World’s fastest train launched

I often wonder when do we start talking solution , making solid decision, planning and action rather than just moan and groan of difficulties all the time. News media is of no help in this area and they seem to be more interested in scandalous stories to feed readers. Time to stop giving excuses for that is time wasting and make task seem even more difficult psychologically Failure to do what ought to be done by any elected government is not acceptable. They ought to do what is right for the nation instead of trying to please every voters to remain in power or win next election. Voters should not expect party they elected into government to please them. We as voters have to leave the task of the nation to the elected ruling party and expect them to manage the nation. They have the intellectual resources in their hand to get things done without procrastination. A minimum qualification in some political and management causes should be introduced to filter out incompetent politicians that disrupt Parliament proceeding for publicity to win some naive voters. Registration should be introduced so that only those with the required qualification will be eligible for political election. This is no difference to any other professional job requirement, a truck driver need a truck driving license, a teacher need a degree or diploma in basic teacher training etc... In short we need an unselfish ruling political party who does not worry their future in the next election and do what is right no matter how unpopular in the short term. They will always be respected for their unselfishness when task is accomplished after a painful period even if they were voted out before the completion of the task such as overhauling the transport system. This may not be the space I want to mention about the vision of the country. I just want to mention that NZ is not a suitable place for manufacturing. It is not because of the higher labour cost but because we are not big enough to implement modern efficient production technology which is only feasible in much larger companies in countries with bigger population like USA, China, and EU. Apart from that we relies on other countries for raw materials and put the cost even higher. It would be wise to find alternative path such as Software R&D for the entertainment industries, medical industries .. I am sure there are many Kiwi who xcan think of more non-heavy infrastructure industries we can zoom in. Export of those digital products do not need building more port etc. Anything intangible products will be good. Just my 2 cents..

Easier said than done, NZ has a very low population density and most of the country's commuting occurs to and from city. Realistically I dont think anyone would have the funds to run a capital intensive project such as rail. Although I also do not agree with highways being the solution, bottom line: NZ has serious transportation issues that cannot be solved with single ambitious projects

Problem in NZ is the never ending argument among political parties for point scoring, debate among different groups of people and city councillors ....on and on and on..... Far too many people who never get out of NZ do not know how backwards NZ is in many area. I am getting frustrated working on R&D in New Zealand because of lack of support and funding. China has spent a lot of effort and money in high tech R&D that international news media have no interest to reveal. They have talented human resources in high tech sector and their standard of education is extremely high. Their success and efficiency in getting things done do not just happen overnight. They had planed their modernization progress after Mao died. They kept their cool and head down working smart and hard even under some very unjustifiable provocative China bashing from western news media. Perhaps some frequent bias negative reporting has spurred them to aim for higher achievement and prove western critics wrong to have the last laugh. If China is as corrupted as news media reported, China would not have made so much advanced progress within a short time. Time to face the real world and start looking at ourselves instead of fault finding with other developing countries to make us feel good about ourselves.

Deane is absolutely right, although out by a century or so. Compared to the Europeans (by next year Spain will have over 7000km of high speed rail) and this example from China above... we are mired in 1850's thinking and technology. And it's not honest to blame the politicians; by and large they follow public opinion, not lead it. No the root of our fate as a nation is that we let the spiv-boys in sharp suits take over, the bean-counters, conformist bureacrats and bankers ...useless paper shufflers who merely shift resources around, but cannot create them. Until nuture and respect our scientists, engineers and technicians ... the people who actually create wealth.. and give them leadership roles in our organisations, we will continue to languish on our downward spiral off the bottom of the OECD ladder.

Getting our train service from Hamilton to Auckland is like squeezing blood out of a stone.

This shows how backwards we are.

We need leaders that have passion, a dream to follow and ideas to get us at least into the 21st century.

Instead all we get is a political brick wall by politicians with 1950s thinking. The highway will solve all our transport woes....yea right.

If we had a nice modern fast train, people would by queuing to be on it.