katter turns on abbott's dirty nbn tactic., page-57

"If one did a cost benefit analysis on government expenditure, many rural areas, for e.g., wouldnt have (1) roads (2) electricity (3) telephone services (4) mail box (5) etc."

Unfortunately, that's a very typical attitude in Australia. One has only to go to the United States and see what use they make of their huge inland resources, to realise how backward our leaders are.

There is a strange and common beleif in Australia that the inland is a dead loss. The cities don't really need the food and the mines, they can comfortably exist without those.

In the US, there are cities and factories and related transport infrastructure on a massive scale in environments that are considered totally hostile in Australia. Phoenix Arizona is the size of Sydney, 4m people, and actually bigger in land area, it is a long way from any coast, is extremely, scorchingly, hot and dry, - and thrives.

Every time I come home from the US, I wonder 'why'? is such a huge resource pretty much wasted here.

If a true non-political cost/benefit analysis was done here, the benefit would be massive.