Senate Committee NBN report full of "partisan bitterness"

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 November 2009 10:19

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

They claim that "The Opposition has not articulated an alternative policy to deliver a universal high-bandwidth network to all Australians, choosing instead to represent the interests of the residual monopoly incumbent Telstra throughout the course of the inquiry."

Ludlum says the Greens are broadly supportive of the NBN plan, except the Government plans to privatise NBN Co within five years. He claims that "No justification is provided for this incongruous and retrograde policy."

Ergas costings: full of fudges & lack rigour
He also dismisses the Coalition's concerns about the lack of a rigorous cost-benefit analysis as being "something of a red herring," and he dismisses the well publicised costing claims from economist Henry Ergas as "a series of mathematical fudges and assumptions...used to lend an appearance of rigour and precision where none really exists."

According to Ludlum "the presentation of professor Ergas to the committee [was] the only real attempt to conduct [a cost benefit] analysis to date," but "the impossibility of accurately monetising the intangible future benefits of an enabling network such as this were laid bare."

Nevertheless he says: "a detailed assessment of the project's commercial viability is essential, given the wildly divergent estimates of the wholesale costs of access to the network which have begun to flourish in the information vacuum."