[LINK] Peter Martin Economist (?) blames Labor for NBN!

[David Lochrin]

On Thursday 10 August 2017 at 15:11 Frank O'Connor wrote:

> 3. Blaming Labor for the shortcomings of the MTM NBN is a leap way too far. Their idea of the NBN wasn’t perfect, but the government’s changes (which resulted in a network capable of 10% of the performance, at better than 100% of the price, with operational overheads that will only increase this cost … and with a cost to upgrade/update even before it is finished that will probably exceed the current build cost) pretty much resulted in a White Elephant that should never have been built.

Hear, hear!!

Kevin Rudd's fibre-everywhere architecture was an expensive over-reaction to the privatised shambles made by Howard's "three amigos" and implementation should have been put on hold while its scope was rethought.  The money could then have been spent more strategically, addressing the worst problem-areas first.

But the Coalition's MTM has succeeded in making what was originally a first-class, though certainly unjustified, fibre network into an expensive rat's nest without adding any nett-value.

The Australian public will eventually have to pay for it all
1. through investment of taxpayer dollars, some of which will have to be written off,
2. through higher service costs for poor quality services,
3. through reinvestment risk (of superannuation funds in private companies, or government issued / mandated infrastructure bonds) when NBN is privatised.

David L.