Australia's infrastructure problems have reached diabolical proportions

It’s becoming more obvious that Australian politics is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Fort Fumble this week released its Asian Century white paper. Australian business leaders doubt the government has the determination or resources to carry out the ambitious proposals – flat reception for white paper. Alan Kohler wrote on Business Spectator White paper, wish paper: "Reading the white paper called “Australia in the Asian Century” is a very surprising and uplifting experience: it lists all these wonderful things that are going to happen to our nation by 2025. I had no idea."

I did read the white paper, which took me back to the CEO – Pulse, where last quarter the CEO scorecard for the government’s performance in managing the economy was steady at 2.9 out of 10.

Remember the aim of past Treasury secretary Ken Henry’s tax review was to have a root-and-branch look at the Australian tax system by designing something that would/should position Australia to best deal with the challenges that lie ahead? History shows that next to nothing eventuated from the proposals so I believe my cynicism is well founded. Australia’s governments are not in a financial position to fund such far-fetched, imaginary proposals.

I’ll keep harping on because I believe Australia’s infrastructure problems have now reached diabolical proportions simply because we can’t afford to fund progress.

Future Fund not an infrastructure dump ground: Costello which is a very fair assessment – it should not be used as a “dropping pond” for bad assets. Biggest embarrassment of the week $1billion error: NSW swings from deficit to surplus – hello! Only incompetent fools could make such an embarrassing error.

This takes me to the best article of the week (in my opinion) by Robert Gottliebsen – Removing the bloat from the public service. “Today’s graphs from Accenture should scare every Australian. We can’t even contemplate being a leader in Asia until we tackle the abysmal state of our federal, state and local public services. The inefficiency and waste in these public services is sucking Australia dry and Accenture warn that unless we do something about it, our ageing population means that Australia faces a grim future funding squeeze.”

Two weeks ago we reported that the number of Mosman houses on the market was 22% down on this time last year. Last week brought a slight increase to 23%, this week it has climbed to 27%. We still predict this figure will jump as high as 35% in coming weeks.

Robert Simeon is a director of Richardson  Wrench Mosman and Neutral Bay and has been selling residential real estate in Sydney since 1985. He has also been writing real estate blog Virtual Realty News since 2000. The RWM real estate model has sold in excess of $1 billion in database sales globally.