Shoulders droop as Victorian decision makers, again, misunderstand the future

by Robert McLean

C

ontradictory values abound and the emphasis on one ahead of the other makes my shoulders droop.

Two pages in today’s Melbourne Age don’t directly discuss the contradiction, but adjoining stories certainly highlight our confused thinking and illustrate that Victoria’s decision makers have little or no understanding what we should be doing to prepare ourselves for a decidedly different future.

One story is about the creation of just over 120km of highway from Ballarat to Stawell at the stated cost of $662.3 million and which an accompanying picture shows is carving its way through rural Victoria, forever scaring the countryside.

Worsening the physical damage is the fact that the builders, VicRoads will cut down nearly 1000 large old-growth trees, four times more than it originally predicted.

And so while Victorians are prepared to pay nearly $700 million on providing a facility that regardless of how you “cut and dice” the project, it is about public money being spent on a project that is inherently about servicing private enterprise.

The adjoining story tells readers that a State Government plan to give Melburnians a 12-month trial on all night public transport will cost $30 million more than the originally estimated $50 million.

That is for public transport and appears a piddling amount compared to the massive sums being spent on what is effectively a bonus for private enterprise.

Sustainability, however you interpret and apply this frequently misused term, doesn’t appear to get a look in.

More than a decade of listening and reading illustrates that the building of a major roadway clearly contradicts what it is we need to do to prepare Victoria for what will be a energy-poor future, certainly in terms of machines powered by fossil fuels.

Many would argue, and unquestionably with intellectual authority, commitment and force, that we will need the roads for the coming electric cars and they would point, for example to such vehicles as the Tesla.

The enthusiasm for such vehicles if misplaced for they are still “individual”, resource intensive and although powered by renewable energy, they do nought about resolving the present “space” difficulties faced by towns and cities throughout the world.

Beyond that these electric cars and still about individualism and status, the two human traits, encouraged by the present market-driven economy, and which are playing a key role in the worsening of global warming.

Read the story discussing the highway duplication – “Nine hundred giant native trees felled in VicRoads planning blunder” and the adjoining story about public transport costs – “$30m cost blowout in 24-hour weekend public transport trial to begin in January”.