Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wpx84 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-19T10:30:09.014Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAPTER V - INVESTMENT IN COMMUNICATIONS

from PART C - THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2016

Get access

Summary

COMMUNICATIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

While private entrepreneurs were preoccupied with the more lucrative tasks of equipping rural enterprises and establishing the major assets of urban society, it was left to governments to make the literal, physical links between towns and rural areas and between the Australian interior and the ports through which trade with the outside world flowed. The development of communications in roads, rivers, harbours, railways and electric telegraphs during the second half of the century was a massive undertaking and was carried out by the colonial and local government authorities by a remarkably sustained process of investment. This task brought government authorities into the position of large-scale borrowers overseas, and, within the domestic economy, established governments as leading investors and entrepreneurs. Here was a rapidly growing avenue of Australian investment in which profit considerations came to play little part, which rested on the expectations of long-term and indirect gains and which depended on foreign financing to supplement local resources.

In the process of Australian capital formation, government authorities had other contributions to make, particularly in the growth of water and sewerage and of public buildings. In practice, public investment in urban facilities, other than those of roads and railways, was not very substantial. The relative importance of communications in public investment can be seen readily in the fact that, throughout almost all of the forty years after 1860, the construction of new assets in communications accounted for 75—80 % of all government new capital formation. The essential novelty of the Australian experiment lay in the fact that railway development, which dominated the communications scene, was the preserve, almost exclusively, of the colonial governments. While this imposed on governments the need to command large capital resources, a situation soon developed in which the colonial governments were replete with funds. Government access to capital was due basically to the re-orientation of British investment towards New Zealand and Australia but, in addition, to the ability of the governments to divert resources from the private sector to the detriment of the process of economic growth as a whole.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×