A billion dollar school
September 2, 2010
Seriously, how could a school cost $578 million? Only in California. It was meant to cost $400m. At least they didn’t do a BER. Here’s the story of the library in Cooma in NSW costing 3 times the original estimate of $285,000. Imagine. If we sent NSW bureaucrats to America, California could have had its first billion dollar school.
We’re now going to have a parliamentary enquiry into a carbon tax. It could investigate the collapse of the carbon price in Chicago.
The plummeting price of carbon demonstrates US carbon traders think the chances of an American ‘cap and trade’ scheme anytime soon are practically zero.
Here electricity prices are going up and up and up thanks to ‘renewable energy targets’. Here’s what the boss of one of the country’s biggest energy companies said about them yesterday. The IPA’s Alan Moran has written about the real cost of renewable energy here and here.
(The average household uses about 9 MWh (Megawatt Hours) of electricity a year. The cost of generating 1 MWh conventionally is under $40. The cost from a wind farm is $125 per MWh and from solar is over $400 per MWh)
Here’s a nice analysis in The Australian on Monday from Michael Stutchbury of the policy craziness engulfing Canberra. And from yesterday’s Australian Literary Review Geoffrey Blainey reviews a new biography of the historian Keith Hancock. Hancock’s 1930 book Australia is of course one of the IPA’s 100 Great Books of Liberty.
With September upon us, Reason TV has announced August’s Nanny of the Month.
If you’re reading this you’re one of the 54% of Australians who have heard of us. Yep – we did a poll to find out. Here’s Andrew Norton’s discussion of the results.
In Friday’s Australian, Sinclair Davidson argued for an independent budget office. In The Drum on Tuesday, Chris Berg said that reforming the states was not a bad idea, and on Wednesday, Tim Wilson said that trying to fight rising living costs was making things worse. In Wednesday’s AFR, Alan Moran warned of an ALP-Green government.
PS: The IPA’s Tim Wilson will be speaking at Creative Innovation 2010, a conference on leadership and creativity. Speakers include Edward de Bono, Edward Luttwak and Paul McNamee. You can get a 10% discount here - log in with the username ci2010 and the password imagine.
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