Turnbull’s NBN challenge: real analysis, real policies, not rhetoric
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Malcolm Turnbull as opposition communications spokesperson was a brilliant if obvious appointment by Tony Abbott. Turnbull can begin his critiques of Labor’s National Broadband Network (NBN) by asserting his credentials as “one of the founders of OzEmail, Australia’s first big internet company” and then hope his glorious brilliance will blind us from noticing that he’s trotting out familiar dodgy talking points. Take, for example, the one posted on his blog before the election but getting exposure today at ABC’s The Drum. Turnbull can be forgiven for larding this piece with the tired old political rhetoric about Labor’s “waste” versus the Coalition’s “affordable” policies. It was an election campaign, after all. Hence, Turnbull labels the NBN a “white elephant”, “the most expensive network in the world”, “too good to be true”, “taxpayer-funded spree”, “simply too risky”, “no benefit to taxpayers” blah blah blah-di-bloody blah. What Turnbull should not be forgiven for is telling fibs about the differences between the Labor and Coalition policies. “Just because the Coalition’s total spend is less doesn’t mean the vast majority of users will be worse off. On the contrary, most will have access to privately provided broadband services virtually indistinguishable from Labor’s — but at a much lower cost,” Turnbull writes in one of the few paragraphs that addresses the actual policy. Rubbish. Under Labor’s NBN, the “vast majority of users”, 93% of them, will have the opportunity to use fibre to the premises capable of speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second today and upgradeable to greater speeds in the future. Under the Coalition’s policy, those users will get … well … who knows? Turnbull’s predecessor Tony Smith pointedly refused to state which areas would get what speeds because, of course, that would be decided by the market. But one thing was clear. Unless the market decides you’d get fibre, you’d be stuck with ADSL2+ at 20-odd megabits per second if you’re as close as possible to the exchange and much less otherwise. Or hybrid fibre-cable (HFC) at 100 megabits per second tops if that’s already in your area. Or fixed wireless at a whopping 12Mb/s. Either way, you’re on technology that will always be slower than fibre. And they’re downlink speeds, of course. None of those technologies offer uplink speeds offer anything more than a couple Mb/s up. Only fibre does that. Only fibre can provide, say, the sustained 7Mb/s uplink speed required by high-definition video conferencing. In other words, Turnbull’s claim that the services available would be “virtually indistinguishable” is wrong. Not good enough. The Coalition’s broadband challenge is now twofold. Provide a focused, sustained critique of Labor’s NBN without appearing merely negative — especially when the key independent are slathering to get that fibre. It shouldn’t be too hard once we start seeing more data. Present an alternative policy that doesn’t look like it was cobbled together in a last-minute pre-election panic. It shouldn’t be too hard, given Turnbull supposedly has a clue about this stuff. As long as egos can be held in check. |
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16 Comments
Of course it won’t come in on budget. No one can prove the cost of a project as big as this in advance of project start up.
Of course some buildings will get wireless instead of fibre-to-the-lounge-room in cases where that is the best solution.
Of course some people will not use the high-speed, but other occupants of the building might. ..and the next inhabitants might.
Wireless is not as good as fibre. I have copper and wireless in my home office and the connect and download times are better with copper.
I don’t see a tower at the end of my street as the ideal solution because half the occupants are business houses and some of the residential is apartments.
Anyone who builds infrastructure for just today’s needs is incompetent – infrastructure is for the future . Like growth and expansion.
Turnbull’s criticisms since assuming the shadow has been of the lack of a business case for the national broadband network, which has more substance.
However, I’m not sure that a business case was produced for the Snowy Mountain scheme and Howard proceeded with the Adelaide-Darwin railway even when the figures showed that its profit would be as small as a flea’s balls, as I think a transport magnate put it.
Tony Abbott said on AM this morning that if Malcolm can demolish the NBN no-one would be more delighted than he. I think that tells us where this debate is going. The quality of data services will have nothing to do with it. Abbott’s a wrecker, nothing more and in accepting this appointment, Turnbull has become Abbott’s tool
Ah yes. The real Abbot has raised its ugly head already. Get ready for more of the same rhetoric people. This guys will stop at nothing to win an argument and uphold his fanatical ego, even if its not in the public interest. Good strategy though to put Turnbull in the position, if he succeeds Abbot the destroyer is triumphant, if he fails its throw the rival on the “no can do” scrap heap! I cant believe Malcom fell for that one!
@Observation: My esteemed colleague Bernard Keane has previously noted that Mr Turnbull’s political skills may not be the sharpest, despite his clear abilities and intelligence in other areas. Perhaps this is one of those Turnbull Oops Moments…
Gavin at 2:55 pm
Correct, but of course if there is a requirement for “profit” or a “business case” not a single public transport project in history would have been built. All the original (private) companies that built the early Metros in London, Paris and NYC all went broke and the systems ended up back with the public, by default. If the Productivity Commission is charged with approving such public infrastructure then we won’t get any……..Oops……. why we have not got any (for the last 30 years or so). And only massive toll roads and tunnels including in Brisbane where they will all be in bankruptcy soon.
