For Bob and Gina

Lenore Taylor does a good job looking at the politics and improbabilities of the Coaltion's leaked discussion paper about developing Northern Australia:

Several ideas in the developing northern Australia discussion paper were ditched by Abbott almost as soon as they saw the light of day - including different taxation zones (which he conceded was likely to be unconstitutional, the same reason John Howard and Peter Costello rejected it on every one of the many, many occasions it was raised by the Nationals during the Coalition's last term) and the idea of cutting the aid budget by $800 million to pay for new medical facilities in the north.

The Coalition also immediately jettisoned the proposed ''first term initiative'' of moving federal departments to northern Australia. As the government quickly pointed out, many public servants responsible for policy delivery already lived outside Canberra. Presumably the ones advising future Coalition ministers would need to stay within earshot in the national capital.

And since the Coalition is planning major savings from cuts to the public service and sweeping changes to the way it does things, spending money moving people and departments around the country could run a little bit counter to the plan.

If these ideas were so obviously out of the question, it is unclear why they were included in a document sent by the opposition finance spokesman to premiers just last month, and included on the list of things the Coalition ''proposes to do'' in its first term.

She goes on to note that Federal politicians come up with these grand "let's decentralise"plans every decade or so; they never go far, as people tend to want to live where they want to live.

 

But as Lenore notes:

It is clear, however, that the ''visionary'' document aligns almost exactly with the manifesto of the mining magnate Gina Rinehart and others who have formed a lobby group called Australians for Northern Development and Economic Vision.

Erk.  I'm kind of allergic to "vision" in politics.  We can safely assume that Bob Katter would similarly be excited by any discussion of the North. 

And look who else is in on low wages and immigrants for the North: 

The director of the ''north Australia'' project at the Institute of Public Affairs, Dominic Talimanidis, says addressing labour shortages and ''heavily inflated wages costs'' is crucial for northern Australia to ''reach its full potential''.

I have often wondered if Gina is a financial supporter of the IPA.  Their crooked views on climate change certainly align with hers.  But who would know.