NBN purchases 1,800,000 metres of … copper. This fit's in with the NBN's pathetic target of providing Australians with ADSL internet speeds but charging people a lot more for it. The only entity that this helps is Telstra: Sauce: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/23/carrier_club_slams_t…
Unfortunately the fool that did this is now Australia's Prime Minister but that's the calibre of leader we now have.
Sauce: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/nbn-co-buys…
Not a bad option, TPG EFM is about $230 for 10/10(4 wire) from memory….$330 for 20/20(8 wire)? Per month and that's dependent on line quality, fairly long contract 2.
Dependent on line quality aswell.
Its funny, as far as I understand it, Fibre to Fibre was ditched because it was allegedly too expensive and wld take too long to roll out.
So years later, costs blow out by - what's the latest figure? 15Bn? And we're STILL years out from an already obsolete NBN being finished.
Our govt - awesome.
It's simply atrocious.
The rest of the world has now come round to the understanding that 10Mbit is the minimum speed for internet to be classified as broadband.
How lucky we are that da gummints has decided that 12Mbits is something to aim for lel …
The only reason Fibre was ditched was because it was Labor policy.
The fibre plan was ditched because it was far more expensive and would have taken many years longer to roll out. In the long term the fibre plan is better, but governments don't get reelected in a year's time based on benefits that bear fruit in a decade. We, the electorate, are partly to blame for that.
Not completely ditched, but about to be. FTTP contracts are honoured until 30th of Oct in my home state of Tas.
Who knows how much more expensive Fibre would be, NBN refused to release that information.
What we do know:
Oh, and Renai's just released the document on Delimiter which shows that the 3 year plan they announced the other day is full of rubbery figures.
I'm not really seeing where FTTN is cheaper, nor quicker to rollout
@jnewau: that's true. Think about cutting off the fibre cable somewhere in the neighbourhood, then set up an active station to convert the optical signal to electronic signal. Not only need the initial setup costs but also extra long term maintenance overhead. How could that be cheaper?
I feel sad the Aussie have to put up with such a … as our communication minister, now even worse, as primary minister. The old Rudd labour government may not be ideal, at least they had the vision and decision of building NBN. Unfortunately this bit good thing got compromised by the other party.
Politics is usually nasty. When the at power party say we human eat food, Sh!t Sh!t. The opposition always advocate otherwise.
Labor is always the party that puts in reforms for the people. Another term by Turncoat and the Liberals could really hurt many Australians in terms of education, job security and health. They might act nice now but watch what happens if they get in again.
That was actually never proven and never will be. How much is the FttN costing now compared to pants on fire Turnbull telling us before the election?
because it was far more expensive
Neither plan costs anything because both produce a positive yield against the investment. It's like if I told you if you give me $10 I'll give you $20 back, and if you give me $15 i'll give you $25 back - as well as another $5 tomorrow. The NBN cost argument is literally 'the second one costs me an extra $5, so it's bad!' and disregards that both investments will yield the same return in the short term, with FTTP yielding better long term results.
Money is only spoken about as a subject in regards to NBN to confuse fools.
If some-one, be it the government or yourself, is asking me to give them $10 to provide $20 of services, or alternatively is asking me to give them $20 to provide $40 of services, how much of my money I am willing to risk depends on my level of trust in the other party's capacity to provide that service effectively, my perceived value of that service, and my fear that the other party might just run away with the money…
I take it only fools diversify and balance their investments, and wise people put all their money in the 'sure thing', the 'sure thing' being 'guaranteed' to make money?
As formulated (by the former Labor government, and largely continuing to this day), the financial survival of the NBN depends on it enjoying a monopoly position, protected by legislation and with taxpayer money to buy-out the older product of its potential competitors. If a company's financial return depends on government-protected monopoly status and buying out its competitors, does that suggest the financial return-on-investment was that solid?
If a company is a government-owned and protected monopoly, it doesn't need to make any profit (or provide a good service) to guarantee its survival. Many don't (that's not just an Australian phenomenon).
Actually it was the previous government who launched the NBN scheme they heralded as being future proofed and we now know would have taken until 2026 to complete if it hadn't been cut back.
