http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/coal-oil-and-gas-compa...
http://reneweconomy.com.au/australian-fossil-fuel-subsidies-...
By comparison the car industry only received about 5 Billion over 10 years:
https://theconversation.com/factcheck-do-other-countries-sub...
It was 5 billion over ten years compared with nearly 5 billion each year.
When you do that comparisons it is a mere 5 billion.
Now I'm not arguing that governments should be propping up sectors with pork barrelling. That is something for the electorate to decide.
However, the current government always claimed they had to stop propping up the car industry, because governments should not be in the business of handing out subsidies.
That government statement is disingenuous and total hypocrisy, since they will not be removing those coal, oil and mining subsides any time soon.
Also: "Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar will receive subsidies of up to $2.8 billion a year up to 2030 to ensure Australia reaches its Renewable Energy Target, according to new research." [1]
1. http://www.afr.com/news/politics/renewable-energy-subsidies-...
I'm more concerned about what will happen when the long-running property bubble pops, because this is propping up huge swathes of the economy (construction, banking, etc) and a lot of people have made financially insane decisions as a result. Lots of people in their twenties holding multi-million property portfolios, where rental income doesn't even cover mortgage payments, because all you need to do is get on the "property ladder" and watch real estate prices go up 15% a year forever...
And, uh, Norway is diversifying its economy, instead of doubling-down on resource extraction. It's not actively de-industrializing.
Wish my own government here in Australia had the brains and chutzpah to do this a few years back. We've never been much cop when it comes to visionary economics (apart from, arguably, rum being our first legal currency).
(1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/norway-s-...
It's about 10% of the size of Norway's so not especially impressive but it does exist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Government_Future_F...
Half of Europe was bombed, butchered or destroyed 75 years ago, the other half was enslaved or otherwise ruled by dictators for a generation.
China was tortured by several of the colonial powers, the Japanese, and then Mao. It's the world's #2 economy today.
Japan was flattened and nuked. It's the world's #3 economy today.
Germany was destroyed, split in half, and impoverished on one half for two generations. It's the world's #4 economy today.
South Korea survived a horrific civil war and Japanese occupation. Starting from intense poverty just 50 years ago - $150 per capita GDP - it now has the world's #11 economy.
And so on.
After the end of the Korean War 1950 - 53, South Korea was the absolute last on the planet in terms of GDP. Poorer than most of the poorer nations.
And remember the trauma of having gone through a conventional warfare that went up and down the peninsula about 4 time. Not some guerrilla warfare where a neighborhood here and there goes up in smoke but a good old WW1 style warfare of massive artillery barrages.
And before the Korean War, Korea was largely a place stuck in the 19th century, with no modern education or institutions to speak of.
In 64 years, they educated the population, built up basic economy, and than kept on advancing.
Same story in Western Germany; massive investments from the West to prevent them from turning to the Soviet block.
And so on. Don't oversimplify History.
While the distances between the towns in Australia is massive, most of our population resides in a handful of urban coastal cities.
While car culture is historically dominant, the biggest cities are all seriously trending towards increased densification, and much of our substantial immigration over the past 2 decades had been from nations used to much denser living.
I leave open the question as to whether it is the answer to all societies problems, but it would be a brave man to proclaim that wasn't the way Australian cities and population hadn't been trending for the past 10 years, and we'll likely trend for at least the next 10.
Public transport from the suburbs to anywhere but the city or somewhere directly on the way, is terrible.
Will we have better cars that are less polluting, safer, even self driving? Sure. Will we get rid of personal motorised transportation? No.
> Will we have better cars that are less polluting, safer, even self driving?
Sure, whatever. Considering the huge amount of pollution that goes into just creating the car, it is silly to talk about less polluting. Safe? Yeah, that why the road toll is going up. Self driving? Can't come soon enough, since people are incapable of concentrating long enough and are too selfish to drive safely.
Private cars are a stupid idea, and have caused way more problems.
I will add in addition to my above post, that our high property prices are additionally feeding an additional densification trend...
You can google for "Australian Census 2016 quick stats" and get this information for most places in Australia.
Where I currently live is very atypical for Aus, about 75% of households here have 1 or fewer cars, but I've lived pretty much up and down the entire east coast and have a relatively intimate knowledge of both this country and the collection of information on it.
As Russel Coight might say: "I've bend around this wide brown land, seen a thing or two..."
Looking at aust-wide and state by state, it's as I described, at most (in wa and tas) 18% with 3+ cars, but 60+% fall into 1 or 2 cars per household. The rest is no car and no answer.
For completeness, one also has to ask whether or why we measure or comment using the statistical concept of households or persons.
Using WA as an example, ~34% of households had 2 cars. We can say that ~56% of households responded that they had access to 2+ cars. We can also say that almost ~75% of households responded that they had with 2 or fewer cars.
However, if we want to come up with an idea of a "representative australia" (an arguably increasingly erroneous concept by the day), we have to realise that the distribution of "people" amongst households will not be uniform.
Indeed, there is likely a strong correlation between the number of people in a household and the number of cars in a household.
What this means is that although only 56% of "households" reported having 2+ cars, the number of "persons" who experience life in such a household is not proportionate to the number of households reporting each characteristic in the population.
Indeed, given that one stat is likely correlated with singles, students and dinks, and the later is likely correlated with early and extended families, you would likely find that on a population weighted basis, the 2-3 car households may need to be counted as some multiple of the single/no car households.
But people here are too addicted to them, and couldn't even imagine going down to the shops without a car. And make lots of excuses about it, such as it is too far and too big.
And from personal experience I can tell you that any argument of not needing a car goes out the window as soon as someone has kids. Discussion over. Unless you're volunteering to cart around all the shit parents take with them?
All that said, the transition away is going to have a high human cost, particularly in Adelaide which just doesn't have a whole lot else going economically. But my wife used to work for a Ford supplier in Melbourne, and that city has managed to absorb Ford's shutdown a few years ago without too much pain. (Nearby Geelong, though, had both the main factory and a steel mill, and is having a harder time.)