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read moreWhen will the NBN stop being disappointing and start being real?
Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 26 November 2010 01:55
From its inception in a dream-like state where Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy shared dreams-within-dreams together on a flight of fancy to Canberra, they thought they could rule the Cyberverse together at a cost of only several tens of billions of dollars. Instead, Kevin Rudd is PM no more, as we know, and Senator Conroy must face news of yet another NBN disappointment.
Given Australia's long-standing battle with the tyranny of distance, you'd think Australians would be welcoming the NBN with open arms, but instead, poll after poll thinks our government is nuts for spending billions on superfast Internet that, according to the first Tasmanian school connected, is 'not reliable'.
What an indictment, what a disappointment, what a rogue packet up the I/O port of Australia's most unbeloved Communications Minister ever, Senator Stephen Conroy. Talk about bad policy!
Incredibly, despite what should be the infrastructure story of the century for Australia, Senator Stephen Conroy has managed to single-handedly (ok, with a bit of Kevin Rudd's help) become an even more useless Communications Minister than the shining lights-out of the Internet like former Communications Minister, Richard Alston.
He was dubbed a massive luddite, but Senator Stephen Conroy has, sadly, proven to be far worse: he wants to deliver an NBN no matter the cost, and then he wants to censor it. Sigh.
It's typical of the ineptitude of most politicians, but Senator Stephen Conroy has taken it to a whole new level: he should really be ashamed of himself and, if he had any honour, would gladly resign and let someone else more qualified at disasters, like Minister Peter Garrett, take the job instead.
I mean, at least Peter Garrett knows how to make a disaster happen in a short time. Senator Stephen Conroy's disaster has taken 3 and a-bit-years so far, with precious little to show for it (including no sign of a real business plan and no real cost-benefit analysis) with at least 5 more to go, if not years more still.
Tasmania's premier, David Bartlett, is another worrying case of politico-ineptitude. While he was bragging about 'Tasmanian innovation', as if Tasmania had actually contributed something to the technology behind the NBN, the first Tasmanian school connected to the NBN was complaining of its 'unreliability'.
Rabbiting on about how it's 'all just the start' and talking about video conferencing as if Skype had never existed and it was all new and thanks to the NBN, Mr Bartlett put himself in the same kind of league as Senator Stephen Conroy. Why do we as Australians put up with it?
Apparently Tasmania will be the most connected place on the planet by 2014. I guess that will be news to South Korea although if North Korea keeps on bombing the place, Mr Bartlett might be accidentally right.
So what about that Tasmanian school with the 'unreliable' and "disappointing" NBN connection? Is this a portent of more disasters to come?
Please read on to page two!
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