Source please.
yeah "Fast. Affordable. Sooner". Slogan didn't really pay off now..
We got Slower, most costly and delayed longer!
FTTP was the only way to go!
Regardless of government the project was delayed and over-cost. Anyone that voted for this project and didn't expect the costs to blow out on either party has no idea about infrastructure.
The downgrade to copper speeds for most certainly is a shame but the majority of users simply want it for media streaming; not something I think the tax payer needs to foot.
The tax payer is not footing anything but the upfront risk.
And the risk is non-existent because of the legislation. Essentially if you want internet in Australia, you'll need to buy it from NBN.
Who cares what it's used for?
If 1% of people use it to create a business and make profit, then that's great.
If 99% use it to watch movies and play games bought from the 1% they're the market that the 1% needed to start the new business.
No matter the technology, the network will succeed.
However, the technology choice can and will affect how big the impacts are. Sadly, we've elected to go down the "cheap", "safe" path, in which case the benefits will be minimal. If we'd elected to go down the "expensive" and "risky" path, we'd have created a globally unique piece of infrastructure that would have encouraged huge investment interest from overseas and made our economy a test bed for the future.
Making money is not about the number of employees you have.
It's about the number of customers you have. (the number of employees you have is dependent on the number or size of your customers)
The internet brings a vast percentage of the global population to you if you have the capability to service them.
This is a vastly incorrect assumption. If there was going to be Abby outsourcing it will happen regardless to offices in countries with fast and reliable upload/download speeds. All we are doing is limiting ourselves
Interesting point.
It does open up the potential for actually being a destination for skilled technical services. It could also change things in a big way. Right now most of the workforce is crammed into a handful of cities. With the right infrastructure (and possibly some govt concessions), it could prompt newer cities based around IT services (e.g. all sorts of small Managed services providers popping up).
Wouldn't that have a very positive socio-economic benefit to the country as a whole? As well as the cities that are bursting at the seams (e.g. Sydney or Melb).
The tax payer is not footing anything but the upfront risk.
Not true. It's taking up a significant portion of the budget. That reduces cash from other areas.
And the risk is non-existent because of the legislation.
Could you expand on this?
Essentially if you want internet in Australia, you'll need to buy it from NBN. Who cares what it's used for?
I don't see the point of forking out such an extreme portion for people to pirate TV, but that's me.
If 1% of people use it to create a business and make profit, then that's great. If 99% use it to watch movies and play games bought from the 1% they're the market that the 1% needed to start the new business.
A lack of NBN isn't stopping people from making media in Australia currently.
However, the technology choice can and will affect how big the impacts are. Sadly, we've elected to go down the "cheap", "safe" path, in which case the benefits will be minimal.
This is true.
If we'd elected to go down the "expensive" and "risky" path, we'd have created a globally unique piece of infrastructure that would have encouraged huge investment interest from overseas and made our economy a test bed for the future.
Pure speculation really; as devil's advocate why would super fast internet entice huge investment from overseas? Australia isn't a cheap market to invest in - our wage's are high and we have good market regulation.
It's not on Budget, never has been, so it's not taking up a significant portion of the budget at all.
I did expand on it. "Essentially if you want internet in Australia, you'll need to buy it from NBN."
A lack of NBN isn't stopping people from making media in Australia currently.
It's not the making it's the distribution and sale.
Pure speculation really; as devil's advocate why would super fast internet entice huge investment from overseas?
Yes, it's speculation, but realistic. NO other sizable country (Small Island economies like Singapore excluded) had plans for such a broad reaching and capable network.
It's not on Budget, never has been, so it's not taking up a significant portion of the budget at all.
The "budget" in the sense of the amount of dollars we have to spend in Australian. The Project costs money and it's bleeding it at that, hence it's costing the tax payer money.
It's not the making it's the distribution and sale.
No one is exactly crying out for Australian media. There's certainly a rise in demand for Netflix related media but that goes back to my prior points.
Yes, it's speculation, but realistic. NO other sizable country (Small Island economies like Singapore excluded) had plans for such a broad reaching and capable network.
