Australia needs real infrastructure, not virtual reality

Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  16^th of April 2009

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au
 

Australia needs real infrastructure, not virtual reality

The $43 billion Kevin Rudd plans to spend on a high-speed broadband network would pay for enough large-scale water infrastructure projects like the Bradfield Scheme, and the Clarence River Scheme, to drought-proof most of Australia and fully replenish the Murray-Darling Basin, CEC leader Craig Isherwood pointed out today.

“Real infrastructure creates real wealth and generates real jobs through real industries,” Mr Isherwood said.

“Australia is in a real economic breakdown crisis, and we desperately needs real infrastructure to fix it: we need visionary, Snowy Mountains Scheme-style water projects; railway projects like a Melbourne to Darwin fast-freight train line, an Australian Ring Railway and a super-fast, magnetically-levitated rail link between our major cities; nuclear power generators taking advantage of our own huge reserves of uranium and thorium, and utilising the modern, meltdown-proof, modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technology (MHTGR).

“This kind of infrastructure will enable us to re-industrialise our economy by creating more opportunities for agricultural and manufacturing production.

“Building the projects will create hundreds of thousands of jobs directly, and set up industries that will employ millions.

“Compare this kind of infrastructure, to Rudd’s broadband scheme,” Mr Isherwood continued.

“Broadband has its place, but in the context of the current crisis it is only virtual infrastructure, to speed up virtual communication in our increasingly virtual economy.

“The only people who could compare it to the Snowy Mountains Scheme are the disturbingly growing army of virtual reality zombies, for whom the world is comprised of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the financial markets.

“Our Prime Minister is running Australia like a virtual reality zombie.

“This is behavioural economics garbage, and as a nation we must drop it, and retreat back into reality.

Mr Isherwood concluded by calling on Australians to look into the CEC’s plans for 18 major water projects, and other great infrastructure proposals, first published in the 2001 New Citizen special report, “The Infrastructure Road to Recovery”

“This is how we’ll get out of the depression,” he said.