From Newsgroup: aus.rail
On Thu, 19 May 2022 09:58:29 +1000, Matthew Geier <
matthew@sleeper.apana.org.au> wrote:
On 16/5/22 06:00, Petzl wrote:
Sydney/Melbourne would of had that in the 1990's at no cost to tax
payer if it wasn't for Labor governments!
Not quite 'no cost to the tax payer'. The promoter wanted fat tax >concessions. The politicians got rolled by their own treasury who were
not going to give up the opportunity to tax the new company.
Here a conclusion from 1991
I THE LAST LUNCHEON: Alan Castleman, the VFT project chief, reflects
on what might have been before a last luncheon with staff yesterday.
By IAN DAVIS,
Finance Editor
The Very Fast Train closes its project office in Canberra today,
ending any immediate prospects that the visionary S10 biilion rail
linkbetween Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne will proceed. The VFT
consortium chief executive, Alan Castleman, a BHP senior executive on secondment to the project, who will return to a new position with the
Big Australian once he has finished folding the tent for the project,
proclaims himself "not gloomy" about what has happened, but admits to
being somewhat frustrated.
Mr Castleman has no doubts about what has killed the project off u at
least for the time being. "Lack of commitment. They [the Government]
didn't try and And a way through the problems,*' he says. "Inthis
country we are too problem oriented. As a nation we are too inclined
to look at the problems rather than the solutions," he says.
Mr Castleman says government refusal to give any concrete support for
the concept has killed the project off before it was possible to know
whether it was feasible.
Mr Castleman says it was not just tax issues which killed the project.
Equally important was the inability of the four governments u NSW,
ACT, Victoria and the ACT u to agree on the process for getting
approvals.
There were, he says, elements of support and opposition to the project
in all governments but in none of the four governments with which the
project dealt was the balance so overwhelmingly in favour of the
project and so constructive in its approach as it was in the ACT.
However, Mr Castleman strongly criticised the Federal Treasury for its
narrow, tax-oriented views. Treasury lacked any ability to consider
the wider macro-economic consequences of projects and their long-term
effect on government reve nue and the economy generally. Mr Castleman
rejects suggestions that reluctance by three of the consortium's four
members u Elders (now called Fosters Brewing), TNT and Kumagai Gumi u
to proceed with funding the project was at least as important as the Government's refusal to find solutions to the tax disincentives faced
by large-scale projects in Australia and the lack of any agreed
decision-making process for a major project requiring agreement from
four governments. "We told the Government that when we got agreement
[from them) we would get the {new] partners. Potential partners would
not commit themselves until there was a clear path ahead."
--
Petzl
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ThatAs the modern legislative business of parliament.
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However, when we undertake the same process in parliament.
we call it lobbying.
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