It's not realistic. This still doesn't give any reason why investment would come here.
What is on budget? Was there ever a budget apart from very conservative figures plucked from outer space?
neither side of politics has handled the nbn well, labor started rolling the network out before they had even decided what the network was going to be. fttn isn't a bad technology, there are areas where the copper isn't in horrible condition, if they need to replace a small amount (10% or less) to make an area ok for fttn it wouldn't be a bad thing, if the whole area is stuffed, then fttn probably isn't a good option
telstra has always been the core reason we haven't had better infrastructure when it comes to internet. they refused to roll out their own NBN in the late 90s because the accc wouldn't guarantee they wouldn't have to provide wholesale services over it. nobody else will roll out a new network because of how they overbuilt the optus HFC network so that most areas had two networks, and other areas had none, almost bankrupting optus in the process. i'm glad that TPG is rolling out their FTTB network to actually compete.
the other side of it is, do we need the NBN, I can currently get 100mbit services from two providers where I live, does another network need to be built where I am?
Today it might seem more than enough, but you wont be singing the same tune in future.
I'm almost certain I will. 10mbit would be fine for me at the moment and with tech advances, both access providers who supply 100mbit will be able to supply more than that in the future.
You got FTTB already or are you mistakenly thinking that HFC (Foxtel/OptusVision Cable) is capable of more than it is (The existing HFC infrastructure is unable to support more than a few simultaneous users at 100mbit)?
I have TPG FTTB and Telstra HFC connected to my place. The DOCIS 3.1 upgrade will allow more bandwith over the same infrastructure, same way as improvements to VDSL will allow more over the last mile copper from the basement. I consistently get 112mbit over my Bigpond service.
Yeah, but how many people are connected to the cable?
The cable network was never designed to offer internet access as a primary function. It's perfect for distributing static broadcast content, not at all perfect for distributing independent and dynamic content to individuals.
As such, it would be massively over-subscribed if everyone were to be connected to it.
@scubacoles: I'm sure that hfc is capable of many Gbps pet headend/node over many channels but it's purposely limited to only a few channels per user to distribute the load. The main problems are Foxtel, sucking up a huge amount of bandwidth, and wholesale, as network management needs to be done across the whole hfc network including backhaul and pricing controls. Under NBN, ISPs would only be resellers at best with not much actual control of the hfc network or user experience
I have no idea how many people are connected to the cable, the HFC part of the NBN is designed to operate similar to FTTN, by moving the "node" closer to the end user, in this case it is so the network is split among less end users, that combined with the DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade makes HFC perfectly acceptable as an access method. Even if you look at is a shared medium, every network has this shared status at some point in the network, it can be at the exchange for DSL or POP for NBN or higher in the core network of the ISPs.
It is ironic that you mention HFC not being designed to handle internet traffic. Copper networks and fibre networks weren't initially designed for that either, that doesn't have any relevance to the discussion.
The current HFC network was not designed for data.
Agreed that once the conversion to NBN occurs HFC ought to be capable.
So you happen to be a part of the small percentage of people that can get cable, and based on this you think that the NBN isn't needed. Ok?
@scubacoles: exactly. Even our previous communication does not understand the difference between shared bandwidth and dedicated bandwidth, hub against switch. That's why he naively thought wireless network can be compared to fibre network.
You sound like the people who say "Wow 1TB hard drive.. I'll never use all that".
Nek minute.
not really, I'm a person that has worked in and around ISPs for a long time (from back in the dial-up days when people still used win 95) so I know a little bit about what i'm saying.
@terminal2k: Well then you should know that Data is constantly evolving and faster than ever! 1Gbps connections are not just for the businesses anymore, soon they'll be required by households.
"Unfortunately the fool that did this is now Australia's Prime Minister but that's the calibre of leader we now have."
Actually the fool(s) that did this were the people that voted liberal in as it was clearly part of their policy that they were not sticking with FTTP. The Australian people believed that NBN wasn't the highest ticket item that people chose to vote for.
Or people naively voted Liberal because they believe the negativity, attack ads and read News Limited.
