Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Tuesday, 5 May 2015

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

When life deals you falling iron ore prices, make steel

Good news! Iron ore prices are right down, so Australia has an opportunity to embark on a program of massive infrastructure construction using steel manufactured here from our own resources.

This is the attitude that Australians must adopt, both for our own benefit and to participate fully in the grand infrastructure development perspective that the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—are leading worldwide. The BRICS alliance is the driving force behind the new multilateral development banks, including the BRICS’ own New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which are directing hundreds of billions of dollars into international railway links, new and upgraded ports, and hydroelectric dams and other energy projects, on which nations can collaborate, thereby building a basis for both peace and prosperity.

For Australia, a domestic program parallel to the BRICS’ global perspective of national infrastructure development, utilising our own abundant resources, would create anywhere from hundreds of thousands to likely more than a million jobs—far more than those lost in the mining industry.

In 2002 the Citizens Electoral Council, in collaboration with the late engineering visionary Professor Lance Endersbee, published “The Infrastructure Road to Recovery”, which detailed many large-scale water, transportation and energy infrastructure projects that Australia could commence building immediately, including:

the Australian Ring Railway and the Melbourne to Darwin Asian Express, both of which Professor Endersbee designed as high-speed rail projects to conquer the tyranny of distance and open up the interior and remote areas of Australia to economic development;
18 major water diversion projects, including the Bradfield Scheme (to direct water from Australia’s highest rainfall areas in north Queensland down into the fertile and arid inland), the Clarence River Scheme in northern NSW (that will inject more water into the Murray-Darling Basin food bowl), the 3rd stage of WA’s Ord River Scheme and the development of the nearby Fitzroy River Basin, and many others;
port infrastructure for high-speed shipping, capitalising on technology developed here in Australia, with which Australia will be just one to four days shipping from all of the major ports of Asia;
a nuclear power grid for cheap, clean and abundant power, utilising our world-leading reserves of uranium and thorium, which will allow spin-offs such as large-scale water desalination, and also put Australia in the vanguard of the global effort to develop fusion power.

The jobs that would be created will be high-skilled, high-wage jobs, in expanded steel manufacturing, and in the construction of the infrastructure projects. Besides steel, many other moribund industries would also come to life, to supply the infrastructure projects: cement, machine tools, and even the automotive industry, which could be re-tooled to supply machinery for earthworks and construction.

The new infrastructure would lead to an expansion of agriculture and related manufacturing industries, to meet the growing demand in Asia. The consolidation of Australia’s industrial skills base—which otherwise we are currently losing, rapidly—would also enable Australia to assist our Asian neighbours with their own projects; Australian-made capital goods could also be exported for use in the developing economies of Asia.

Funding

Funding this perspective would not be an issue. There is plenty of money in the economy; more importantly, there is plenty of idle manpower and resources. It is a case of putting it all to good use. Since the 2008 GFC the Commonwealth government has racked up a debt of around $300 billion, from stimulus and deficits. If even a fraction of that money—say $50 billion—had been spent on the kind of nation-building infrastructure in the CEC’s program, Australia’s economy would be greatly improved on what it is today.

Otherwise, the government has the power to establish another National Bank, modelled on the original Commonwealth Bank, which founding governor Denison Miller opened for business in 1912 without capital, declaring that the bank was “backed by the entire wealth and credit of the whole of the Commonwealth of Australia” (Denison Miller, 20 January 1913, “The Commonwealth Bank of Australia”, by C.C. Faulkner). Furthermore, there is well over a trillion dollars in superannuation accounts that is at risk in the presently collapsing economy, which the government could call into good use, ensuring its security by doing so. And on top of all that, Australia will benefit from the trillions of dollars that the BRICS-initiated development banks are directing into infrastructure projects in the region.

The CEC has initiated a new petition campaign, to compel the Australian government to seize the historic opportunity before us, both internationally with the BRICS, and domestically: Australia must secure its future by aligning with the BRICS in a new, just world economic order.

Join the fight! Sign the petition, join as a member, order and distribute the CEC’s literature.

Click here to sign the petition.

Click here to view the proceedings of the CEC’s 28-29 March international conference on the BRICS: The World Land Bridge: Peace on Earth, Good Will towards all Men.

Click here for a free literature pack, containing: the CEC’s 2014 pamphlet on the BRICS entitled, “Do You Want to defeat Terrorism? Establish a New, Just World Economic Order”; and the CEC’s full-colour 2002 New Citizen Special Report, “The Infrastructure Road to Recovery”.

Click here to join the CEC as a member.

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