Man, Canberra is completely spastic:
More than 80 road and rail projects should be axed and a further 36 have funding withdrawn subject to better planning, an independent review of Australia’s $120 billion infrastructure pipeline has recommended.
Just over 150 projects have been given the green light to proceed, though Transport Minister Catherine King will confirm the full list on Thursday when she releases the Albanese government’s full response to the 90-day Infrastructure review she commissioned in May.
Fending off growing criticism from states and territories and the federal Coalition, Ms King will announce at least an additional $6.2 billion to cover huge cost blowouts on existing projects, the money for which will come from savings elsewhere in the pipeline.
The review found there has been $32.8 billion worth of cost blowouts in the existing $80 billion, 10-year Infrastructure Investment Program (IIP), $14.2 billion of which was on projects that had not even begun construction.
The Herald-Sun sums up the farce as follows:
“The independent review, announced as a 90-day inquiry but commissioned almost 200 days ago, did not assess the merits of federal Labor’s controversial $2.2bn commitment to Suburban Rail Loop – ostensibly because the party’s election commitments and projects under construction were exempt from its terms of reference“.
So, Labor’s “independent review” didn’t touch its own pork projects.
This is what a corrupt Canberra does with your tax money. It:
- stuffs the country to the brim with people for whom they have no plan;
- launches multitudinous pork projects to placate angry punters with falling living standards;
- hoses billions into the nothingness;
- launches a review to blame the other guy;
- keeps favoured pork projects, such as the Melbourne Rail Loop, which is still not a plan for the people pouring in;
- tells everybody they’re cutting back to fight inflation;
- while lifting expenditures to boost inflation.
Meanwhile, 600k more people arrive every year, and the porkfrastructure deficit gets bigger.
Rinse and repeat.
