Alan Kohler is one of Australia’s most experienced commentators and journalists. Alan is the founder of Eureka Report, Australia’s most successful investment newsletter, and Business Spectator, a 24-hour free business news and commentary website. He also hosts Inside Business, a half-hour Sunday programme on the ABC, is the finance presenter on the ABC News - and producer of the nightly graph (or two).
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Comments on this article
Comments PolicyStephen, what I want to know, is why?, it has it taken them so long to understand the potentialities (The Future Fund's domestic take-off, November 26).
I thought fimancial planers, were supposed to be ahead of the curve.
Time to wake up, boys and girls and realise that, you are going to have to be good,to earn your income - no more free rides!
Why doesn't the government look at investing the superannuation fund monies into expanding communities across Australia (The Future Fund's domestic take-off, November 27). These new towns with connecting roads/rail and communities could utilise, on a voluntary basis,immigrant workers to train up into tradespeople and reduce the cost and stress of imprisoning these people. If the infrastructure was planned to facilitate workers and connections to new mine sites then this could be a win-win situation in the long run. Once the mining boom is over we have established towns available for private investment and future population growth. Surely this would be worth investigating further?
If there is one thing Australia can do better with, it is more water where needed (The Future Fund's domestic take-off, November 27). Long or short periods of drought have devastating effects on life of farmers and livelihoods of inland population . Presently the Eastern states have ample water in most dams. It only takes a couple of years of little rain for us all to be struggling with water limitations like they are in western states of Australia now. Each year on average we have about 200 times more northern seasonal river water going to sea than all our capital cities use each year. Over 100 years back, the western states of USA recognised water shortages would hold back growth and started building canals to service major cities and agriculture . The result was California the largest and most progressive state in America.
Surely with huge demand for food to Asia looming the construction of similar water storage/canal infrastructure to move a small fraction of northern water to all southern states of Australia could be a win/win project for The Future Fund to consider both for returns to savers and national interest