Infrastructure the runaway favourite for budget

Tuesday, 12 May 2009 18:21 | Written by Graham Young

The least popular initiatives are giving individuals money to go out and spend, whether by direct handouts or tax cuts. 60% rated tax cuts 7th or 6th on their list of priorities, and 62% gave the same ranking to the direct handout.

Tightening of tax concessions was also popular, with 73% putting it in their top 4 priorities.

However, analysis of priorities against voting intention shows significant variations between Labor, Liberal and Greens.

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0 #1 Comment — Ben Rose 2009-06-05 11:07

Good thumbs up for infrastructure. Problem here in WA is that the Liberal Govt is not proactive and didn't come up with 50% funding that would have got us Fed funding from the Infrastructure Australia Fund. There are significant sorely needed projects here that would have qualified such as fixing our crumbling freight rail.

0 #2 Comment — Benedict Pope 2009-06-05 19:51

What ever happened to your WA man's plan to carve a canal from top to bottom of the state? That should be enough to absorb the entire fund...

As with the sale of Tesltra, and the shameful waste of public monies under the guise of 'land repair' and 'technowhizzery ' for 'the bush', these 'infrastructure funds' will be wasted in hastily conceived plans to 'spend money', especially money in ALP electorates a la 'white board' and ditto from Howard during his shameful years...another Kelly as I vaguely recall?

Here in Toowoomba we need a bypass (a religious bypass would be great but in the absence of that a road one) to take up the hundreds of B doubles that roar through our city carrying coal from west of here to the port in Brisbane.

Any intelligent government would have required a train line to serve the literally dozens of mines and gas fields opening up here, ripping up our farm land and polluting land, air and our city, but not the Qld Gov't and not the Commonwealth either.

Sadly, we do not qualify for this bypass, being in Macfarlap's electorate, and he failed miserably to bring it when he sat on the Howard front bench for years, doing sweet FA for Groom.

These billions, of course, should have been spent during the Howard era, not now.

0 #3 Comment — Bob Manton 2009-06-05 22:06

Don't worry about a bypass or any other "new" road building. There will not be enough fuel to run anything much on them soon and we will not be able to buy any from abroad. The Chinese will have grabbed any spare oil going within five years and we will not have converted to rail with all this money to spend.

0 #4 Comment — Colin Smith 2009-06-06 03:06

Note the remarkable difference between the Greens and the other two parties in the 'Other' line.

Obviously the Greens voters want infrastructure too - but of the "green new deal" sort to provide "green jobs" in a new clean, green sustainable economy.

There is far less of this on offer in the stimulus packages than there should be, and a good deal of what little there is is there because the Greens bargained for it in the Senate.

0 #5 Comment — Bartleby Psmith 2009-06-06 06:22

Rather than rail or bypasses, Toowoombarites should think ahead and build port facilities!

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