I refer to the Malaysiakini report Table Petronas' profits in Parliament, Najib told .

As the global oil price is moving above US$100 per barrel, there is talk of subsidy eating into our country's budget. We might ended up subsidising RM40 billion a year on oil and gas alone.

With such a huge sum of money involved, it becomes a real issue for us to ponder on. The government said it cannot continue to sacrifice other developments for the subsidy alone. This is a logical statement but what can the government do to reverse its own policy malaise which created this monster (subsidy) in the first place.

What is obvious is that Proton, the national car project, is not sustainable with such low sales and production volume (less than 150,000 cars a year). The need and urge to protect the company by being overly generous with a fuel subsidy and outright encouragement of private car ownership has become unsustainable.

The government should now seriously look into improving the public transport system by calling for a White Paper and initiate a focused effort in planning and building a network of efficient and reliable public transport systems with the public buses and the LRT as the backbone.

It is also time to liberalise the licensing for commercial/public transportation, eg taxis. The present 'Ali Baba' system which gives thousands of licenses away to politically-connected individuals who in turn lease out these licenses to taxi drivers must go.

It must be replaced with a direct licensing system and a good monitoring system to ensure that complaints of shoddy services are taken seriously. Drivers can be made directly accountable for their services.

If the government is serious in finding better ways to use the RM40 billion, it must act immediately to correct its past decisions and actions. It was a bad policy but talking about it alone will not help solve the problem. The public cannot be made fully accountable for the government's past folly.