John Howard was Australia's 2nd longest serving Prime Minister, holding the position from 1996 to 2007. He was known as "Little Johnny", not only because of his stature (he's about the same height as me!) but also because of his "littleness" in many other traits - think mind, values, spirit, integrity etc). Analogous to a company that says its purpose is "to make money" e.g. Enron, Mr Howard's sole purpose in life was to stay in power. In that he was successful, no matter what institutions and values he had to trash along the way.

That littleness of Little Johnny also extended to infrastructure and investment for the future. His successive governments were the recipients of many many windfall profits. In many years Government income far exceeded the budget / Treasury forecasts. That money was never used for any significant infrastructure investment - the timeframes for returns on that didn't suit the political agenda - and I often wondered how long it would take for the chickens to come home to roost. Clearly, a lack of infrastructure spending was not going to show up in economic performance for a long time.

Well it now has. It's official.

Australia ranks #34 in a recent World Economic Forum report on infrastructure quality, which is two spots behind war-torn Slovenia and one spot ahead of Jordan.

That IS frightening. So now we all have to pay for the 21 years of incompetence on the part of Mr Howard and his colleagues, and it is estimated that today's generation will have to fund more than $700 billion of investment  to bring the infrastructure to the level of quality necessary to "sustain national prosperity". That's almost criminal isn't it?

By the way Mr Howard DID invest in one piece of infrastructure. As you can imagine he was a complete troglodyte when it came to the digital world, and the digital economy, and in fact he seemed to surround himself with advisors who were best suited to keeping him in the dark and fed on you-know-what. Every policy setting around digital was a shambles, usually an orchestrated outcome by the incumbents to gain more protection.

But Little Johnny did understand and like trains.

While dithering on everything digital he approved an almost $1 billion "investment" to complete Australia's North to South railway connection. The Alice Springs to Darwin rail link project was the absolute highlight of Mr Howard's infrastructure investment projects. This is at a time when repeated requests and proposals for investment in broadband and related infrastructure were almost lampooned by Mr Howard.

How much economic activity could this new railway line generate?

According to the government - almost unlimited! The gateway to Asia!

The reality? This line runs one freight train per day, that is ONE train per day, and one passenger train per week. Try not to laugh or cry when you read that. How much economic value can one train deliver I wonder, compared, say to a broadband "railway" upgrade? It was so laughable that no one ever even commented.

Unfortunately the untold economic wealth which this public investment was to generate turned out to be less than enough to just keep the operating consortium alive - they folded within three years, and eventually the whole show was sold to a US rail operator for some $200 million. So the public lost out twice, once when they lost all their investment and it was sold for cents in the dollar. And a second time to rebuild what was not built during those 21 years as the money weas squandered on pure pork barrelling - notably to Tasmania as it was important to buy votes needed to stay in power.

The Alice Springs to Darwin rail link is a fabulous example of the squandered opportunities under Mr Howard's reign and why Australia now ranks with Solvenia in national infrastructure quality.

It's a pity. Australia actually had the income, and unlike Slovenia we had no war, and we just wasted it all away.

That waste, and the public debt to rebuild is Mr Howard's true factual legacy.

Walter @adamson