As for Turnbull here is a post I cooked earlier:
And I forgot to mention -
of course there will be fatalities and injuries all of which will be the government’s fault.
My take… the only “brilliant” thing about this appointment is that Tony has kept his most obvious enemy out of the more senior roles in which he would be devastatingly effective: Finance or Treasury.
I cannot help getting this sneaky feeling that Turnbull has accepted the Communication position for a reason best known to himself and his loyal supporters in the Liberal Party. Either he has one of Baldricks “cunning plans” waiting to be let loose on the unsuspecting unhinged one, or he is just plain stupid.
Others with more knowledge than I will doubtless contribute over the next few days. I find it all very dark and mysterious.
I agree, Michael R James
Melbourne’s trams, trains and gas supply followed the pattern you describe. They were started by entrepreneurs, taken over by the Victorian government when they went broke, privatised when they started making money, taken over again by the Victorian government when they went broke a second time, and now at least the trams and trains are in that weird limbo land where one can blame either or both the government and the private operators for service failures and limitations.
Unlike the Coalition and prolly Turnbull I wouldn’t require a surplus from the national broadband network or any other public infrastructure or service. But it would be good to have a clear idea of how big the subsidy will be.
It would also be good to have a clear idea about how much of the subsidy is due to policy decisions such as requiring NBNCo to start the rollout in the country rather than in the more profitable metro areas and to charge the same wholesale price for country and city suppliers, for example.
Again, I’m not necessarily opposed to any of those decisions, but I think it would be good to have the information. Apart from anything else, it would allow one to start costing some country cousins’ demands for services ‘as good as’ those provided in the cities.
Governments (Politicians): they’ll spend *all our money and then borrow more. For the public benefit? Nope, to get votes. The public benefit is just assusmed.
Like the fact that this is ‘infrastructure’. I guess the hope is that once the resources run out, this fibre network will facilitate a miraculous change in the Australian social make-up from being cave-dwelling, box fed primates to sophisticated …well… net - productive - online - stuff - Gigabyte - thing - CPU - stuff - workers.
If politicians think it up, its f###### doomed and if we follow their idiotic whims, so are we.
The assumption that Malcolm Turnbull is debasing himself as an ‘attack dog’ on the NBN over-values his integrity. Don’t be fooled. His worst moment as Leader of the Liberals was to fall for weasel Godwin Gretch’s execrable email conspiracy to do a “gotcha” on Rudd. He had to prove he was a headkicker and subsequent backpedalling to support Rudd’s ETS got him nowhere. The idea that he is somehow above this kind of behaviour is a fatuous delusion, so expect much more of the same. Don’t forget what an utterly arrogant b*stard he is with an overdeveloped sense of his own wisdom and skill.
In my view, the Godwin Grech affair was a set-up by Eric Abetz, although it’s not possible to prove it. It was very unfortunate that Malcolm went along with it. I think the worst that could be said of Malcolm is that it was an error of judgement.
I am concerned that this Comms appointment is another set-up, this time by Tony Abbott. I hope Malcolm will find a way to make progress despite that.
I don’t suppose anyone cares that most of the bloody thing will be up and running before the next election and that unless Malcolm digs up the cable as it is laid down it will be laid down.
Considering the only ones in the parliament who don’t want the broadband network and don’t understand it are a few troglodytes like Abbott there is no chance it can be scuttled.
I sent an email to a friend 10 km from a dedicated exchange and it got to her quick enough but with her slow satellite it took her forever to down load it.
@Marilyn
The CoDependency’s strategy here has little to do with actually stopping the NBN - they have already lost that battle - it’s about laying the foundation of their next “GREAT BIG NEW WASTE,DEBT,DEFICT” … “the Devil loves socialism” scare campaign
Labor will really have to get their act together if they dont want the NBN to become anotherBER-like rod they be relentlessly beaten with at the next election
Instead of arrograntly believing, as Rudd did, that because most of what the Coalition says is crap, no one will believe them, Labor need to be out rebutting the disinformation campaign early, effectively and often.
The whole “they should do a business case” argument is comedy gold. Copper wires, laid maybe 100 years ago, are used right now to access the internet. Can you imagine people sitting around 100 years ago trying to do a business case for the installation of the copper network? Can you imagine someone saying “well, we have to factor in that these incredibly useful things called computers might be invented, and they might send data to each other, and this proposed copper network might assist in that…so yeah, let’s build it.”
It cannot be known what uses the fibre network will have, but I’d bet that technology will continue to advance and uses I cannot even dream about will be normal, essential everyday living in the decades to come.