CANADA CAN DO IT
AFTER returning from Canada I was bemused to read two letters regarding the Inland Rail Project (“Great idea, but…” and “Do the sums on road”). Canada is a country as sparsely populated as Australia with a population only 12 million more, but has a rail system (19th century romantic) that is keeping the country alive, running the full breadth of Canada. I never saw a freight train with less than 150 wagons, all double stacked with containers, or grain trains with 180 wagons.
Australia’s north-south equivalent in the east is the Newell Hwy with B-doubles running at a rate of one every 50 seconds. The highways have been built on the original stock routes, designed for the movement of livestock from water to water regardless of climate condition. The railways have been planned and constructed on primarily safe ground.
I am not an economist, but surely a single rail line must be far cheaper to construct and maintain than a multi-lane highway, a railway that with each train could move the equivalent of as many as 150 B-doubles. Parkes now has the capability to send goods wagons north, south, east and west – a system that should have been operating for probably the past 60-plus years.
Canada has done it, despite winter snow and the ever present threat of landslides, none of which we have.
JAMES MASLIN,
Caragabal.
FLOGGED OFF, GOUGE BEGINS
THE “flogging off” of the historic and successful grower-owned Batlow Apple Co-operative to majority foreign-owned entity, Ausfarm Fresh, ticks all of the boxes in the ongoing tragedy that besets rural Australia (Batlow apple growers hand over the reins).
We seem to take delight in the disempowerment of producers and the creation of serfdom and third world enslavement.
The Batlow Co-op producer members have typically fallen for the big end of town spin and financial inducement and there is every reason to expect the new corporate structure will see the rapid removal of the remaining grower directors and their supposed benefactor will gouge them with impunity in the ruthless pursuit of shareholder dividends.
JOCK MUNRO,
“The Brae”,
Rankin's Springs.
FUNDING THE REGIONS
YOU do not need to travel far to see that communities need upgrades to their local infrastructure. Better roads, well-maintained schools, improved hospitals, water security and more sports and community facilities are needed in every corner of NSW.
That’s why I called on the Nationals Leader, John Barilaro, to support Labor’s plan to invest 100 per cent of the proceeds from the nationalisation of Snowy Hydro back into regional NSW.
This investment could create jobs, grow the economy and improve the quality of life of all who live in regional NSW.
I was disappointed the deputy premier rejected this idea.
Instead, he thinks we should invest only 30pc into our regions, once again giving Sydney more than the lion’s share.
Throughout its history the Snowy Hydro has been a great example of the wealth creation capacity of regional infrastructure.
As it enters its next chapter, under complete ownership of the Australian government, it is only fair the benefits are re-invested back in our regions.
LUKE FOLEY,
NSW Labor leader.
FIBRE OPTIC SHORTCUT
CONGRATULATIONS to Queensland’s Burke Shire Council for its vision to improve communications infrastructure now and for the future. The Doomadgee to Burketown Fibre Link Project is officially “live”.
It delivers high-speed broadband, 4G mobile and public wi-fi to Burketown for the first time.
The Burke Shire Council secured almost $2 million in funding for the fibre link project through the federal government’s National Stronger Regions Fund.
Regional Development Australia (RDA) supported the council’s bid.
The RDA committee’s Regional Roadmap 2015-18 identifies investment into communications infrastructure as one of its top four economic development priorities.
RDA will conduct workshops with councils and not-for-profit organisations to help secure funding through the Building Better Regions Fund. First-round funding announcements are expected soon and the second opens later in the year.
GLENYS SCHUNTER,
RDA Townsville and North West Queensland chief executive.
