ABC arts funding:
Sharon Grey writes: Re “Outsourcing the arts at Aunty: the problem with commissioning” (Wednesday, Item 2). One of John Howard’s gifts that seems to keep on giving appears to have been the appointment of Maurice Newman to chair the ABC in January 2007. Should anyone care enough in future to write about Aunty’s history during this tenure, it would not surprise me in the least to learn that the de facto brief has been to ‘Channel Ten-isise’ the organisation.
The line “the recently appointed ABC Controller Brendan Dahill has been given five years to turn the network’s demographic around from a majority of over-65s to an audience from 18-40” is a case in point. While continuing to dumb-down the ABC alone will see the older age group off in my opinion, the demographic question remains: because the largest-ever demographic bulge in Australia’s history — the baby boomers — is turning 65 this year, and thereby standing to substantially enhance the ABC’s ‘majority … over-65s’ audience, why would the ABC, during the next five years, seek to turn-off the largest audience slice that it would ever have?
If this is a case of trying to have one’s cake (via assuming the loyalty of the so-called ‘natural constituency’ of the older demographics) and eat it too (trying to cater for the young across diversifying media platforms), one must ask why? Why is the ABC chasing an ‘unnatural constituency’ and aping Australia’s commercial media instead of playing to its strengths? Strengths, that will, in fact, become stronger during not only the next five years, but the next twenty years.
I, for one, don’t mind paying my eight — or eighty, for that matter — cents worth for an ABC of calibre. If the Newman strategy, however, is to make people begrudge paying anything for pap, well, that’s another matter, isn’t it?
High speed trains:
Bryan Nye, chief executive officer, Australasian Railway Association writes: Re. “The high-speed rail project and the fairytales that surround it” (yesterday, item 3). It is interesting that Ben Sandilands seems to be the only person in Australia not excited by the prospect of High Speed Rail in Australia. In his article yesterday, Ben lamented about the “implausible capital costs” of the proposed high speed rail network. He said “How come the entire rail infrastructure could cost between $61 billion and $108 billion in today’s dollars when the estimates for extending M4 motorway to the edges of the main CBD with a branch to Port Botany and Sydney Airport is only $12-15 billion? The answer to this lies in his question. This is because it is the “entire rail infrastructure”, one that will open up the East Coast of Australia. This “entire rail infrastructure” is more than 1600kms long not 46km in length like the current M4 or 60-70km like the “future” M4. Ben also did not recognise the fact that since 1985, Australian Governments have spent more than $293 billion on roads. This spending has brought us the problems of today; road congestion, high level of carbon emissions and rising road fatalities.
A High Speed Rail network is an infrastructure that will dramatically change where we live, work and how we travel. Through this network, we will be able to travel from Sydney to Brisbane or Melbourne in 3 hours, Sydney to Canberra in less than one hour and Brisbane to Gold Coast in 15 minutes. It will also help reduce road congestion and carbon emissions. Access Economics recently found that one passenger train can take 525 cars off the road. This is 3.2 million vehicle kilometres per trainload removed from our roads each year. The same passenger train also reduces carbon emissions by the same amount as planting 320 hectares of trees. Clearly, rail has “proven” green credentials. Another study prepared by North American economists found that electrified high speed rail is about 9 times more energy efficient than private road vehicles or domestic jet travel. Rail only emits about one-ninth as much pollution as air or road. In 2036, it is likely that high speed rail would be even more energy efficient. There will be technology that allows us to produce electricity solely from natural and renewable sources.
The benefits of a high speed rail network along Australia’s East Coast go on. The high speed rail network will create more jobs, rejuvenate regional Australia, provide people with greater access to employment opportunities, increase land value and promote social inclusion. To put these benefits alone into a dollar value would be astronomical.
Furthermore, in his speech at the Infrastructure Partnerships Australia Conference yesterday, the Hon Anthony Albanese said that Sydney Airport will not be able to cope with future growth. He is right. We will need a second Sydney airport. At present, the Sydney to Melbourne air corridor is the 5th busiest in the world and Sydney to Brisbane is 7th. High Speed Rail links between Sydney, Newcastle and Canberra could remove the need for a second Sydney airport by providing Newcastle and Canberra as overflow airports. Further, as the Government’s Study has found, High Speed Rail encourages people to travel by a more environmentally friendly and energy efficient mode of transport. It has the ability to shift about 50% from air travel by 2036. This is a significant achievement.
