Gary Johns, the greens, and a very fast track to steaming nonsense ...

(Above: better head off to Japan to catch a shinkansen because you'll be dead before we get a VFT in Australia. Such fun to ride, and remarkably reliable and efficient for what suddenly and shockingly is revealed to be not a very robust system. Pity no one told the Japanese their trains lacked robustness).

My theory of mind is incomplete and inchoate, but one thesis that I'm working on involves the radical mind.

What is it that enables steadfast believers to jump from one belief system, devoutly, strongly, sincerely held, to another belief system, devoutly, strongly, sincerely held, which provides a series of antonyms for the previous set of beliefs?

You can find it in Marxists and Communists who slide over into extremist libertarian or free market camps, in greenies who shave off their dreadlocks and don a suit, and in capitalists who grow the dreadlocks and frolic in the fields dressed in hemp clothes. In much the same way that some atheists become fierce believers, and once fierce believers can become equally fierce atheists. Surely the one time Marxist Christopher Hitchens is a prime exemplar who could argue the hind leg off a dog, or all four legs off a table, by taking a contrarian position.

Who knows how or why it happens, it remains a mystery of the first water.

Meanwhile, what are we to make of Gary Johns?

According to his wiki - it seems everyone but everyone has a wiki these days - he started off as the member for Petrie in 1987 for the Australian Labor Party, up until getting booted out in 1996, along with the Keating government.

Then from 1997 to 2006 he was a senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, which the wiki kindly describes as a neo-liberal conservative think tank. We prefer to think of the IPA as valiant warriors in the right to preserve for smokers the right to die from consuming a legitimate product.

Next thing you know Johns turns consultant and ends up at the Australian Catholic University's Public Policy Institute as an Associate Professor of Public Policy, while also currently acting as president of the Bennelong Society, described by the wiki as "an organisation that advocates the provision of welfare for Indigenous Australians under the same rules as for all other Australians."

Is there something in the water that makes former ALP apparatchiks go funny? Shades of Barry Cohen, Michael Costa and Mark Latham.

All this is by way of preamble to Johns' exquisite disquisition for The Australian, A Very Fast Train after the election?

Well we presume it's the same Gary Johns. It could of course be Gary Johns, proud premiership winning captain-coach of the Cessnock rugby league team.

But it couldn't be, could it, because our Johns is given to profound metaphysical musings:

My theory of the green mind is that they are people who are pessimistic about the human ability to deal with the physical world. This is because their experience, as rich and powerful as it may be in, say, human relations, has little bearing on the world that determines our physical wellbeing.

As a theory it certainly lends more credence and weight to my own theory of pessimistic people being pessimistic about the human ability of greens to deal with rantings of the dumb fuck mind, let alone the physical world.

But when you're on a roll, why not produce as many stereotypes and cliches and pieces of dumb fuckery that you can in the shortest space available:

Indeed, most of their material benefits are derived from non-renewable carbon products, oil and natural gas in particular. Everything the young and not so young greenie desires and relies on - from antihistamines to mobile phones, clothing, computers, deodorant, DVDs, lipstick, pantyhose, roller blades, shampoo, contact lenses, sunglasses, surfboards and syringes - are not to be given up lightly.

Ah yes roller blades. What every young green wants. Not to mention syringes! Junkie greens! As for that deodorant and shampoo, enough with the dreadlock holiday cliches bro. Wash those dreads on a daily basis. And you, you bloody separatist lesbian feminists, admit deep down what you want is lipstick, and pantyhose, and sunglasses.

Amazingly Johns left out the most important item - iPads on which to compose this essential drivel. You see, greenies understand that computers are fey and old hat, and they just want to devour the planet with their conspicuous consumer consumption. Away with the fried out combie, in with the surfboards.

But wait, there's more. Drivel without traducing arts graduates would be as remiss as an offer of a bargain kitchen utensil without a set of steak knives:

Polling suggests that the Greens voter is young and working in the service industry, particularly in education. Essentially, it is made up of people who are not confident of the challenge of the material world (arts graduates), and yet who more than most (middle class) rely on its taming by scientists, technologists, and engineers to deliver the comforts they crave.

Dearie me, is this what academics in public policy get up to in the bowels of the Australian Catholic University? Is there any irony here in Johns holding a Bachelor of Economics and an MA from Monash University? Himself a master of farts, as we holders of the degree like to think of ourselves.

But wait, there's even more steak knives on offer. How can you resist?

