Will the Coalition preside over the No Broadband Network?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 04 August 2010 12:54

Opinion and Analysis

It's crunch time for the Australian Liberal Party and its coalition partner, The Nationals, as Australians are faced with an awful Federal election choice: the socialist Labor party with its plan to spend $43b building a national broadband network at 100Mbps speeds, only to cruel it with a freedom-killing filter, or the freedom-loving, capitalist Liberal Party which still hasn't stated what its NBN policy is, or whether it truly is 100% opposed to a filter.

OPINION: Politicians, you suck. You're a bunch of meddling, taxing, do-gooding world improvers that, no matter which side of politics you're on, regularly lie, evade, pork-barrel, obfuscate and from time to time, steal and even shamelessly cheat on your partners.

If I had my way you'd all be sent off to our famed (and somewhat imaginary) Tasmanian salt mines (second only to those in Siberia) where you could "move forward" as much as you wanted in delivering as much salt as the kidneys of Australians could bear.

But, I'd probably then a politician (or a dictator) and would have to join you in your muck-racking, dishonest and putrefyingly progressive ways, so'¦ no thanks.

Knowing this about politicians, you'd have to ask yourself why you believe anything they say, especially when it comes time for an election, where promises are always made but rarely kept, with some core promises becoming non-core promises and some the other way around.

Aside from a zillion things that differentiate the depressingly similar nature of supposedly opposing political forces (how's that for a contradictory statement)'¦ is the issue of broadband for Australians.

After years of Australians having to pay much higher prices for bandwidth compared with many other countries, and having to put up with slower speeds, our current government is promising to build a national broadband fibre network.

This will, if built, deliver 100Mbps speeds to Australians connected to the network, with 93% of the population expected to be connected, eventually. In several years' time.

The problem is that the network is expected to cost AUD $43 billion dollars (billion with a B), with some analysts predicting the cost could be double that figure.

That's stunning! Amazing! Incredible! Unbelievable! Totally socialist and progressive! Very debt-making in an era where debt is so bad that not even debt likes debt anymore.

There's also no guarantee that any NBN provided service will actually be affordable, with some predicting costs of anywhere from AUD $100 to $200 per month for an Internet connection, when $49.95 per month is the price most Australians would be far more comfortable with, and a price at which existing competitive telcos are selling bandwidth at, presumably at a profit, although more expensive plans do exist.

With Australia already in massive debt thanks to our rather useless socialist/progressive government (which the impending election could turf off into the electoral wilderness), the government's answer to any problem is simply to spend more money.

It's not their money, after all, it's yours and mine, and whenever it comes to 'OPM', or other people's money, governments of all stripes never seem to care much about whether they're spending too much of it, or not.

But that's especially true of socialist, progressive governments, who think your money is theirs, and who cook up ridiculous $43b spending programs without even first doing a cost/benefit analysis to see whether the plan is a) affordable and b) can be paid for.

Sadly, however, the allure of faster broadband in a land where the tyranny of distance is well known and understood is a powerful one.

Continued on page two where the rage against the progressive political machine concludes'¦. Read on!