Admittedly, this is only in its investigative stage and it will take years to complete, but at last we have a government decision that will mean today’s Australians will be financing something for future Australians.

It is such a long time since any government has had that sort of vision. All we have had for many years has been governments (of all colours and both state and federal) selling off the assets that were paid for and once owned by the people, the taxpayers.

History has shown that any move to privatise the Snowy Mountains Scheme will be shot down by the Australian people, so this will be an asset for their grandchildren.

The results of the recent election in Western Australia showed clearly that voters were fed up with politicians who showed no foresight other than to sell off potentially profit-making projects that were created and paid for by previous generations.

This Snowy Mountains proposal is the first long-term development for decades. Might it be wishful thinking that we might have someone in politics able to think beyond the next election and create other schemes that will benefit the Australian people, not just those who have the big money needed to buy up the good things that past generations have built and paid for?

Our Minister for Foreign Affairs has been performing her job quietly and, it seems, effectively. Ms Bishop has helped give Australia a reputation for a well-balanced approach to international affairs and that is important with the current shadow boxing between the three big powers, Russia, China and the US.

Although it is obvious Australia will continue to be a close partner with the US, recent actions in that country are a worry. It appears, at least on the surface, that its president has almost dictatorial powers, with a raft of decisions appearing to have been made by the president alone without any public debate by the elected. Some of those decisions and actions must cause concern for elected decision-makers in Australia, and the rest of the world.

The Australian Government has, thankfully, established a much more balanced national policy, such as our relationship with China. Sure, the Chinese Government is secretive and sensitive, but its leaders have been clever and our trade deals with that regime have benefited both countries. There seems to be no reason for that relationship to change. Indeed, we can only hope that China will use its influence to force some sort of stability in that strange and dangerous North Korean regime. They would be the only regime who has any influence on North Korea.

The US under President Trump is to increase its spending on ‘defence’ and is encouraging other nations in NATO to do likewise, but no one seems to be talking about easing the problems that create wars, such as over-population and the power of money going into fewer and fewer hands. This imbalance of wealth (ie. power) is not new. History shows us how that imbalance can have serious consequences.

Next October will mark the centenary of the bloody October Revolution in Russia, an uprising against the extremely wealthy Tsars and their likes who ‘owned’ not only the land, but the citizens themselves. That revolution led to the creation of communism, a system which, in theory at least, gave all citizens equality and the dream of better times but, largely because it was to be a one-party type of government, it played into the hands of people who were no better than the extremely wealthy class they replaced, people such as Stalin who became a virtual dictator of a cruel system that led to the death of some 30 million people.

True, that revolution was 100 years ago, but the problem with this imbalance of the world’s wealth is still a serious, and growing, international problem. It seems the extreme conservatives see no problem in this, but the world had a big kick to its finances not so long ago with the global financial crisis.

So what? We all survived and sat back with the belief this would not happen again, but reports of President Trump’s first days in the Oval Office said he had set in motion “an unwinding of Wall Street regulations imposed after the 2008 financial crisis”.

That being the case, maybe the US’s trading partners should put a tariff on all financial dealings with the US so they can build up their finances just in case greedy Americans create another GFC. That would not be out of line with the policies being implemented.

Australia survived that crises better than most countrie,s but it left us with a big hole in our financial reserves and another GFC would be far more damaging. Our leaders, in Australia and the rest of the world, should start thinking about this lack of control over our national and international balance sheets and what it could lead to.

Instead of trying to find ways to finance the ever-increasing cost of possible wars, surely there should be lots more effort put into peace and avoiding the likelihood of international conflicts. Giving the United Nations more power and a complete revamp of the Security Council to make it more democratic would be a good start.

But, in the meantime, Australia and the rest of the world need to be shoring up their defences, not against some unlikely attack by another country, but by giving the World Bank the powers to protect us from another GFC. The world needs to put some effort into real ‘defence’ and that includes protection from the sort of actions Mr Trump is pursuing.