THE WORLD is way out of kilter. The Pacific Highway collapses due to lack of $250,000 in maintenance - and a family of five dies - yet in six months a smiling Prime Minister can pull $65.5 billion from a pork barrel to stay in power.

I can't help feeling the billions - plus the other billion wasted on Government advertising in the past 11 years - could be better spent.

The Government is awash with money but where are the big projects that will mark its years in power?

The new hospitals, roads, bridges, universities, laboratories, climate change measures, the land releases to give young marrieds a new start? What about another crossing of Sydney Harbour, or the Hawkesbury River? Yeah, right!

At least the phony election is over and the real thing has begun, but where is the money going?

On tax cuts that at best will buy most families a takeaway feed a week, or thrown like confetti at marginal electorates.

And so the fear-mongering campaign is under way with a $34 billion bombshell start and many young people denied the right to vote because the caretaker PM knows they won't vote for cunning old him. The period of grace for enrolment ended last week after just a few days because the rules were deliberately changed.

Locally, expect nothing from the election, as the Baulkham Hills mayor Sonya Phillips notes in her column this week:

"I think it is contemptible for any major party to ignore major growth areas like The Hills, which is part of a safe federal seat [Mitchell] and therefore not worthy of more funding."

Spot-on, councillor.

Last week, Mitchell residents received a PR blurb from Alex Hawke, the young Liberal candidate firmly pushing the prime ministerial barrow. A vote for Rudd against the Howard-Costello team, "with its proven record of economic management" was a horrifying project, he thundered, heralding "the most inexperience and union-dominated Federal Government in a generation".

Hawke promises to "crack down on hoons and vandals" improve local schools, and make our roads safer. Whew! He's pretty ambitions, Alex Hawke.

But personally. I prefer Sonya Phillips's big-picture agenda. None of it will happen, of course. We're taken for granted in the second safest Coalition seat in the country.