in: blairtrewin; blairtrewin > 2007-08-01;
| # Posted 2007-08-01 15:46:20 | |
| Oxoman: | CRB was responsible for all highways. There were a lot of fiddles with funding. I recall roads funding being used to build a railway car park in suburban Melbourne. |
| # Posted 2007-08-02 07:40:24 | |
| blairtrewin: | Not surprised to see cost-shifting in government is an ancient phenomenon. I got to see a nice example in outback Queensland of the uses of different pots of money - the highway from Winton to Mount Isa (which is part of the main Brisbane-Darwin route) wasn't sealed until around 1990, decades after the relatively minor Winton-Boulia and Boulia-Mount Isa roads, because the latter was paid for under a federal program directed at facilitating the movement of beef cattle to the nearest railhead.
Reading the report of the Royal Commission into the 1939 bushfires is also pretty enlightening as to how many of the less desirable aspects of early 21st century governance were alive and well many years ago - turf wars between departments, fear of legal liability being used as an excuse for inaction, non-enforcement of OHS and environmental laws under pressure from business interests who complained that they cost too much...(There's also a wonderful line in the report about some witnesses who "contrary to advice, gave evidence which was clearly truthful"). |
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