MATS Plan

Oppenheimer

15/09/2023 by Australian Family Party

On the 14^th of August, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was interviewed by Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW. Part of the interview went like this:

“Mr Albanese, if you were dictator, what’s the first thing you would do?”

“Ban social media”, he replied.

How telling.

That the Prime Minister would ban social media – our most popular means of communication – is brutally authoritarian.

It reminded me of a scene in the movie Oppenheimer in which nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer meets with President Harry Truman shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2.

Following his successful testing of the bomb, Oppenheimer was known to have uttered the words, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”, a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, a holy scripture from Hinduism.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer told Truman he felt he had “blood on his hands”.

Truman angrily responded with the words, “The blood is on my hands, not yours. It was me who dropped the bomb, not you”.

With that the meeting was over and Truman said he “never wanted to see that man again”.

There’s more than a little Oppenheimer in Albanese’s view of himself and the world around him. Here’s why I think that.

There’s an old Greek proverb, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows only one thing.”

Albanese knows only one thing – politics. It’s all he’s ever done.

But as we know, the world isn’t made up of just one thing, it is made up of a whole range of competing factors and trade-offs that differ for different people of different ages who live in different places and have different priorities.

Like the ‘crystallised intelligence’ vs ‘fluid intelligence’ paradigm. Crystallised intelligence employs experience and wisdom and knows how the world works. Fluid intelligence knows how to study, learn facts and pass exams. Foxes vs hedgehogs. We’ve all met them.

Harry Truman, a Democrat (a bit like the Labor Party here in Australia), was a very good President. Before entering politics, Truman was a soldier and then a shopkeeper. A better understanding of how the world works you wouldn’t get than by owning a shop! Harry was quite the fox.

But the story is told of when Truman was elected President, his former army buddy and shopkeeper partner, Eddie Jacobson, said to him, “O Harry, now that you’re President, everyone’s going to start telling you what a great man you are, when you and I both know you ain’t”.

Anyone who gets to the top needs an Eddie Jacobson in their lives.

Being knowledgeable on one subject can narrow one’s focus, lead to over-confidence and dismiss dissenting views. This can lead to self-deception, even delusions of grandeur. The Voice perhaps?

The world is a very dangerous place, and it is impossible to predict what will happen next. There are countless variables and factors. Foxes understand this innately, hedgehogs not so much.

For this reason, we have to stop letting the hedgehogs run the show. Let them be advisers, by all means, but do not put them in charge.

They may be fine leading other hedgehogs in a particular field, but the world is not parliament house or a laboratory or a hospital or a courtroom or a classroom or a police station. We can’t let scientists or police commissioners or judges who do not have to answer to the people run the place. Being answerable to the people forces you to understand how the world really works and how to assess the many trade-offs – as the Prime Minister will soon find out.

On a more celebratory note, next month marks the three-year anniversary of the launch of the Australian Family Party – and almost one hundred Newsletters!

Inaugural letterbox flyer from 2020

Our membership is strong and the response to the Newsletters, all of which are listed on our website, has been phenomenal – especially The New Gulag, The MATS Plan Re-visited, Black Hawk Down, Two Stories, One Lesson and of course Remembering Andrew Evans.

But, like the story of ‘the turtle on the fence post’ (if you ever see a turtle sitting on top of a fence post, what is the one thing you know? – It didn’t get there by itself!), if anyone wants to get to the top of the fence post in any field – sport, the arts, business, and yes, politics – you’re not going to get there by yourself. You’re going to need a lot of help from a lot of people.

In our case, that includes other minor parties.

As I outlined in The Shrinking Forest earlier this year, alliances with like-minded parties are essential for success.

More news about that in coming months.

The Veil of Ignorance

03/08/2022 by Australian Family Party

In his fascinating book, A Theory of Justice, the American moral, legal and political philosopher John Rawls promotes an idea called the Veil of Ignorance.

When drawing up laws, says Rawls, lawmakers should imagine themselves standing behind a curtain or veil, ignorant of what position they themselves will occupy once the law has been passed. Rawls cites a number of examples of this idea, the second being housing which I will cover shortly.

The first example he gives is in relation to slavery. What sort of law would lawmakers write if they were unsure whether they themselves would be slave or slave owner once the curtain was lifted?

His second example of housing is as relevant today as it was in 1970 when he wrote his ground-breaking book.

This approach, he states, would create a more just society.

Let’s consider this in relation to housing.

Knowing what they know now, how would today’s baby-boomers write housing and planning laws if they did not know, once the veil was lifted, whether they would be young or old?

In the event they found themselves in the ‘young’ category, it is beyond doubt they would want low-cost, low-entry level rules to get into their first home – as happened for them 40 years earlier!

As we know, low-cost, low-entry housing is not what first homebuyers are faced with in 2022. Entry-level housing is not three times the median wage like it was for previous generations. It is seven … eight … nine … even ten times the median income.