Thought you were going to say '"Actually the fool(s) that did this were the people that" designed the NBN on the back of a serviette to be built with money we don't have'…
I thought it was the actually the fools who sold a business yielding $1.3 billion/year in dividends (as at 1996) and threw in the network with no forethought that it might not be a good idea to hand over Monopoly Infrastructure to a Retailer.
20 years later, we buy back the neglected network for $11 billion so that we can spend another $40+ billion to chop it up and in a few years, sell it back (most likely to the same retailer).
They're all geniuses!
It all comes down to how easy it is to spend money… other people's money that is.
I had FTTP NBN installed at my 3 year old house a few months ago. It took the NBN workers about 5 hours to connect just one house as they had to dig up paving to fix a broken conduit (original installer's error). If Labor's FTTP plan had stayed in place I think we would be looking at a fiber roll stretching well into next decade. The NBN guys told me all sorts of stories about the difficulties they face. Usually it's a broken conduit on a property or even a conduit running to the wrong house.
At least most Australians will have something of an NBN by 2020, albeit using inferior old infrastructure. There are many people around Australia who have no ADSL2 access right now. I have a relative in a medium density suburb in Adelaide who is forced to use 4G broadband. WiMAX isn't available, satellite was incredibly unreliable and slow, so 8Gb per month upload/download combined cap it is.
Took about 20 minutes to be NTD to be installed for me
The way the current FTTN plan is progressing, I'm pretty sure it will be complete at roughly the same time that the FTTP plan would have been largely finished
Sure but it's a mammoth mammoth infrastructure project which needed to be done, do it once and be done with it.
If that means we wait longer or it costs more, ok, so be it. At least when it's complete it's a problem that is solved for 50 years like the copper network did for us (or longer?)
Instead this dicky thing they are putting in will be obsolete in 15 years and upgrading it will be immensly difficult.
Cu for the future….
Australian domestic high speed internet is very out dated. God bless.
Here we go, another forum post where everyone blames the government for doing a bad job delivering the NBN. Well the NBN didn't have to be delivered by the government. Taxpayers are facing all the risk, and as we've seen by all the cost blowouts and delays, are paying for it. Before Kevin Rudd came up with the idea on the back of a napkin back in 2009 there was a consortium of companies who were preparing to bid for the right to built a new fibre system without any government intervention.
I don't have any problem with having faster internet, I just don't see any reason why taxpayers should be on the hook for the bill (maybe in extremely remote areas, but then why should I be paying for someone's decision to live in the middle of nowhere). Private companies are willing to provide the service if the heavy hand of the government would get out of the way #googlefiber.
We had 20 years before the NBN plan for the private sector to show any indication they were going to revamp our decayed and 3rd world communication system, and the best they did was cherry pick a few profitable areas in the big cities to install cable into. That is it.
The NBN was the correct way to go. In the end, the government would have owned a profitable, extremely important assets for the future of our country.
You can still get the fibre directly to your house if you want to pay for it. I've heard the cost would be about $3,000.
A quick google balloons that number to up to $12,000 - and thats if your in the very limited range. A lot of people don't even qualify.
where do you get this from?
I've read that on whirlpool, unsure on the price though
You mean direct from NBN right? That was another lie :')
I don't understand the NBN. We are paying a fortune in taxes for internet that is hardly better than 20 year old cable, and something that could have just been left to the commercial sector. In the UK Virgin and BT laid fibre to the house and offer up to 300mbps speeds for prices considerably less than say a Bigpond cable plan. Our cities are more dense than most UK cities (Well Melbourne and Sydney are), why couldn't we just leave it up to the private sector to sort out access for those in cities and let the government supply remote access where it is not economically feasible to supply internet (outback etc). Surely we wouldn't each be paying thousands in tax for it.
Actually, the NBN isn't costing us anything. Long term, it will pay for itself and end up giving the government a profitable asset. The only situation where this doesnt work is somehow the internet goes bust, and no one wants broadband any more lol. Fibre network will remain relevant for the next 100 years
The commercial sector was doing almost nothing to improve our communication network, the most they did in 20 years was rollout cable in a few cherry picked areas
You mean, it is costing us right now, but the Government plans to recoup the cost back in the future? Unless i misunderstand the situation (which im sure i do to some extent), the money is ultimately coming from the government, which is tax payer money.
