John Linton
You may have read that Lindsay Tanner (the Labor Government's Finance Minister) has been saying that the Krudd 'NBN2' shouldn't, and isn't going to be, subject to the promised cost/benefit analysis because "it is a unique situation" and it is "obvious that something has to be done without further delay". I wonder what planet Tanner lives on to be able to say that ANY government should embark on a huge national expenditure without determining whether it is justified?
I, like anyone else who has not been provided with some semblance of an expenditure analysis and the basis on which revenue will be generated to recover that cost couldn't possibly comment on whether any project is worth the money spent on it. Kenneth Davidson has made some points in this:
http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/competition-is-gouging-phone-users-20091102-hscp.html
that address the issue based on a couple of figures that he has found from somewhere or other. However Davidson's points aren't as relevant as Tanner's 'running for cover' - Tanner obviously does have access to whatever 'back of a bus ticket' figures are what Krudd and co based their public statements about the need and the costs of the second version of their nonsensical approach to demolishing Australia's communications industry and, equally obviously, he knows they make no sense at all. For a key financial member of an Australian government (any government) to try and use rhetoric to rather than financial analysis to justify the largest expenditure in Australian history shows just what a total shambles the 'NBN2' is.
Davidson doesn't actually need any figures to make his two main points that the real issue is that, irrespective of what is spent on building a 'new' network all that can possibly happen is that the current telecommunications delivery in Australia will become less competitive and more than possibly less capable. Whether you agree with his premises and his demonstration of the consequences or not he does draw attention to the fact that it isn't simply the money that hasn't been analysed it's the whole concept of ripping up the current processes and infrastructures and replacing them with processes and infrastructures that haven't even begun to be looked at.
I am no fan of Telstra or the way it operated under El Sol and his carpet bagging cronies and I certainly don't know that Mr Thodey and his drones will be any better but, when all is said and done, Every Australian and every Australian business depends on the Telstra owned network for every aspect of their communications. There is little doubt that the costs of that network to the end user are too expensive when compared to some other countries facilities - this is partly due to the size of the land mass and the sparseness of the population density and partly due to the inefficiency of 100 years of monopoly. However neither of those issues is going to addressed (the first one can't be addressed in any way) by replacing one operating monopoly with a new government owned monopoly that has yet to even build, let alone operate, a complex new network.
So Mr Tanner tells us that this 'Huxleyan' situation shouldn't be subjected to cost/benefit analysis because it's obvious that Australian citizens and businesses need "faster broad band" and it must be built quickly irrespective of the cost and irrespective of what effect it has on the current communications network. How so totally Whitlamesque in its total stupidity those statements are and like the great Whitlam stupidities how unbelievably dangerous they will prove to be - just like Whitlam's drug induced (the drug in Whitlam's case being his gigantic ego) wild fantasies of his "Better Australia" - which ruined Australia's economy and set Australian business back by 20 years.
Never mind - it appears that Krudd's word is accepted by over 60% of the electorate so, unless the opposition and cross bench Senators can actually lay their hands on some commonsense and indisputable facts that they can explain to that 60% of morons in simple enough terms for them to understand the Australian communications industry will descend in to chaos over the next five years for all the reasons that are obvious to anyone with a scintilla of understanding of how communications services are delivered in this country. A coherent opposition is about as likely as Krudd looking in a mirror and not seeing 'God' so it will have to be chaos for Australia's residential users unless the LTE deliverability moves forward a year or so.
Never mind if the boxed trifecta of:
Viewed, Basaltico and Alcopop
comes home then we can all retire and insulate ourselves from the Krudd Imperium.