Big Brother is watching

WILL the Feds come to the party?

Or will the partisan politics prevail in Townsville?

Let’s hope for the good of North Queensland, it is the former.

Sometimes it’s hard to admit you were wrong, or even that you were misleading people.

But it’s looking like the Turnbull Government’s 2016 election eve pledge to promise $ 150 million for the new port rail corridor – which we now can see was always subject to the findings of the business case – was laden with a big dose of politics and not a lot of foresight.

You would have to say that wouldn’t you, judging by the findings of the business case which have only now been released by the State Government despite its boffins finalising the report in November last year?

Sadly, it is not good – or particularly thrilling – reading.

There is a woeful cost- benefit ratio of 0.16 and a net present value of negative $ 226 million – in other words it’s uneconomic or not worth the $ 300 to $ 400- odd million to build.

To make matters worse, the rail freight demand forecasts are flat to falling on anything but the highgrowth scenario and even then the projected growth, year after year, is not much more than existed in 2017.

It could all be a nasty Brisbane conspiracy. But I doubt it.

The State has called on the Feds to take a cold shower and support the channel- widening program as a means of increasing the ship sizes which can use the port and in turn support growing the trade that will help underpin the rail corridor.

That is by no means all that is needed.

The Feds could gain some much- needed brownie points by backing the channel widening and pressuring the State to do something about the woeful state of the rail system, including the charges forcing more and more freight on to our roads.

Otherwise, there will be no big new mining project to drive growth and finally justify a rail corridor said to be a critical piece of infrastructure. PARTS of the Australian Government are using your data far more than Facebook could even dream of.

This week we learnt the Bureau of Statistics followed thousands of people’s mobile phones for a few weeks back in 2016. People were tracked as they travelled around the ACT to give an insight into how people moved during the day. Telstra took the details and sold it to the ABS and all of this is totally legal.

A few weeks ago there was a huge debate about privacy when people took Facebook data without people’s permission and sold it to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Facebook officials were called before politicians to explain the situation and have promised to change the practice.

The change isn’t selling people’s data, just giving us more control over what they know and, at times, telling you the information is being used by someone else.

The data used by Telstra and the ABS is far worse than anything Facebook did because they turned people’s phones into tracking devices without anyone’s permission. How can this be? Who approved of this and did a minister know about it?

I have no problem with using technology to get better information about how we use our cities, but we have to be asked first.

Thousands of people would gladly sign up to be tracked if they got free calls or extra data. But we should all be very concerned when the phone company doesn’t ask and the government is willing to pay to follow us. THIS weekend, there’s a music festival in Canberra and no doubt people will take drugs while they are there. The drugs are clearly illegal and the event promoter openly tells people on their website not to do anything illegal while at the event.

But in an Australian first, people will be able to test the drugs they plan to take to make sure they are not poisoned.

Advocates say it’s all about harm minimisation, but it’s hard to not see how this isn’t tacit approval to break the law.

Ironically, if I wanted to light up a cigar at the event, it’s banned. You can’t consume a legal product yet you can test the illegal one before you take it.

The endless argument in favour of “pill testing” is to make sure people don’t die because of the drugs they plan to take, regardless of the law.

But think about this, if someone tests the pill, but they have a bad reaction, who are they going to go after for compensation?

The logic of letting people break the law safely doesn’t exist anywhere else.

We don’t have roads where you can ignore the speed limit, why should we send any message that illegal drugs are fine.

Ironically, if I wanted to light up a cigar at the event, it’s banned. You can’t consume a legal product yet you can test the illegal one before you take it.