Air corridors are diminishing around the world. There are no longer flights from Paris to Brussels and between Paris and London, 90% of people travel by high speed rail. High Speed Rail is being constructed and actively planned throughout the world, including in the USA, UK, Argentina, Poland, Morocco, Turkey, Iran, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and India. In Italy, High Speed Rail is travelling at 360kph, connecting Rome to Naples and Milan and in Japan, the government is about to launch a High Speed Rail program that allows customers to travel at 500kph. Clearly it is the way of the future.
Overall, the benefits of high speed rail far outweigh its costs. The High Speed Rail Study and the effort of those who were involved should be commended and not criticised. Australia needs to move towards the future and not continue to live in the past. High Speed Rail is the Future. The facts stack up and those who are blinded by the dollars.
End of the retail boom:
John Hunwick writes: Re. “Dick Smith: get used to pain retailers, time to stop the growth fetish” (yesterday, item 2). Getting the economy back on track is just postponing the inevitable. In recent years with increasing consumption our community has sped towards the limits to growth as measured by material goods and non-renewable energy use. Even as we argue, most of it illogically, towards the necessary air pollution tax (misnamed the carbon tax) we still seem to be oblivious to peak oil — the time rapidly approaching when the amount of oil available deceases no matter what, and the price increases correspondingly. The fact that oil and coal should be phased out within a generation is too horrendous to even think about for most people. Now that more efficient ways of retailing are available that too will be quickly adopted by consumers, as Dick Smith and other are pointing out. If bookshops are disappearing, and my wife is buying clothes and shoes online at about 30% or less of the shop price, the sooner the changeover comes the more savings there will be.
Nuclear interests
Geoff Stennett writes: Re. James Eggins’ response (comments, yesterday) to Ben Sandilands article on the Fukushima. He talks of “journalistic ethics” — would it not be ethical of him to mention in passing his interest in the matter? From his employer’s website:
James Eggins has been involved in marketing and sales administration in the uranium business for 25 years. Mr Eggins began his career with Queensland Mines Limited which operated the Nabarlek uranium project in the Northern Territory. Mr Eggins subsequently worked on the Kintyre Project with CRA Limited before joining WMC Limited in 1989 where he spent fifteen years in various marketing and commercial roles with the Olympic Dam business unit. Mr Eggins is a director of the Uranium Information Centre Limited (now the Australian Uranium Association) and has served on various committees of the World Nuclear Association.
The Renovators
David Havyatt writes: Re: “Last night’s TV Ratings” (yesterday, item 17). Glenn Dyer wrote: “For Ten, the news about The Renovators is terrible. It is supposed to anchor Sunday-to-Thursday ratings after MasterChef finishes on Sunday night. With these figures so far, Ten will be buried. The weak ratings for The Renovators must be giving Ten palpitations. I wonder what interim CEO Lachie Murdoch will do with this flop? If it’s not fixed, the rest of 2011 will not look good.”
Important to note that the show comes from Shine Australia — Lachlan’s sister just sold the parent production company to his dad (and him — he is on the board at News Corp still) for an amount that market watchers claim was excessive. Hard balancing act that one……
Won’t somebody think of the hat?
Anonymous Crikey reader: Re. “Media briefs” (yesterday, item 16). I read the article about the hat in the tree with some amusement. However, my mood soon turned to one of anger when I read that if not claimed, the hat will be destroyed. Don’t people know that a hat is for life, not just for Christmas? And why knit or buy when homeless hats die?
Bryan Nye,
I’m very keen on high speed rail, but not fairy tales.
Not even the Minister believes it would remove a need for a second Sydney Airport, but on a number of routes it would undoubtedly provide a superb alternative provided the financial engineering costs don’t totally destroy the fairy tale fares quoted in the study and discussed in some detail by our Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane in Crikey today.
Note that in terms of demand, Sydney West would support a major airport today. It can take two hours to get from Penrith to Sydney Airport by road and even by rail the current journey is awful , which is a reminder, dealt with quite well in this study, that the trade offs between HSR terminal locations can disenfranchise a large part of the greater metropolitan area without a really serious investment in a better city rail system.
Will the CBD go to Homebush or Parramatta (where major savings in project costs are realised compared to Central) to get a high speed rail train, or will it still find the existing airport the answer for a trip to Melbourne or Brisbane? There are billions of dollars at stake here, as the report makes clear, and quite frankly, your simplistic and fanciful messages yesterday did nothing to draw public attention to the make or break decisions that will be required to turn fantasy into reality.
