GOVERNMENTS on the look out for nation-building projects should spend more time looking for them in rural Australia, says XAVIER DUFF

You have to feel for the eight people arrested last week as they protested against the north-south pipeline.

It's no fun for a normally law-abiding citizen to be treated as a criminal because they strongly believe a government decision is unjust.

But like all the protestors and property owners affected by this project and the desalination plant at Wonthaggi, Victoria, they won't get a sympathetic hearing from government.

This is nation-building and bad luck for any one who stands in its way.

It's nothing new. The residents of Tallangatta in Victoria in the 1950s were given their marching orders when the government decided to enlarge the Hume dam and submerge their town.

Not that it was a bad decision, but Tallangattans paid a hefty price for being in the way of progress. At least they got a new town built for them not too far away.

These days they would more likely be sent packing with an inadequate compensation cheque and a lecture about the national interest and the big picture.

Nation-building seems to be a bit of a theme of state and federal governments at the moment.

But there is a danger the term can be used to justify all sorts of politically-expedient projects.

One of Kevin Rudd's big nation-building promises is a computer for every child at school.

I would have thought parents would be far more excited if Kev promised to take computers away from children, rather than give them more.

There are already computers in most classrooms and many children have at least one at home, not to mention the one in their pocket - the mobile phone.

Providing more of them hardly seems the Great Leap Forward. But it sounds exciting and sexy.

"No town shall be without an inter-modal freight centre by 2020" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

And that is why we need to watch out our governments do not confuse nation-building with ego-building.

Pulling down perfectly good facilities and replacing them with monuments to political excess is not nation-building.

Spencer Street station's expensive make-over does not improve the frequency or speed of country rail trips.

Rebuilding the "iconic" MCG - now as as original as grandfather's axe - does not improve our balance of payments.

Spending ever-increasing amounts of money on freeways and by-passes for Melbourne is dumb when it does not solve the long-term problem of the city's excessive growth, which in turn is gobbling up some of Victoria's best agricultural land.

Part of the problem has been the current obsession for getting the private sector to build these projects - known as public private partnerships.

Unless a project can be neatly packaged up and sold to a private consortium it is much less likely to get up.

Need a new toll road, stadium or airport? No problem, Macquarie Bank will be happy to oblige. Need a desalination plant? Multinational water companies will beat a path to your door.

Need to upgrade thousands of kilometres of country roads or build a new toilet block in Nhill. Hello? Anyone there?

It is much easier to get a French company to build an energy-guzzling desalination plant than do more to capture stormwater, which requires a bit more imagination and is likely to be messy and difficult.

There are plenty of nation-building projects waiting for attention that are not as sexy, iconic or profitable to private investors as toll roads and convention centres. Many of them involve simply replacing ageing and worn out stuff like bridges, footpaths and water pipes.

It's a bit like choosing between buying the latest plasma screen TV or getting the old house re-stumped and re-wired. We all know what we would prefer but the plasma is not a priority if your house is falling down around your ears.

Any politician who really wants to leave a legacy for the nation should consult the wish list being compiled by Infrastructure Australia.

To his credit, Infrastructure Australia is Kevin Rudd's creation set up to invite public submissions for priority nation-building projects.

Many relate to the local government sector where a backlog of infrastructure has been building up to the tune of $14.5 billion.

Not surprisingly, roads feature strongly - particularly local country roads struggling under the burden of more and bigger trucks. Councils, saddled with their 19th century revenue base simply don't have the money to fix them.

There are hundreds of projects around rural Australia awaiting a modest injection of funds, compared to the big-bang projects. But they will have a huge impact on regional economies.

They might be boring, but you won't find anyone being evicted or sitting in the path of a bulldozer. And for a pollie who needs good spin, that has to be a plus.

• Xavier Duff is a senior Weekly Times reporter.