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I believe that ALCOA is responsible for ~20% of Victoria's electricity consumption... I think.
Transport is an issue.The gravy train of highway construction has got to end (to mix some metaphors). Every dollar sunk into more roads is also a huge maintenance commitment for each and every year thereafter.
Perhaps Gavs Carbon tax, coupled with at least the threat of or actual reduction in diesel fuel rebates for trucking firms, might see the emergence of interest in the national rail network. Here, perhaps government could maintain ownership of the network while private interests run the services, renting competing routes, the rent used to maintain, upgrade and expand the system.
Otherwise we have the Telstra Scenario. Where competitors are renting (bits of) the network from their main rival.
Aluminium smelters are usually the largest single power consumer in a region, so your Alcoa factoid is probably true.
I agree about government owned railway tracks and private services operating on them - the network is just another natural monopoly that there are few benefits in privatising and lots of risks...
I dunno, I think today's highways will serve as transport corridors well into the future. Whenever I'm driving on a shiny new freeway I imagine light rail on one side and horse-and-cart on the other :)
When I look out the window of the train that runs along the freeway I imagine that a whole lane for push bikes or electric bikes would be handy if energy got really expensive. Come to think of it, that's how my great-grandad got to work during towards the end of the depression.