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October 24, 2008
The op-eds in The Australian by Michael Costa, the former Treasurer of NSW, give us an insight into the mentality of the Right of the NSW Labor Party - (currently headed by Obeid, Tripodi, Rozendaal) that now run the clapped out administration called the NSW Government.
Costa's latest on public infrastructure adopts the stance, and frame of, neo-liberal economics to have a go at those who advocate a shift to a more sustainable economy in our public culture. Costa says:
The growth of the "sustainability industry" is closely correlated with the emergence of green politics, particularly the anthropomorphic global warming religion of which Carr is attempting to become Australia's high priest...There is a tendency among the more extreme public transport ideologues to adopt a "Field of Dreams" approach to public infrastructure projects: build it and they will come. It is also true that many of these people are urban planners. The availability of appropriate public transport in dense urban environments is a logistical necessity.
These urban planners aim to to shape the urban environment around their personal green worldview that is ideologically based.
Spooner
Costa rightly says that the real debate is about what type of public transport, where it should be provided and at what price. Who could disagree other than add that the investment ought to foster the shift to a more sustainable mode of urban life.
Then he says that;
most urban planners have an elitist disdain for market-based land use outcomes. They are particularly hostile to the lifestyle preferences of Rudd's "working families", witness their hostility to the McMansion.
Maybe the urban planners are critical of McMansion style suburbia because that urban mode of life is not sustainable in terms of energy and transport in the context of climate change?
That is not good enough for Costa. Such an approach to urban planning and public transport provision for him is ideologically based as the urban planners views on global warming influence their urban planning approach. He illustrates this with reference to Peter Newman, a former NSW Carr government-appointed sustainability commissioner, and present board member of Infrastructure Australia. It is the scepticism about climate change ("the science is not in") that underpins Costa's antagonism to sustainability, public transport, urban planning, and urban planning elites advocating so-called urban villages.
Costa, no doubt, would see this negative stance as continuing his campaign to challenge Labor shibboleths after another begun with removal of tariffs, the deregulation of the economy, ditching centralised wage fixing and the embrace international competitiveness. He has little time for environmental concerns, talks in terms of the environmental McCarthyism of the Greens and public transport ideologues, and made his last stand as Treasurer on energy deregulation.
Costa, apparently is not an ideologue, despite his neo-liberalism and his view that it is not only 'elitists' that are pushing for more public transport.
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I have a doomsday scenario for such low density cities such in Australia.
Current modes of transprt are unsustainable yet to build a better form of public transport will bankrupt the state and will ALWAYS drain the public purse to an intolerable level.
It will not be a pretty place (to paraphrase Joh Bjelke!!).