And the way it's going to be paid for is by doubling our water bills. Which, of course, will hit the poor the hardest.
Most of us will scarcely notice the extra charges. But disadvantaged families — the one in 10 Australians already dependent on welfare agency relief to make ends meet — are going to be hit very hard indeed.
Paying for it by means of progressive taxation like income tax, so the rich pay more than the poor? What an outrageous idea. Communist!
And will this publicly paid-for project remain in public hands? Of course it won't. It'll be another of those ridiculous public/private partnership deals.
You know, the ones in which the government sends some public servant boob in to reach agreement (the brief: REACH AN AGREEMENT NO MATTER WHAT THEY DEMAND, as long as it doesn't seem to cost too much out of the budget) against well-paid hardline negotiators (see: CityLink, Southern Cross Station, EastLink, Anything Else That's Been Built Since Kennett - And During His Reign Too). The ones in which the inevitable result is that we're signed up to a contract filled with hideous little clauses that become legislation (see the Melbourne CityLink Act 1995). We've agreed to shut down competing publicly-owned roads in case they take away from the profits of this shiny new private freeway (large chunks of which used to be in public hands)? Well, of course. What possible objection could we have to that?
The ones where we take the risk, and put in most of the money, and some private company gets to rake us over a barrel for the next thirty years.
Does anyone really think the desalination plant will be any different?
Obviously the reasoning behind PPPs is that the government is terrified of not having a surplus at budget time. People think that a good government is one which taxes more than it spends, and never borrows for any reason whatsoever. Borrowing to build infrastructure? Apparently that's not allowed. Sure, pretty much every successful business borrows continuously to grow. Almost all of us borrow money to buy a house. Does that make us financially-irresponsible cretins? Of course it doesn't - and it's the same with government. If a company refused to borrow to expand, it'd stay small and unsuccessful forever. If a person refused to borrow to buy a house, they'd keep renting until they died.
Of course it's the same with governments. But whilst we've got this "surplus = fiscally responsible" idiocy in our heads, they're going to keep signing us up to these PPP things - ridiculous deals in which we pay almost as much as if we'd just built the things ourselves, but someone else benefits at the end - instead.
And I have an issue with being forced to buy stuff for private consortia. As far as I'm concerned, if we're all going to be paying for it anyway, we (as a community) should fricking well own it at the end. Imagine if we had a government that understood that radical concept.