Most green issues have at their heart technology and economics: energy, transport, resources. Greens voters tend to be very demanding, but by and large are the least economically and technically proficient of the educated electorate. They can therefore be very expensive voters because their aspirations are not often achievable; think ETS. What the main parties offer this time will reflect the mind of the green voter. And that brings us back to the Very Fast Train.

Actually it brings us back to the splendid capacity for delusional mythologising shown by Johns. Yep, you see the same scientists warmly embraced elsewhere, and wanting to put a price on carbon, are now part of the green conspiracy. Think ETS.

But okay, let's get Johns' incisive insights into the Very Fast Train and why it is Very Likely Impractical:

The evidence against the VFT is strong. Alan Davies, the Melbourne economic consultant, argues that a VFT is too risky in competing against air travel when airlines have scope to price out new entrants.

Well you can get an idea of Davies' thinking by trotting off to Has the very fast train run out of steam?

Amazingly, he manages to debate John Legge's Very fast rail travel figures add up without debasing himself or his argument by a series of furphies in relation to greens, young, old, mildewed or people with an arts degree.

Davies provides what little meat Johns can muster:

Further, he (Davies) argues, environmental advantages of a VFT over new generation planes are not clear, as air travel is reasonably fuel-efficient on a passenger-per-kilometre basis.

And then poor possum, he decides to branch out on his own:

And, for the practically minded, while rail and plane can both be closed down by station-terminal incidents, the entire VFT rail line can be stopped by blockages from mechanical breakdowns, accidents and hoaxes. In contrast, while one flight might be delayed or cancelled, passengers can take a later flight or use an alternative carrier.

A VFT system is simply not as robust.

This will be surprising news to Europeans and to the Japanese, and no doubt the Chinese, who have been spending up big on rail. Not as robust as a DC 9? Dearie me, doesn't Johns ever watch our favourite show, Air Crash Investigations? When was the last time you saw a VFT flown into the Twin Towers?

I keed, I keed. When confronted by silly arguments, it's hard not to get a little silly.

The combination of a needy Labor government, a confident green movement, and a pliable green mind could just land the nation with another very expensive revolution. Oh, and the price tag, about $59 billion.

Yep, worse still, Johns decides to construct his own set of figures regarding the price tag as his capper, as his Krusty the Klown sign off, forgetting that he's urged us to read Davies. Here's Davies doing some maths:

... he (Legge) claims without any evidence or supporting argument that it would cost $15 billion to build the line and acquire rolling stock. This computes to $17 million/km on a 900 km line. However construction estimates for Europe and the US calculated by the US Government Accountability Office range from a low of $14 million/km to $82 million/km without rolling stock. My (conservative) estimate is $27 billion to build the line plus $140 per one-way passenger trip for operating costs, including rolling stock!

... As I’ve mentioned before, the viability of a very fast frain in the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne corridor will depend primarily on whether a second Sydney airport and associated transport links is needed. If so, and if it were to cost around $15 billion and emit similar levels of greenhouses gas during construction, then a very fast train might be competitive. The cost of a second Sydney airport at Badgery’s Creek was estimated in 1999 at between $6 to 8 billion dollars.

Well of course there's an assumption in there. That the blithering public servants in charge of such schemes can be kept at arm's length, so we can order a system off the shelf, and get the Chinese in to build it in a trice, rather than have the sort of over specified, completely and utterly and foolishly unique light rail that bedevils a small portion of Sydney (in much the same way as the military can't see to order anything off the shelf without making it uniquely unusable on the basis of their own arcane specifications).

But isn't it a sight to see, someone actually juggling figures and quoting sources for the figures. How peculiar. Not a rhetorical flourish in sight.

What I want to know most of all is how Johns managed to get from Davies' conservative estimate of $27 billion to the "oh, and the price tag, about $59 billion" punch line. Is there something about public policy costings that makes mathematics the rough equivalent of sealing wax, and a long piece of string. Or rubber? Is this the path down which public policy musings strut, while berating arts graduates and greenies?

Truth to tell, Johns could have save us all an onerous read by just scribbling "I hate greens, and I hate the idea of a VFT in Australia." Then arts graduates and greens could simply have scribbled on their roller blades "I hate Gary Johns, and I love catching VFT's because they're more fun than a ride on a roller blade."

So goes the level of public discourse and debate when it comes to innovative ideas about Australia's future. No wonder the country is steaming along like a flock of luddites ...

No ambition, no forward thinking, just a flock of luddites at the IPA shrieking about the marketplace ...

(Below: sheesh, even the Chinese are now doing high speed trains, this one from Beijing to Tanggu. Of course the Chinese government is notoriously full of greenies and arts graduates, which explains why they've embarked on this deviant activity. Who knows, they might also love roller blades).