The Guardian has run a detailed report explaining how Australian taxpayers have given “$8m of $20m earmarked to progress high-speed rail to a consortium led by a man who has no expertise in major infrastructure projects, who had been a bankrupt and who was once a National party candidate”:
The Consolidated Land and Rail Australia consortium, better known by its acronym Clara, is headed by Nick Cleary, a would-be property developer from the southern highlands of New South Wales.
Cleary is a man with big dreams. Clara has sold bureaucrats and ministers on a vision so large it’s almost eye-watering: a high-speed rail network between Melbourne and Sydney that would open the way for not one but eight new cities, each between 200,0000 and 600,000 people, to be constructed along its route.
