Motivated by

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MNEA4rimys

I thought I take a look at the situation in Australia.

It appears to me that the longest such journey is from Melbourne
(Southern Cross) to Casino NSW, which takes 22 hours 50 minutes, and is
1245 km as the crow flies.

Mind you, you need to make a 10 minute connection at Central, which
given XPTs seems unlikely.

Sylvia.

On Sun, 15 May 2022 15:16:53 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
wrote:

>Motivated by
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MNEA4rimys
>
>I thought I take a look at the situation in Australia.
>
>It appears to me that the longest such journey is from Melbourne
>(Southern Cross) to Casino NSW, which takes 22 hours 50 minutes, and is
>1245 km as the crow flies.
>
>Mind you, you need to make a 10 minute connection at Central, which
>given XPTs seems unlikely.
>
>Sylvia.
>
Un till the tracks are upgraded to handle existing speeds of our
fleet.
"The longest distance between two points" is presently state rail!
8am Tokyo to Hiroshima arrives 11am time for lunch trip is quiet and
fast.
Sydney/Melbourne would of had that in the 1990's at no cost to tax
payer if it wasn't for Labor governments!
--
Petzl

The entire Parliament was sacked,for treason under Whitlam
Constitutionally Parties are not recognised. So when a Government was
found to be removing ties to USA and Britain's orbit moving towards
that of the Communist and Third World powers, with strong support for
the "Arab lobby", Britain and USA would of found that treachery.

Arab financiers offered lower interest rates on governmental loans
than US banks/financiers. The Middle East at the time was awash with
"petro-dollars", as the price of oil quadrupled between 1973 and 1974.
Whitlam allowed Saudi Arabs to build a Mosque in Sydney/Lakemba.
Whitlam was a immoral communist working to remove ties to USA and
Britain's orbit moving towards that of the Communist and Third World
powers, with strong support for the "Arab lobby".
https://is.gd/IzhkxL

Whitlam did not want anti-communists to settle in Australia,
irrespective of whether they were genuine asylum seekers. Here his
stance differed from the position he took following the overthrow of
Salvador Allende's left-wing government in Chile in 1973.

Whitlam said on the ABC that Australia did not want “another
­reactionary right-wing minority”. Foreign minister Don Willesee
pleaded with him to take more. Whitlam replied: “I’m not having those
f..king Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their religious
and political prejudices against us.”

Whitlam opposed the entry of Vietnamese refugees, saying they stirred
no sympathy in him. He added: “There will be some resentment about the
people coming to Australia at a time of unemployment, and also people
from a very different way of life.”

In other words, Whitlam consciously stirred up ethnic and racial
prejudice against Vietnamese ­because he thought they might be
politically hostile to Labor.

On 16/5/22 06:00, Petzl wrote:

> Sydney/Melbourne would of had that in the 1990's at no cost to tax
> payer if it wasn't for Labor governments!

Not quite 'no cost to the tax payer'. The promoter wanted fat tax
concessions. The politicians got rolled by their own treasury who were
not going to give up the opportunity to tax the new company.

On Thu, 19 May 2022 09:58:29 +1000, Matthew Geier
<matthew@sleeper.apana.org.au> wrote:

>On 16/5/22 06:00, Petzl wrote:
>
>> Sydney/Melbourne would of had that in the 1990's at no cost to tax
>> payer if it wasn't for Labor governments!
>
>Not quite 'no cost to the tax payer'. The promoter wanted fat tax
>concessions. The politicians got rolled by their own treasury who were
>not going to give up the opportunity to tax the new company.
>
You are correct, sort of, called negotiation the first offer is never
the last.

The major problem was incompetence, lack of planning support from
Federal and state governments.

The Governments were pandering to NIMBY groups untrue nonsense.

Threatening the VFT with opening up the airways, station stops that
were uneconomic.

It became obvious the 3rd world Governments of Australia, both state
and federal, that their lobbyists did not want the VFT to go ahead.

The main players then told the Australian government to bugger off,
stop time wasting then walking away.
--
Petzl
"Our" Media and Major parties are run by lobbyists

Lobbyists write the laws, parliament sells the laws,
paid lucrative commissions for passing their laws.
That’s the modern legislative business of parliament.

When we talk about paying-off politicians in third-world
countries we call it bribery.
However, when we undertake the same process in parliament.
we call it lobbying.

On Thu, 19 May 2022 09:58:29 +1000, Matthew Geier
<matthew@sleeper.apana.org.au> wrote:

>On 16/5/22 06:00, Petzl wrote:
>
>> Sydney/Melbourne would of had that in the 1990's at no cost to tax
>> payer if it wasn't for Labor governments!
>
>
>Not quite 'no cost to the tax payer'. The promoter wanted fat tax
>concessions. The politicians got rolled by their own treasury who were
>not going to give up the opportunity to tax the new company.
>
Here a conclusion from 1991

I THE LAST LUNCHEON: Alan Castleman, the VFT project chief, reflects
on what might have been before a last luncheon with staff yesterday.
By IAN DAVIS,
Finance Editor
The Very Fast Train closes its project office in Canberra today,
ending any immediate prospects that the visionary S10 biilion rail
linkbetween Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne will proceed. The VFT
consortium chief executive, Alan Castleman, a BHP senior executive on
secondment to the project, who will return to a new position with the
Big Australian once he has finished folding the tent for the project,
proclaims himself "not gloomy" about what has happened, but admits to
being somewhat frustrated.
Mr Castleman has no doubts about what has killed the project off — at
least for the time being. "Lack of commitment. They [the Government]
didn't try and And a way through the problems,*' he says. "Inthis
country we are too problem oriented. As a nation we are too inclined
to look at the problems rather than the solutions," he says.
Mr Castleman says government refusal to give any concrete support for
the concept has killed the project off before it was possible to know
whether it was feasible.
Mr Castleman says it was not just tax issues which killed the project.
Equally important was the inability of the four governments — NSW,
ACT, Victoria and the ACT — to agree on the process for getting
approvals.
There were, he says, elements of support and opposition to the project
in all governments but in none of the four governments with which the
project dealt was the balance so overwhelmingly in favour of the
project and so constructive in its approach as it was in the ACT.

However, Mr Castleman strongly criticised the Federal Treasury for its
narrow, tax-oriented views. Treasury lacked any ability to consider
the wider macro-economic consequences of projects and their long-term
effect on government reve nue and the economy generally. Mr Castleman
rejects suggestions that reluctance by three of the consortium's four
members — Elders (now called Fosters Brewing), TNT and Kumagai Gumi —
to proceed with funding the project was at least as important as the
Government's refusal to find solutions to the tax disincentives faced
by large-scale projects in Australia and the lack of any agreed
decision-making process for a major project requiring agreement from
four governments. "We told the Government that when we got agreement
[from them) we would get the {new] partners. Potential partners would
not commit themselves until there was a clear path ahead."

--
Petzl
"Our" Media and Major parties are run by lobbyists

Lobbyists write the laws, parliament sells the laws,
paid lucrative commissions for passing their laws.
That’s the modern legislative business of parliament.

When we talk about paying-off politicians in third-world
countries we call it bribery.
However, when we undertake the same process in parliament.
we call it lobbying.