Joseph Stiglitz: Australia should not follow the American path to inequality

[GBFan]

We do have a large Public service. The present government is trying to reduce this. For example it is reducing our government owned TV and radio network in Asia. I am not sure this is good for our relations with our Asian neighbours but it does save money. A you can see we still have some areas owned by the government that you do not. I suspect our road are comparable to yours. Both countries are very large so this is expensive Sometimes this is paid by partnerships with private companies with toll roads. We do have a large railway connection paid by state governments. This includes passenger trains in country areas.

I suspect we have more national parks due to the influence of the greens. Many of these are in remote areas

Out of curiosity, I checked public lands - 645 million acres in the US, 432 million acres in Australia - 69 million acres of national parkland in Australia, and 84 million acres of national pars in US (though that is kinda distorted by the federal land grab - for oil reserves - in Alaska of 13.2 million acres)

 

[Aus22]

GBFan , It is difficult to make comparisons without knowing what is meant by public lands. I suspect you have far more defence installations that would be on public lands.
Ntional Parks are also hard to define. A lot of Australia is desert so national parks there are rare. However much of the land is registered as aboriginal land.

In the cities there are parks in every suburb. Melbourne was known as the Garden states for it extensive public gardens