Regrettably, today’s laws are written more in the mode of ‘I’m alright Jack, pull the ladder up’ rather than, ‘What if I’m a young person trying to get a foot on the employment ladder or trying to buy a first home, or having to pay off a student loan?’

As previously described on this site, Australia does not have, and has never had, a ‘housing’ affordability problem. It has a ‘land’ affordability problem. The actual cost of building a house in Australia has kept pace with inflation and is low by international standards. The price of land on which to the build the house, however, has skyrocketed.

Land is the problem.

By restricting the amount of land available, lawmakers have sent the price of entry-level housing through the roof. Lawmakers have used urban planning laws to restrict the amount of fringe land available and have then drip fed it to a land-starved housing industry.

The ‘scarcity’ that drives up land prices is wholly contrived – it has been a matter of political choice, not geographic reality. It is the product of restrictions imposed through planning regulation and zoning.

Some of the claims used by lawmakers to stop urban growth are that urban growth is not good for the environment, or that it prevents the loss of agricultural land, or that it saves water, or it leads to a reduction in motor vehicle use or it saves on infrastructure costs for government. Although all of these claims are either false and/or misleading, they have become accepted wisdom. Few have had the courage or the insight to challenge them.

One of those few is Patrick Troy.

In his 1996 book The Perils of Urban Consolidation, Patrick Troy, Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, and a leading thinker on urban planning, squarely challenged the assumptions on which the urban densification principles are based. He pointed to flaws in the figures and arguments which have been used over and over again to support what is speciously called ‘smart growth’ arguing that these policies will produce ‘mean streets’, not ‘green streets’.

Until the 1970s, the development of new suburbs was largely left to the private sector. The many leafy, liveable suburbs like Netherby or Colonel Light Gardens south of Adelaide or Tea Tree Gully in the north-east with their large allotments and wide streets are an enduring testimony to what suburbs looked like before planning laws were introduced. Compare these old suburbs with the packed-like-sardines stuff foisted on young home-buyers today!

In last week’s Newsletter, we discussed opening up Adelaide’s northern plains to provide access to housing, employment, supply chains and tourism opportunities for the new $100bn maritime defence project based at North Haven.

The northern Adelaide plains are more than three times the size of metropolitan Adelaide – a city of over a million people that has taken over 150 years to get to where it is today. There is enough land in Adelaide’s north to last for centuries.

To enable first home-buyers easy access to housing – on quarter acre (1,000 sq metre) blocks if they want to kick a ball around and/or grow a few vegies, fruit trees and chickens – for around $300,000 and to permanently fix the ‘land’ problem, ensuring future generations do not have to suffer a similar fate, we need to do five things:

Where they have been applied, urban growth boundaries or zoning restrictions on the urban fringe must be removed. Residential development on the urban fringe needs to be made a ‘permitted use’.
Compulsory ‘Master Plan’ communities need to be abolished. If large developers wish to initiate Master Planned Communities, that’s fine, but don’t make them compulsory. This will allow smaller developers back into the market.
Allow the development of basic serviced allotments – ie, water, sewerage, electricity, stormwater, bitumen roads, street lighting and street signage. Additional services and amenities – such as lakes, entrance walls, childcare centres, bike trails, etc – can be optional extras if the developer wishes to provide them and the buyers are willing to pay for them.
Privatise planning approvals. Any qualified Town Planner should be permitted to certify that a development application complies with a Local Government’s Development Plan.
Abolish up-front infrastructure charges and so-called ‘developer contributions’ by Local or State Governments. All infrastructure services should be paid for through the rates system – ie, pay ‘as’ you use, not ‘before’ you use – like it was for the boomers! First home-buyers should not be singled out and forced to pay up-front for Local or State Government infrastructure expansion given that existing homeowners were not required to contribute when they bought in.

Thank you for support.

MATS Plan Revisited

27/07/2022 by Australian Family Party

Part 1

Without doubt, South Australia’s biggest ever public policy failure was the abandonment in 1970 of the MATS Plan (Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study). The MATS Plan was a world-class road network for Adelaide’s future transport needs servicing a vibrant, emerging city. As a result of that ill-fated decision 50 years ago, SA has suffered incalculable cost, congestion and inefficiency due to its inadequate road system.

At that time, I was working for the SA Highways Department as a Laboratory Technician in the Department’s Materials, Research & Testing Laboratories at Northfield. Our then Commissioner Keith Johinke and all his staff were at the forefront of road transport planning and innovation. The excitement was palpable. Then came a change of government and the announcement that the MATS Plan was to be cancelled. It was an insane decision. All the land for the new road corridors had been acquired and the project was ready to go. So distressed was Commissioner Johinke by this announcement, he refused to sign the papers for the project’s cancellation, leaving it to an underling to carry out the Minister’s orders. The Department never recovered. Nor did Adelaide’s road transport system. I left the Department 5 years later to go into the private sector as did many others. In the 1980s the Department merged with a couple of other government departments and changed its name. A sad end to a once great institution.

