James Riley
Monday, 19 July 2010 10:13
IT Policy -
Regulation
Page 1 of 3
For the tech industry, the 2010 election presents a crossroads, where the policy differences being presented to voters by the two major parties are stark.
At the heart of the technology debate is, of course, the future of Labor's ubiquitous fibre to the home National Broadband Network and the fibre economy that would grow on the back of that infrastructure.
The National Broadband Network is a great story for Labor, undervalued by its election strategists.
When Julia Gillard dropped in at Yarralumla on Saturday for a cup of tea and an election timetable chat with the Governor General, she highlighted four things that would shape the debate over the next six weeks.
.
Government would tout its economic management record, pointing to Australia's having avoided a recession and the worst of the GFC. The mining tax and the Prime Minister's breakthrough compromise with the mining industry. She pointed to a new response to Climate Change and the future of an Australian emissions trading scheme. And she highlighted border protection and asylum seeker policy.
It was just a little odd that our new Prime Minister didn't shout the name of the NBN Co from the rooftops. Because along with avoiding the recession that developed economies suffered through as a result of the Global Financial Crisis, the National Broadband Network is shaping the be the single biggest and most important "legacy" of the Rudd-Gillard Labor first term. It is a concrete example of vision and progress of during that difficult first period.
It seems almost incredible that the NBN is not a more mainstream issue in politico-land. Because if Labor is re-elected on August 21, the NBN is the thing that economists and political commentators will point to as a giant marker for change in Australia.
The issue is not entirely uncomplicated, of course. There are plenty of people who believe the $43 billion price tag is a waste of taxpayer dollars and that such infrastructure should be built by the private sector on the basis of commercial need, with Government only stepping in where the market fails.
This is the Coalition's philosophy. It has tied the NBN spending (or investment, depending on your ideology) into its core issue of Government debt and deficit. This argument – and Tony Abbott has been making it forcefully for months – is that Labor are big spenders, poor administrators and can't be trusted with money.
Shadow Communications spokesman Tony Smith has regularly decried the NBN as a wasteful debacle. He says a Coalition Government would halt construction of the network and instead encourage the private sector to invest. Government would become involved only in underserved areas like regional Australia.
But the Opposition has not said how they will do this, nor what broadband will look like under a Coalition government. Nor has he said how long it will take to roll-out. With the election date now set, the tech sector will be keeping a keen ear out for formal policy and costings.
These very different broadband policies are about nothing less than the future of Australia, about the shape of its economy, the kinds of jobs that the nation will be generate in 20 years. The policy winner will be a determining factor in the way our education sector is structured, or how the health system operates.
Kevin Rudd and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's back-of-envelope estimate of the cost of the NBN roll-out was $43 billion. The massively expensive KPMG-McKinsey implementation study agreed – the total cost of the roll-out would be just under $43 billion – but the investment requirement from taxpayers would be $26 billion (the rest funded through cash-flow and debt.)
KPMG-McKinsey costed an NBN construction scenario that did not include an agreement with Telstra. Now that Stephen Conroy has a Heads of Agreement between Telstra, NBN Co and the Government in his back pocket, the total cost to taxpayers will decline by some billions of dollars.
This Heads of Agreement is the lynchpin of the Government's communications policy, and makes possible a re-writing of 25 years of mistakes and missed opportunities in the sector by both sides of politics.
