Driving around rural Australia on crook roads is bad enough, but following another long trip in the car, I am over increasingly mindless government interference in our lives.
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Like most farming families, we have to make 400-kilometre round trips if we need a specialist or any decent medical help.
The three-hour trips become more frustrating as you drive through countless small country towns every 30 kilometres or so, slowing to 60km an hour.
Adding to the annoyance on the road is watching the huge waste of our tax dollars regulating traffic at road repair works.
If we ran our farms as inefficiently, we would all go broke.
My frustration came to a head the other day when I received a notice in the mail advising me I had been pinged by one of those sneaky roadside cars doing 58km/h at Dunedoo.
Now Dunedoo is no doubt a good place, but why the hell do they have 50km/h streets?
So much for NSW government putting signs up warning us where they are.
I cannot help but wonder how many city-based experts with absolutely no knowledge of country driving sitting around a table come up with these you-beaut rules and regulations.
It is not unusual to come into towns with 80, then 70, then 60, then 50 signs. Until you hit a school and then it is 40.
I read that Ashfield Council in Sydney now has 30km/h speed limits. So if you follow their logic of reducing to 30km/h, it is only time before we get to 20km/h, then 10km/h, then what, Shanks's pony?
Is there an argument for country drivers who are forced to drive thousands of kilometres each year to get more driving points than their city-based cousins?
Very importantly, I understand the rationale for curbing speeding to reduce accidents and death but the plethora of change in speed limits and slowing vehicles down as technology enables them to go faster is a bit perplexing.
In the old days, when you came upon road works, there was a bloke with a stop-go sign who directed traffic.
I came upon the best example of a public waste of taxpayers' money recently travelling to Bundaberg in Queensland.
First up, we had a traffic light which you would think would be enough, but no, we had a bloke on a walkie-talkie, I presume to tell the light when to change.
We also had a bloke with a walkie-talkie halfway along the road repair.
To top it off, we had a bloke in a truck with flashing lights we had to follow.
Now I am no road safety expert, but surely, by any measure, that is a massive overkill, to say nothing of the gross waste of money.
The Australian economy has been so good for so long, with all three levels of government raking in the funds.
With an expected recession on the horizon, we can only hope as government income shrinks, we might start to get some efficiencies and perhaps go back to one person with a lollipop sign.
Ah, for the good old days.
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