John Linton .....was today's front page head line on the 'paper' version of the SMH though it's not on the web version so I can't provide the detail....(thanks to a reminder from BS the link is now up:)
http://www.smh.com.au/business/soaring-costs-halt-tenders-for-nbn-20110331-1cnl3.html
In essence it is reporting that NBN has halted negotiations with all tenderers and, at least in the article, cited no process/time frame to re-start them. I suppose the only surprising issue is that it is head line news that a government expenditure estimate has been deliberately under stated or the sheer pig ignorance of the person who 'bus ticketed' the costs to cover up his election lies (Krudd) has simply been shown to be the liar he has always been. The cost of any major project will always, by definition, be grossly under stated as will the time frame and the end benefits will be grossly overstated - Labor politicians = serial liars...they always have been and always will be as they constantly choose to make grandiose promises without reference to their departmental research or even common sense (who can ever forget such grandiloquent nonsensical gems of Labor lying as "No Australian child will live in poverty.....")
So, apart from all of the other lies on which the 'NBN2' is based the first "costing difficulties" have appeared. Of course these costing difficulties are all the fault of the greedy and price gouging contractors and current labour shortages caused by the ongoing WA mining booms. If you believe that 4 or 5 major construction companies have colluded to pitch the tender responses at unreasonable levels or that the government of the day of the country were unaware that there was an ongoing drain of construction resources going on in WA then I guess you exactly describe why there is still a minority Labor government in charge of looting this country....it's because the electorate contains a higher than average number of 'stupids' than at any previous time.
Does it really matter? No. For those idiots that thought it was going to be possible at all the end price is irrelevant. They don't consider such things as cost or delivery times being solely based on a egotistical politicians lies being remotely important just as they believe the nonsense of "fast internet" for less than the cost of ADSL and all the other nonsense that has been spruiked since the start of this fiasco. What you could find amusing, if you don't find it alarming, is the increasing amount of comment in the business press of who will buy up the partly completed NBN when it eventually becomes clear that it is not only going to go massively over the current cost estimates but that it won't go close to delivering on Krudd's and his successors lies. The articles I have read to date all point out that Telstra will be the only company interested and financially capable of taking over whatever has been built to the date of abandonment at a fire sale price and even the dummies should know what that would mean.
Of course, such talk is totally speculative but the incredibly sad fact is that is being talked about at all - and so incredibly early in the project schedule. What's really going to happen? I certainly don't know but Labor politician's legendary lack of financial abilities to "run a chook raffle at the pub on a Friday night" comes to mind. Oh well, back to the real world of actually trying to run a communications company in Australia today rather than unthinkingly wrecking the whole communications delivery structure in some lying ideologue's fantasy world tomorrow.
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PS: Latest ABS figures released today:
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/6445F12663006B83CA256A150079564D?opendocument