At last, the voice of reason

At last an Aussie newspaper wakes up and realises that whilst personal car use is subsidised we will continue to over-use petrol and over-invest in vehicular infrastructure, effectively running down public transport at the same time. You can't have it both ways as the SMH says. Excellent. About time.

Make note - this is not the "Drive" section! It's in "Business". Can't have such logical thoughts expressed in the motoring section, can we?

In a nutshell, we have as a community, indeed as a global community, undervalued and underpriced petrol. Whilst we generally leave the market to decide pricing, in fact by providing community-owned infrastructure (roads, for example) at cost or below and by propping up car manufacturers with subsidies we have chosen short-term growth and employment over long-term sustainability. It's a distorted market because the true cost of using oil is not addressed in the price paid - the community carries the can on much of the infrastructure and the 'clean up' of health and environmental impacts.

Since the 'oil shock' of 1973 we have steadily increased the price by means of taxes as well as producer cartel activity, however consumers have protested politically and driven the cost down when it should be going much higher. We have even gone to war over the damned stuff in order to keep Joe Public happy with the end user price. In my opinion, anyway!