WE’RE WORLD CLASS AT POLITICAL BICKERING, BOTTOM OF CLASS AT GETTING THINGS DONE

WHY is it that as a country we often make a real hash of major infrastructure? For a smart country, we sometimes excel at being dumb.

Very much back in focus at the moment is the need to secure our extreme excess of water up north and pipe it either down south or inland, and also the major road/s connecting Australia’s third largest (and growing) city, Brisbane, with Australia’s sixth largest (and growing) city, the Gold Coast.

Where’s the vision? Bureaucrats and politicians will roll out the good old reliable line, we don’t have the money.

Sure, that didn’t stop in excess of $75 billion going into the NBN – and hasn’t that worked a treat! Or finding what, another $400-plus million, to build a light rail to Gold Coast Airport when buses already servicing that facility drive around half empty at best most of the time.

No, lack of vision and stupidity get in the road more than a good public test case or a sensible funding objective.

And of course, it creates one of the most watched and enthralling political games we excel at – both sides of Parliament, or state and federal governments, blaming each other for lack of funding. Boy, we are bloody good at that. World class in fact.

We should have in every Australian parliament a Minister for Blaming the Other Side.

Might have a run myself. I’d be outstanding at that!

Building a second M1 or finishing the overused one we already have is a prime homegrown example. That debate has gone on for an eternity.

The piece left off between Reedy Creek and the crossing of Currumbin Creek is a prime example – God help you if you need to commute every day on this antiquated and junk piece of infrastructure commonly known as National Highway 1.

Or how about the poor folk who daily must queue for stupid lengths of time just to get on an exit/entry ramp to travel the M1? Probably if you added up all the petrol and time they have wasted now for many years, you could have built all the upgrades, had change for a few new and much needed parks or ovals, and even kept a Greens politician (you know my views of them) happy for nine seconds with all the carbon pollution that would have been saved.

Where’s the priority, where’s the vision? You were happy to open these areas up to new growth suburbs and corridors, just not to actually move the residents between the two major cities servicing the same.

I discussed this with my dog the other day and he could work out this was going to be a disaster, so how come

our leaders can’t work it out?

Don’t worry, I have told my dog he can’t run in the next election.

But here we are, years on, lots of argument, lots of debate but a complete failure of a major piece of infrastructure linking the two cities.

Then of course we have had the massive wet weather event up north.

Water, water, everywhere! Well unfortunately, not everywhere but certainly in Central and North Queensland.

Australia doesn’t have a water problem. We have a water distribution problem.

Nearly every single year Central and North Queensland get hit with one or more major cyclones or massive tropical depressions that literally dump dozens of “Sydney Harbours’’ on to that part of our great state. The same is true of course in the west, in the northern part of that large state.

And here again, for so very long, we have been discussing storing that water and via pipelines and pumping stations moving it out to inland Queensland, or on to the head of the Diamantina river system to keep water flowing right through the western part of Queensland down into the inland river systems in NSW and beyond – a real and sustained lifeline for so many Australians and regional communities.

It’s not an original idea. It was first muted by the talented Australian engineer John Bradfield in the late 1930s. Other similar schemes have also been put forward over the years. It’s a big vision.

Just imagine if we had undertaken this project, even in part, all those years ago. It would have paid for itself so many times over we would have had spare money to fix the M1.

But more to the point, we would also have achieved so much more than good dollars and sense strategic spending. We would have spared major parts of Queensland from flooding on numerous occasions or at least certainly minimised it.

We would have provided jobs, towns with real economic growth as the farm and food gateway of Australia, while limiting the annual concern of drought.

We would have saved billions in drought costs for a massive part of our great country.

The list goes on and on. It’s certainly not rocket science and yes, it’s massively costly. But look at the benefits, both to the bottom line and to the Australian community in rural areas and the big cities.

No one talks big ideas anymore, no one has vision, no one wants to have a serious big debate. We continue to get totally bogged down in so much political crap we don’t seem to be capable anymore of taking on an almighty challenge. Why not? Are we scared, lazy, stupid or so locked into playing safe we don’t want to have a real go?

Or is it more important to just talk up all this PC garbage and not worry about real futures for real communities?

Meanwhile another 50plus Sydney Harbours empty into the ocean, having caused massive heartache, loss of life, loss of opportunity and devastated communities, not to mention all the valuable top soil carried out to sea to silt up the Great Barrier Reef.

Sorry, this isn’t a smart country, it’s a dumb one!