Water, Water everywhere

The Rudd government is running around with a Razor gang looking to keep down government spending, so they can subdue what is still a fairly tame inflation result (historically), and then try not to cop the blame if a roll-back of Workplace reform leads to a real inflationary spiral.

Their first target is $643 million of Howard Government programs.

Considering that all government spending in Australia, whether it is done by the state governments or federal governments, is still spending (and affects the economy), perhaps some other wasteful spending should come under the microscope. After years of Frank Sartor saying that "a Dam is no good when there isn't any rain", the NSW Labor government decided to build a water desalination plant for $2 billion.

Since Dam levels have not ever been below the 30% trigger point from which this plant was supposed to be built, and are now at 64%, it may be tough to find a worse waste of government funds (especially if you only consider the start up costs) just to look tough to win an election.

Further to this, while water restrictions may sound great in theory, we have now had a year of rain, a year in which total water stored for Sydney has almost doubled, and yet, because of climate change models, the government has reneged on their promised relief thresholds for water restrictions.

So thanks to those scientific models, the Sydney water catchment could be full of water, the desalination plant turning greenhouse gases into surplus tap water we won't need (so I guess it might just pump back into the sea), and the people of Sydney paying increased water bills for the privilege, and they still won't be allowed to use a hose to wash their car on a grassy area.

What a relief to know that our government is looking after us.