Coalition NBN 'policy' to blame for Abbott's embarrassment

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 11 August 2010 22:32

Opinion and Analysis

The Coalition NBN policy's total focus on the 'how' of broadband rather than the 'why' has left its leader in the unenviable position of trying to justify the choice of technologies that he does not understand and has marginalised the NBN as an election issue.

On his blog today, long time telecoms industry participant and commentator, David Havyatt, said: "In 2007 the NBN (Mark I) was the defining policy (other than climate change) that delineated the ALP with having a view of the future. Both of these policies were launched well ahead of the relevant election; they became part of the narrative delineating the parties.

"This coalition policy has been snuck out eleven days from polling day. Worse the leader wasn't able to stand beside the shadow releasing it, and couldn't personally defend it [when interviewed by Kerry O'Brien on the ABC]."

Go and read the transcript of Kerry O'Brien's grilling of Tony Abbott on the ABC's web site. It's embarrassing. Abbott is totally out of his depth as O'Brien quotes at him comments from "Professor Rod Tucker from Melbourne University with a string of qualifications in [telecommunications technology] as long as your arm," trying to pin Abbott down on exactly how many bits per second the Coalition NBN will deliver, and how.

It's all very well for Abbott to plead that he is "not a tech head". He has only his own party to blame for lowering the level of debate to this.

As a key determinant of Australia's economic future broadband infrastructure deserves to be high profile and deserves to be a topic that the Opposition leader can competently debate: at the level of its importance as infrastructure but not at the level of the relative merits and capabilities of various technologies.  But since the Coalition policy itself never ventured onto higher ground, Abbott got what he deserved.

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