Further up its mentioned that many private sector companies lined up for the job and wanted to do the roll out, but history may have repeated itself in that case anyway - fibre may have only gone to cherrypicked locations. Doesn't sound much different to what is currently occurring however.
Why does everyone keep saying "it's not costing us money"? An investment is still an upfront cost until it's actual return. If it wasn't we would be springing up new roads and and even more NBN's left right and centre.
Roads don't make money. (unless they are toll roads)
NBN does make money.
An analogy is the government pays upfront to build you a house (the NBN)- but you rent that house (monthly internet bill).
At some point that house is paid off, but we will keep paying rent
Also keep in mind the Govt, theoretically, is us. (not a business like Apple) The money is supposed to be spent on us.
They have a non-compete legislation. So it is guaranteed to make its money back in (is it 20?) years from when the build-out began. After that it generates money for the economy every year (hint: less taxes!), for up to 100 years. Either that or they will make internet cheaper.
When you build roads, no one pays money for them unless they are toll roads. Toll roads do usually make their money back but they are still risky and take a long time to pay off because paying for a road isn't that popular. So the government usually unloads that burden on to private companies.
Everyone already pays for internet and that isn't changing any time soon. Certainly not in the next 20 years, let alone the next 100.
Fibre is future-proof but I have to say copper certainly isn't.
Yes but until the actual point it makes money it's a calculated risk and it's costing money.
Uhm, because our wonderful Telstra have been doing such a bang up job maintaining and improving the network? I'm completely trusting Telstra would absolutely spend shareholders money upgrading Australia to fibre….NOT!
All about the bottom line mate. You can't leave this to the private sector. It would be all cherry picking if it got off the ground at all. Rural Australia would never see anything.
That would work well if it was a free market, however Telstra has been blocking and preventing competitors that reduce their monopoly. Telstra would have blocked any other commercial plans for fibre to the home until they have squeeze every last dollar out of their aging copper lines.
Sauce ? o.O
And now for some leftist propaganda. “The Australian Labor Party is the party that conceived and started building the NBN. A fibre NBN. We are the party of fibre. The Liberal Party is the party of copper. They sold it. They bought it back. And now they are replacing it with new copper.” - Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare.
So the party noting that it's the only party that's not in Murdoch's pocket, and committed to an NBN that will propel the economy, is simply engaging in leftist propaganda? Anybody not on Labor's side of this argument is an idiot, plain and simple.
The awkward moment when you bring copper to a fibre party. And then make the population pay 50+ billion dollars for no inherent increase in speed
^^ Freakin' gold. I'm definitely stealing that for future use.
Is he joking when he wrote sauce instead of source
Yes, it's just not very funny.
doubt it.
If it was, the joke was so dry it needed some sauce
Maybe faster internet will help us spell?
Ah but what ever happened to http://jpap.org/papers/icc-2006-dsl.pdf ?
The claim was that while this was going to be difficult to implement, it has the potential to drastically increase the capacity of the existing copper network. Australian grown too.
Faster DSL always requires less distance and more money (for more copper nodes). It increases in speed to the point where the distance is 0m and you are just 100% fibre (which actually costs less than popping up nodes everywhere).
I think this was more about gaining efficiencies by lowering overheads in the network traffic itself.
And the bloke in charge of it is now our pm!
edit really dont think this forum will achieve anything. So happy thoughts
My ADSL2+ has been running at 3mbits for the past 6 years so anything higher is going to be massive improvement for me but I do agree they should have done it properly.
This simple video pretty much sums up everything that the LNP does too Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1ggMgjYev4
Best video ever lol
Just shows all the people who voted Labor at the last election were right. :)
Does NBN charge service to property charge if we don't use the service?
I am waiting for NBN to be ready for my suburb as currently no provider including Telstra can provide any service to me.
Man, that is some good sauce…
Democracy doesn't work. The party who serves the 1% is always voted in by the poor and uneducated. It's funny but mostly just sad.