Let’s not make that same ‘future planning’ mistake regarding the needs of the new submarine project which has just been announced. An industry sector this size is going to need a massive amount of support industries, including manufacturing, commercial, retail, education, housing, health, and other professional services.

In 1955, another great South Australian visionary, Sir Tom Playford, oversaw the growth and development of SA identifying that one key element for successful growth – cheap land.

The support industries for SA’s new maritime sector will need two things – affordable land, and easy ‘MATS Plan’ style access to the shipyards. Do not underestimate the importance of transport access.

Adelaide’s north can provide the land, and a new world-class gateway bridge over the Port River can connect the naval precinct with the northern Adelaide plains. Such a bridge and road system – perhaps even a rail line down the middle – would provide essential access to housing, supply chains and tourism opportunities – not to mention a ten-minute drive from the Edinburgh military air base.

The cramped suburbs around Port Adelaide are already under unsustainable pressure. Grand Junction Road is at maximum capacity. More traffic congestion, air pollution, the destruction of bio-diversity (bulldozing tree-lined streets and low-density housing) or increasing pressure on electricity, water, sewerage, or stormwater infrastructure, in other words more urban densification, would be a disaster.

One thing is certain, the new naval industry will need support systems. We don’t want to be spending countless billions of dollars retrofitting like South Road or the Southern Expressway debacle.

The Federal Government has given South Australia a new multi-billion industry. The SA State Government now needs to respond by opening up Adelaide’s north to supply this industry. Over the next 30 years tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs are there for the taking.

In 2013, I was elected to parliament on a platform of “every family, a job and a house”. If every family had a job and owned a house, I argued, the benefits to the state and the nation would be great indeed. Clearly, a lot of people agreed with me.

Adelaide as the new maritime defence industry capital of Australia has the opportunity to provide ‘every family with a job and a house’. Let’s not blow it.

Part 2

gateway-bridge Last week in Part 1 of our MATS Plan Revisited report, we looked at connecting Adelaide’s new maritime defence precinct with the northern Adelaide plains via a new gateway bridge over the Port River. An industry sector this size we said was going to need a massive amount of defence procurement support, including manufacturing, commercial, retail, education, housing, health, and other professional services. In Part 2 of our proposal, we connect these support industries with long-haul freight infrastructure.

One thing is for sure – there will be a lot more freight and a lot more heavy vehicles on our roads as a result of this announcement.

“Fatal crash closes freeway”

This has become an all too familiar news headline in Adelaide.

Whether it’s taking children to school, taking farm produce to markets or long-haul interstate freight, road safety is paramount.

My first project when I began working at the SA Highways Dept in 1969 was the new SE Freeway. To be fair to the government of the day, when it designed the freeway, it did not expect the level of residential development to take place that has occurred since. The Adelaide Hills has become one of the fastest growing urban areas in the State and commuter traffic on the SE Freeway has increased exponentially. Long-haul freight transport has become incompatible with that level of commuter traffic. Truck drivers dislike the current SE Freeway situation as much as commuters.

A solution is available. A solution that takes trucks and semi-trailers off the freeway, off Portrush Road, off Hampstead Road, off Grand Junction Road and will get freight to the shipyards and new northern precinct quicker, safer and cheaper.

First let’s put things into perspective. Long-haul freight transport on the SE Freeway is mainly coming from Melbourne – a 740km journey. A new north-bound road from Murray Bridge, connecting to the existing Sturt Highway at the new $200m Truro by-pass would deliver freight to the northern Adelaide development precinct by-passing the SE Freeway and Adelaide’s suburban roads completely.

While adding approximately 70 kms to the overall journey – less than 10% of the distance from Melbourne – this non-stop route would not increase the journey-time. Adelaide’s suburban road congestion and approximately 30 sets of traffic lights between the Tollgate and Port Adelaide reduces freight transport to a snail’s pace.

According to the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (Report No 148), the cost of building new highways in Australia is approximately $5m per lane per kilometre. A new 90 km four-lane Murray Bridge – Truro highway would therefore cost around $2bn. The safety benefits of such a project however would be incalculable and the cost of building the road would be recouped through increased productivity, fewer accidents and less suburban road maintenance.

To summarise these two MATS Plan Revisited reports, the recent nuclear submarine announcement has changed everything.

This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset the State will deliver tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs – significantly making up for the loss of Holden’s car manufacturing plant.

The new maritime defence project is a $100bn endeavour spread over the next 30+ years. Again, to put things into perspective, spending a small portion of that amount to ensure the project works properly makes good sense. A new gateway bridge and a new Murray Bridge to Truro connection, should be included in the overall cost of the maritime defence project.

As stated in Part 1 of this proposal, SA has been blessed with two great infrastructure visionaries in (former Premier) Tom Playford and (former Commissioner of Highways) Keith Johinke. Perhaps we could name the above infrastructure projects after each of them.