[LINK] Four Corners NBN

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmm,

Past infrastructure projects went ahead with little of the academic 
and navel gazing vacillation that some want to see applied to this 
one ... but it's a mark of the times I suppose. Too many people with 
not enough to do, ensconced in their comfortable (often publicly 
funded) armchairs in their ivory towers criticising projects 
involving people who are doing something to hopefully improve our 
standard of life and provide for future demands and requirements 
(which none of them seem to be debating).

The reason behind the debate seems to be the money being spent ... 
but the ostensible purpose of the exercise is to build a cost 
recovered communications edifice that will, serve us into the next 30 
years. (Yes, it has that amount of potential for growth.)

I mean if the money was being spent on sacred cows like Defence (the 
F35? Our naval supply ships? Our failing new submarine fleet? 
Over-runs on any one of a thousand projects?) there would be no 
debate at all. Spend it on the future, though (education, 
communications, health and aged care) and some non-achieving 
parasitic academic, schmuck, politician or shock jock will come out 
out their gold lined closet and rail wildly and loudly against it, 
pleading for prudence and reconsideration when they revert to 
'rational mode'.

They'll all look bloody silly in 10 years time ... not the 
politicians and shock jocks of course, because they'll deny that they 
were ever opposed to the project and assert that it was all their 
idea in the first place.

It's a real pity that the public memory is so bloody short (as 
evidenced by the way that certain market economists are now being 
sought out for their opinions despite the fact that they failed 
predictively so badly in the last four or five years) ... but in the 
final analysis we're a species that delights in disappearing up our 
own fundaments from time to time, which is what I'd suggest various 
numbers of us are doing at present with regard to the NBN.

Just my 2 cents worth ...

				Regards,

At 3:04 PM +1000 16/4/11, David Boxall wrote:
>On 13/04/2011 8:48 AM, Tom Worthington wrote:
>>  ... We need to make sure these changes to
>>  business, government and social structures are in the public interest.
>
>Don't we also need to move forward? We can second-guess and vacillate to
>the point of paralysis or we can screw up some courage, make a choice
>and get on with it.
>
>  From the far reaches of my childhood, an aphorism:
>"A fool is certain; an ignorant fool, absolutely so."
>In other words, we can never really "make sure". We can only convince
>ourselves that we're sure. There's still a possibility that we'll be
>wrong. Or right. Or somewhere in between.
>
>--
>David Boxall                         | ignorance more frequently
>                                      | begets confidence than does
>http://david.boxall.id.au            | knowledge
>                                      | --Charles Darwin (introduction
>                                      |  to 'The Descent of Man' 1871)
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