and subsidies, creating an enterprise bargaining system that sapped the power of unions, privatised Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, and modernised the Australian economy. All of these were brave moves that got a lot of people offside, but in hindsight after many years of solid growth we can see how beneficial these reforms were.

Kevin Rudd, by contrast, has shown a remarkable ability to set up committees and write reports, but at any chance of being able to make some brave changes he runs for the cover of populist politics. Instead of addressing climate change we get inquiries into why petrol isn’t cheap enough; instead of reforming protected industries (like cars) we get more talk of tariff freezes and subsidies we don’t need (like an Australian-made hybrid); instead of a budget that seriously tackles inflationary pressures we get more tax cuts and a failure to address the ‘middle-class welfare’ problem. And then there’s the lack of both vision and spine on industrial relations law and private school funding.

You’re Prime Minister now, Mr. Rudd, not the Opposition Leader. This is your chance to make your mark.

Train fares

The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal wants to raise Sydney suburban train fares dramatically, in the hope that this will improve CityRail’s finances and allow for future improvement of the network. Only in NSW could a proposal like this ever be taken seriously. Who in their right mind would charge passengers more for declining service quality? A more sensible option would be to borrow funds to finance an improvement of the train network and then, once services have improved, raise fares to pay off the loan. CityRail certainly has funding problems, but slugging the hapless passengers who have had to put up with CityRail for years—and who are doing society a benefit by not clogging up roads with polluting motor vehicles—is not the way to solve the problem.

NSW Budget

The focus on infrastructure spending and public transport projects in the NSW Budget is welcome, but as usual the devil is in the detail.

A look at the budget papers reveals that of infrastructure spending on transport for 2008/09, $1.14bn is devoted to roads whilst only $563m is put aside for public transport projects.

The Labor Government’s attitude towards public transport spending doesn’t seem to have changed much.

Health system inefficiencies

Tanveer Ahmed raises an important, if disturbing, point about the outdated and archaic nature of specialist medical examinations that aim to restrict the number of qualified specialists to ensure those already in the workforce can charge more. This is counter to the public interest. It makes me wonder how many other pathetic inefficiencies and stupid administrative practices exist within the health system. Many recent news stories have described how accountant-minded managers in hospitals have cut corners at every opportunity, simply raising the total cost to the health system in the long-term as patients fail to recover properly. Public hospitals are in such a bad state because of a lack of funding, of course, but how much better could things be if they were simply run properly with the long-term public interest in mind? The state treasurer might want to think about this in his budget: here is an opportunity for a big improvement in services and efficiency at minimal budgetary cost.