Sharon Grey’s comments about the ABC with which I agree [over 80] provides an opportinity to comment on those wretched ads about “more for free” We all know from the ABC what the cost of its services are. Is it still 8 cents per person per day? So why try and fool us into believing that new television access is cost free. We all pay for the ABC and we all pay for the cost of advertising on SBS and commercial channels. We all know there is no free lunch.
Ben, You are over-reacting, and you are looking at some of this in a very perverse manner. And the fact that BK is in agreement with you just means, that like last time this was an issue, Crikey is a bit one eyed on this topic.
First, let’s take the airport issue. Bryan Nye is wrong when he says that a HSR would capture 50% of air traffic. It is absolutely clear and scientifically beyond argument that between such city pairs like Melbourne-Sydney, Melbourne-Canberra, and Sydney-Canberra it would capture at least 70% and proceed to 80% and 90%. The London-Paris and London-Brussels and Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam and Paris-Lyon did this. And it does it quickly–within the first year and sometimes in the first month (the 2011 Rhine-Rhone TGV got 1 million passengers in its first month). The Madrid-Barcelona AVE opened in 2008 effectively shutdown the air route.
So this gives two conclusions: 1. passenger numbers are plenty enough to ensure reasonable operating budgets of HSR 2. lots of takeoff slots from Kingsford Smith and Tullamarine will be freed up; lots, such that Sydney would not reach saturation for a long time. A third aspect is that some travellers (or those cheap airlines) can choose to use Canberra airport, even internationally, and use the HSR to go on to their final destination of Melb or Syd.
Second, your Penrith example is actually an argument to support HSR and better rail infrastructure in general. By contrast an airport in far Western Sydney is not going to appeal to Brisbane/Melbourne/Canberra travellers unless you believe that encouraging cheapo airlines that operate from airports in the boondocks with weak links to the city and weak interconnections is a “solution”. Not.
And it is not a case of robbing Metro transit to pay for intercity HSR. It is no accident that all of the cities in those TGV-linked city pairs have excellent Metros too. They go together. This is why the PC or whoever has said that there is a$700 billion deficit in investment in transport infrastructure in Australia. We need to stop inventing all these weak as piss (and false) arguments and get on with it.
Finally you and BK seem to placidly accept the outrageous bloated costs that this report puts forward. I have not read yet if they actually set it out so we can see how these costs are arrived at, BUT: there is a cost of $3 billion for a train station in Sydney. WTF! Now really, are you going to accept this? It totally discredits all their nonsense costings. Just to give one comparison: the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world and has the fastest elevators in the world and it cost $1.5 billion. In any case, either the terminus is within existing Central Station and might cost $100 million remodelling or something like that, or it is a purpose-built one in the western suburbs or somewhere and it would ditto not cost that much (I don’t think this plan makes much sense–all the Euro and Asian HSRs terminate in existing stations in the centre of cities for obvious reasons).
London, three times the population of Sydney has Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, Luton and City, and they all are congested, nothwithstanding the terrific Eurostar services to Paris and places north.
I think you are underestimating the traffic potential of Badgerys Creek in that it is much closer to Parramatta in road time now than Sydney Airport, and for the professional demographic across the Hills District and and even the transformation in activity elsewhere in western Sydney Badgerys Creek via the M7 and a spur road would be far quicker than the struggle to get to Sydney Airport, whether by road or rail.
Thus the Parramatta site for an HSR station does deal with Badgery’s Creek demand, yet reduces its attractions to the lower North Shore and main CBD.
Incidentally like yourself I don’t accept the costs quoted for the terminals. They are outrageously overstated, yet I suspect they may be padded to compensate for under estimation of the long distance infrastructure, especially those sections that might use tunnels or long elevated sections to straighten the way through chaotic topography.
The worst thing about portraying the HSR as a cure for Sydney’s airport issues is that it makes this a Sydney centric project that is supposed to be national not parochial in its objectives.
This study is about determining the corridors for an inevitable and ultimately essential surface transport system, not getting Sydney off the hook in terms of air access.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
The Renovators
David Havyatt writes: Re: “Last night’s TV Ratings” (yesterday, item 17). Glenn Dyer wrote: “For Ten, the news about The Renovators is terrible.
You certainly make an important note about the producers but like all well organized families they can make the family important by serving it well and getting extra value for the special family shine can only be legit and after all it’s not Dad’s money it’s the shareholders money and it’s going to the family who would argue with that, not the family.