[LINK] New opposition spokesperson for broadband

[Glen Turner]

Jan Whitaker wrote:

> ``Nick Minchin will take on the fraud that is Labor's broadband 
> revolution,'' Mr Turnbull said.
> 
> ``He will be there to take on (minister Stephen) Conroy and with a 
> very powerful combination of experience in communications, finance 
> and in regulation.
> 
> ``Nick Minchin is perfectly equipped to take on Stephen Conroy and 
> demonstrate the hollowness of this area of the government's initiative.''

If you were to describe the proposed NBN as "hollow" it would be
because it is installing a $5B network which will be inadequate
within a decade and have huge maintenance costs (90,000 street
cabinets) rather than dealing with the $20B nettle of fiber to
the home now and reaping the longer network lifetime and lower
operating costs in the future.

What is also disappointing is Mr Turnbull's treatment of
telecommunications as a purely political exercise.  We suffered
strongly from this during Minister Alston's time in office. I
do hope that attitude hasn't returned.  We'll see soon enough I
suppose.

-- 
  Glen Turner   <http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/>