Suburban Subterfuge
More housing is needed, and Bob Carr’s got the plan to get it done: with the new land release, new plans for subdivisions to be built according to a “village” centre concept, ensuring that everyone lives within walking distance of a shopping strip. It apparently doesn’t matter that there will be no mass transit infrastructure to speak of until 2019, requiring the residents to drive to work, and there doesn’t appear to be any plan for easing the environmental burden, whether in power or water usage. Carr’s plan is, as usual, a short-term vision for a long-term problem. What shops are going into these suburbs? Who’s going to run them? What has to be given away to get the major retail support? If Bob thinks Coles and Woolies are going to build supermarkets in his village centres, he must be deluded or already conceding the tax revenues to entice them. If he thinks the drilling being planned out in the aquifers is going to supply the increased demand for water, he must be listening to a latter-day Noah. As for electricity, well, he’s working on the coal-fired plants even as we speak, although it’s going to cost all of us plenty more even before the new houses go up. Vision, Mr. Carr, is a word meant to be used when the plan employs foresight, not desperation.