Image courtesy of Cooperative Individualism
Letter to the Editor
The Age 03/10/2014
David Beardsell
North Balwyn
The 1880s in Victoria were largely driven by land speculation and the building of useless public and private infrastructure such as the Outer and Inner Circle railways, which ran from Oakleigh to North Melbourne. This scenario closely parallels what is happening today where the Victorian economy is partly driven by rampant, greedy and unproductive property speculation.
What is scary is that the East West Link follows almost the exact path of the useless Outer/Inner Circle railway line from Clifton Hill to west of Royal Park. Both were designed to facilitate the movement of goods to and from east of Melbourne to the western suburbs.
Clearly this government and property investors have not learnt from the history of the late 19th century and none of the signees and supporters of the link have read Michael Cannon’s insightful book The Land Boomers. Hopefully the fallout will be gentler this time around, but I suspect not.
Note: David Beardsell is involved in an upcoming documentary the Forgotten Outer Circle train line
Good point. The consequences of the coming price correction is clearly on the horizon as unemployment rises. The fallout will be harder than expected but only for those who bought in the past 10 years. Those who bought before this time will only get their money back. However, Australia would be in billions in debt and nothing to show for it in terms of real productivity and real economic growth and we will all be looking for scapegoats even while we ourselves will be to blame for voting for the corrupt Labor-Liberal monopoly.