Column | Macquarie 2100

I wanted him to comment on the bus system in Columbia's capital city, Bogota.

It may seem a long way from this region but there's a vital lesson about government spending our taxpayer dollars wisely.

We've got log-jammed traffic in Sydney thanks to decades of poor planning and the only 'solutions' our most highly-paid minds can come up with are new toll freeways and heavy rail services which will cost billions and benefit the regions very little.

This, despite the fact our country tax dollars are subsidising these mega projects, leaving us hopelessly short out here.

I wanted Mike Baird to look at Bogota's amazing bus transport network and apply it to Sydney.

This could help fix that city's transport woes and leave plenty of cash in the kitty to actually build some decent long-term infrastructure out west.

Not long after the turn of this new century a new mayor was elected in Bogota and the first thing he did was scrap plans for billions of dollars of new freeways.

He told city planners to show him just one example in the world where building new freeways had solved traffic congestion and of course they couldn't.

He reclaimed lanes all over the city for buses only and built a series of train-like bus stations in the middle of main arterial routes.

Now, for a fraction of the cost of freeways or rail, Bogota's bus systems moves more than two million people each day.

(Go to YouTube and type in 'Bogota Rapid Transit Streetfilms for more information).

Imagine this sort of system being implemented in Sydney.

There's a tiny ray of light on the horizon.

While every transport bureaucrat I've mentioned this to thought it was ridiculous (as if they could be taught anything by a third world country), Mike Baird had actually flagged the Bogota concept in a speech to state parliament.

This is where our politicians should be taking their study trips, scour the internet, find out what counter-intuitive programs are actually working around the world, and check them out.

Then come back here with the steely resolve to stare down the senior public servants and direct them to make good things happen.

The federal government also needs to take this common sense approach to heart and there are so many ways of helping people cut living costs that are never explored and successive budgets clearly show there's little holistic thinking from the bean counters.

Provide incentives or rebates for families and pensioners to set up backyard aquaponics systems.

For less than $1000 you can build a system which supplies fresh fish and veges.

These home-made gardens produce so many veges with no weeding and very little work.

Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics and combines the best of both systems and none of the weaknesses.

(Google 'backyard aquaponics).

With aquaculture, the big problem is cleaning the fish waste and keeping the water clean so the fish don't die.

In hydroponics, it's having to provide nutrients to the plants.

With aquaponics, the fish waste water is cycled into the hydroponic grow beds, the nutrients feed the plants, in turn the plants take up the nutrients, thus cleaning the water for no work and no cost, it's then cycled back into the fish tank.

Run by solar power, there are virtually no running costs.

By feeding the garden trash to the worm farm, and feeding those worms to the fish, it's a closed loop of food production, just as it is in nature.

No expensive chemical inputs are needed, greatly cutting costs.

If Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants proof of how good this could be for struggling Australian working families, set one up at Kirribilli House.

And think of all that Omega 3 from the fish diet out there lowering the nation's healthcare bills, we may not have to spend so many billions of our dollars 'fixing' the health system, if people didn't get so sick in the first place.