Some of Austen's comments suggest that he doesn't have a handle on much at
all, including the urban planning that lies behind the transport network,
while others (trains that don't fit in stations, ferries that don't fit
under bridges) are Labor scoring points that are complete lies. The whole
piece is a partisan rant. Menadue is just as bad.
Tony P
On Friday, 24 March 2023 at 12:51:56 UTC+11 Tony Galloway wrote:
> I think he has a better handle on it than you, mate. But as Matthew said,
> public transport is not the big ticket item many are voting on here.
>
> After fire, floods, fish kills, mass extinctions, moral panic inciting
> culture wars and relentless assaults on civil liberties to stymy the
> protests against the vile environmental depredations this government
> perpetrates, an increasing proportion of the informed and aware electorate
> has had enough of “business as usual”, from both parties trying to win a
> majority based on promising more of the same.
>
> All driven by bogus Ponzi cancer economic ideology.
>
> This malignant ideology is rapidly losing its social licence as the crisis
> of environmental degradation and species extinction grows exponentially
> with no respite. The demographic of ignorant bogan coprophiles that
> supports it is rapidly ageing and dying, and those now reaching voting age
> are all too aware of the world of pollution and species extinction, both
> flora and fauna, they are inheriting.
>
> They are aware of the noxious substances from micro plastics to PFAS
> chemicals that permeate and poison everything. They have had a gutful of
> seeing clear felling of koala habitat for the profit of greed driven
> sociopaths building slums for totally unsustainable population growth. They
> are sick of being confronted with a housing market that only benefits
> wealthy spiv speculators and greedy, self entitled landlords.
>
> They are increasingly abandoning both conservative, right wing,
> intrinsically corrupt parties that have dominated the political arena.
> Young people, and their parents, who go to music festivals are sick and
> tired of being sexually groped and assaulted by violent child molesting
> cops searching for the recreational drugs they enjoy, sooled on to them by
> a government where the last police minister was previously a shill for
> liquor and gambling, and the current police minister has a brother charged
> with dealing large quantities of crystal meth, and a father who killed
> someone while drunk driving. Public sector workers are sick of dealing with
> low pay and crap working conditions while having to put up with overpaid
> deadshit bosses.
>
> They are aware that Perrottet’s cashless gambling card is just a Lynton
> Crosby ”dead cat” thrown on the table to try to distract attention from the
> serial atrocities committed by these criminals in their term in office. As
> Victor Dominello revealed on Four Corners this was a very late conversion
> on the road to the Damascus of gambling reform, and weak as piss, with no
> assurance it will happen. The liberals even preselected a poker machine
> club manager to run in Wakehurst, which, along with the crap bus services,
> is likely to lose the seat for them.
>
> The educated bourgeois in wealthy suburbs and environmentally blighted
> regions are abandoning the liberals, leaving them and the nationals to a
> diminishing cohort of white nazi racists, small business wage thieves,
> christofascist pederasts, bogan ignoramuses and incestuous, inbred bumpkins
> and rustics.
>
> As the Midnight Oil song says : “Your dream world is just about to end.”
>
> I’m sure by Sunday you’ll be having a really big sook about the election
> result, along with those who thought the ALP deserved a majority.
>
> We will see.
>
> Tony
>
> On 24 Mar 2023, at 11:28, TP histor...@...> wrote:
>
> The ignorance of that John Austen about public transport is staggering.
> How fortunate that he's no longer in Infrastructure Australia.
>
> Population policy is in the hands of the Federal government. If there's a
> policy of growth, then the states have no choice but to plan for it and
> build the infrastructure and services for it, hopefully with some
> assistance from the Feds, but otherwise go it alone like NSW has. There are
> two ways to go on that. Either you can plow ahead at full speed like the
> present NSW government has in the last 11 years, or you can make a lot of
> announcements then do nothing, like the previous Labor government did for
> 16 years, creating a gigantic backlog.
>
> What would a new Labor government actually have to do for public transport
> if elected? Basically, sit on its hands and relax because the present
> government has set it up for them. Three metro lines are locked into
> contracts and underway, with enough work till 2030. Bus contracts have
> recently been renewed and locked in until 2030 afaik. Sydney suburban
> trains will have a heap more capacity when the Bankstown metro conversion
> opens in 2024, so Labor will be able to claim credit for improved suburban
> train services enabled by the Coalition. All of the currently-planned light
> rail lines are either in operation or heading towards completion. Stage 2
> of Parramatta light rail has been kicked off, with Labor's only substantive
> public transport proposal, motivated by a desire to win the seat of
> Parramatta, being to complete it. I think that will be thrown into doubt
> when they discover they will have to breach their Australian-made policy
> when no tram manufacturer will manufacture a handful of trams locally, so
> they'll turn it into a busway.
>
> There have also been huge fleet renewals and service improvements over the
> last decade, so Labor won't have to worry about those, but no doubt will
> unpick some of it. The metro and the many new motorways that have been
> built in the last decade have not cost the taxpayer anything, so, since
> Labor doesn't believe in giving taxpayers a bit of relief, either they'll
> be borrowing or hitting taxpayers ($1.1 billion for roads from taxpayers
> promised already) to do anything new, which means, on past record, they'll
> do nothing.
>
> Anything actually new from Labor that the Coalition hasn't already set up
> for them? Buses - lots more of them, including wondrous "BRT". Drivers will
> be miraculously plucked from the sky by a working party. Plus cancellation
> of business cases for two important additional metro lines, plus motorway
> toll relief and demerit point reductions for drivers to encourage them to
> drive more instead of using public transport. That's it folks - a luxury
> cruise for Labor, a few ribbon cuttings on Coalition projects and a rough
> ride for taxpayers. What an easy life for Labor.
>
> Tony P
>
>
>
> On Friday, 24 March 2023 at 08:54:46 UTC+11 Matthew Geier wrote:
>
>> The problem is that BOTH major parties are believers in the infinite
>> growth economic model and both are desperately trying to grow the
>> population faster than it's possible to build supporting infrastructure.
>> Never mind the consumption of finite resources (particularly water) all
>> this extra population will consume.
>>
>> I still don't know what jobs they expect all this extra population to
>> perform given that everything is automating as fast as they possibly can
>> deploy it - and recent advances in AI technology are moving into the white
>> collar workforce too, after the robots took all the blue-collar jobs.
>>
>>
>> Given that a 'universal income' is also not something they are
>> entertaining either - just where is all this extra population going to get
>> the money to pay for their consumption that feeds the great economic cycle ?
>>
>> Our favoured public transport mode is just a minor side show in the big
>> game.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 24/3/23 08:23, Greg Sutherland wrote:
>>
>>
>> https://johnmenadue.com/sydney-transport-job-ahead-for-labor-links/
>>
>>
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