The countryside is just very attractive.

Venice is Venice, as in the glossy tourism books – interesting canals, old churches, intriguing local shops but an overriding memory I have got to say is lots of tourists and tourist souvenir stores. I eventually got tired of the crowds and headed off to a ristorante where I gobbled some palatable seafood and some fairly average merlot.

I am starting to enjoy my stay in Trieste and have increased my Italian vocabulary 400% from 3 to about 15 words over the past 3 days – clearly approaching fluency. It is comfortable here. The locals seem to be involved in a continuing, good-natured conversation and local community is strong. It is obviously something we do not have to the same degree in Australia – maybe we are compensated by higher living standards but that is not clear to me. Italian migrants to Australia must find aspects of life difficult in their new country.

Perhaps the less cohesive Australian society is a product of its more recent development that occurred along with mass usage of the private car. This led to sprawled out settlement and lower social cohesion. Of course you get compensations in terms of greater independence. These are the types of profound thoughts you get having spent about 4 days in a new location.

Tomorrow morning I will do some work. About midday here, the Australian election results should be finalised. I frankly dread the thought but I guess I’ll listen in.

The Government does not seem to have much of a clue about dealing with congestion in Melbourne and Mr Pallas seems to be a poor Minister for Roads and Ports. While the Government refuses to allocate road lanes on St Kilda Road to bicycle traffic on the grounds that this would limit access to Melbourne by cars (‘People have a right to drive their cars, and they have a right to do it without being impeded up on … for the purposes of looking after 2000 cyclists’) at the same time it levies a levy on parking in Melbourne city to do exactly that.

The Government’s response states ‘Government policy on road use charging is clear on this point: the Government will not toll existing roads and will only accept the use of tolls to fund new roads in defined situations…’. Thus any road pricing that is introduced will target cost-recovery rather than congestion – a flawed approach that means tolls are too high and do not address congestion.

It bears repeating even if it has been said many times. Road pricing to address congestion seeks to internalise external congestion costs – not to recover the cost of road projects. User-pays is the inappropriate principle to achieve efficiency in managing traffic flows.

The Government’s response does support various supply measures but refuses to even trial tolled high occupancy lanes on new lanes constructed (Response 16) or to even undertake a feasibility study of road use charging (Response 17). It does not want to learn since the ‘Government’s policy on tolling roads is well known’. Nor will it allow an external advisory board to be established to consider a ‘broad range’ of congestion control options (Response 31). The cat will not be allowed out of the bag!

On the positive side The Government accepts the need to monitor and report on the success of the parking levy (Response 18), it will discuss with the Commonwealth ways of eliminating ‘fringe benefit’ arrangements that encourage citizens to drive cars rather than use public transport (Response 20) and, most importantly, it will consider off-peak fares for public transport (Response 22) and time-of-day charging for CityLink and EastLink.

The opposition problems the Government has experienced over pricing traffic on EastLink have made it phobic about any form of road pricing. This has not been helped by opportunistic sniping from the sidelines by dills in the Liberal Party trying to make some cheap political capital. Neither major political party has shown any willingness to display principle and support the only measure that will satisfactorily deal with Melbourne’s congestion problems – to charge motorists the full cost of making journeys on congested roads.

The refusal to accept VCEC’s suggestions on congestion pricing is discussed in the Age.

The national secretary of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, Jeff Lawrence, said ‘There’s just no evidence it’s had any benefit.’ This might be so but that does not mean the scheme is wasteful. If the objective is deterrence it will be difficult to assemble evidence of effectiveness? Virgin Blue are also unhappy about the measure.

Federal Justice Minister Chris Ellison defended the use of marshals saying that every day without an incident was a successful day for aviation security. ‘It’s like saying that because you have an armed guard outside a bank, and the bank is not robbed, the guard is unnecessary’. But Ellison is not right either unless he has evidence he does not present. One cannot assume attacks have been deferred by the marshals.

Some rough empirics however suggest that the use of marshals is unlikely to be excessively costly so Senator Ellison is partly right. Suppose the marshals deter just 1 terrorist attack on a plane every 10 years, an attack would have led to the deaths of 50 people. Supposing the value of each life lost is $5 million (this is conservative) there is a total human cost of $250 million which, including property damage costs, would cover current costs of the marshal program.

Of course the key issue is whether the same level of enhanced security might be provided more cheaply. Reinforcing cockpit doors, arming pilots with handguns and providing more effective passenger screening procedures (including computer-based selective screening of high-risk ethnic/religious groups linked to terrorism) prior to boarding will also deter terrorists. So too will surveillance of suspect groups including suspect religious groups to inform on those linked to espousing terrorist rhetoric.

Australia should also monitor the immigration and refugee program to limit entry of those ethnic/religious groups who pose greatest terrorist threat. The humanitarian program should be redirected towards Asia where we can address humanitarian concerns at lower risk to ourselves.
Determining whether marshals are a waste involves assessing risks as well as the costs and benefits of these alternative measures and whether it is best to go for a narrow or broadly based defense measures.

A terrorist attack in Australia is almost an inevitable consequence of our role in fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq and of our efforts in East Timor. This attack might be directed at aircraft, our ports or our mass transit systems.

Effective ways of addressing terrorism need to be systematically analysed using economics and operations research (an excellent survey with references is here) not on the basis of glib editorials that ignore the real threats we do face.