Too late now, Election cannot make it before they layout Copper for all of us.
Was having some hopes to vote Labour back or whoever really takes on Fibre NBN
Fibre to the premise is the future. Malcolm Turnbull as communications minister just delayed its implementation. He claimed in 2013 that the Labor implementation of FTTP 'could' cost $100 Billion dollars. The figure itself was not substantiated by any evidence and denies the credibility of Turnbull. His review concluded it would cost $64 billion to do a full fibre rollout to 93% of Australia, and that was also with an extra 10% contingency on this plan. Whereas recent estimates form NBN have stated the MTM rollout of FTTN, HFC and FTTP will have peak funding cost of $54 billion.
So do we rollout a network which will return more money, have the ability to be upgraded easily, cost effectively, give better outcomes, be more reliable in general with FTTP, or do you succumb to the powers that be, reuse Telstra's copper network which has been quoted as being '5 minutes to midnight' (meaning nearly at the end of its life), that is slower, prone to environmental damage/ disruption, has a higher latency, can't transmit as high speeds over long distances, require nodes that need an electricity supply and battery backup to every single one. It was illogical thinking a multi billion project involving so many different parties could be turned around so quickly, by having to engage with new stakeholders, find people to roll out the copper, re-negotiate a deal to takeover the largest telecommunications networks in Australia and then operate it and guarantee the unguaranteeable 'at least 25-100mbps to all australians', all by the end of 2016. The clock is ticking Turnbull.
There has been media coverage that NBN FTTB trials of GFast., a technology used to crank up the speeds of copper displayed download speeds of around 522down/78m up Mbps. These speeds sound great, but they were achieved over a distance of 100m. At the NBN test facility they achieved speeds of 927Mbps over 20m. I don't know about you, but I know many driveways are much longer than 20m, especially if you are nowhere near the node. How about the fact that drops off to 800mbps over 100m. Compared to GPON fibre, where each stand is capable of transmitting 2.5Gbps down and 1.25 up, which is split between a maximum of 32 different users. There are clear upgrade pathways from GPON. It can be upgraded to XG-PON. which is capable of 10Gbps download and 2.5Gbps upload, and in the future 40 GPON and 100 GPON, giving download speeds of 40,000Mbps and 100,000Mbps. This is the inherent issue with copper, its scalability. Sure, there is an upgrade path from ADSL to VDSL and GFast., but copper is severely limited by distance. Fibre can be run at a maximum of 20km, with new standards of fibre technology enabling longer distance of data transmittance.
Up your vote for the efforts. Anyway, with candidates like TB, TA, JH I definitely will vote for other party.
Hockey is gone, didn't you hear?
My country of origin the Philippines is now offering FTTH.http://www.rappler.com/business/industries/172-telecommunications-media/110005-pldt-fastest-broadband-service It's much much much poorer than Australia so how come they're going to have betted internet?
Mainly because of population density. and also the difference in wages and material. Phillipines have very low wages but labour in Australia is several times more expensive.
To explain in ELI5: let's say you have a 1KM long fishing net made out of fancy optic fibers on your fishing boat.
This net represents the infrastructure — the cabling, the nodes, the trunks, routers, all the hardware that makes the network work.
The fish are your customers — the more you catch the more money you make, and the faster you can pay off the cost of infrastructure.
In the Phillipines, there are a lot of fish living in the same area and with just one big fishing net, you can capture a lot of fish in one net. So it's very easy to make money, because you don't need more than one net so the costs are low, and soon you start making a profit.
Meanwhile. In Australia, the sea is very big and the fish are spead out much further. The 1KM long fishing net isn't catching enough fish as a result…. So you have to make the net bigger, or buy more fishing nets in order to catch more fish. Either way, the new nets are three times expensive and take a long time to make, so you won't be making money until much further down the road.
Now the Australian government doesn't want to spend too much money on new nets, because according to the Libs it costs roughly 100 billion which we can't afford. Besides, we already have some old copper nets which are already making money for us — so instead of making new fiber nets they continue to use the lousy copper ones which are more prone to breaking and in the long run costs more to maintain.
Remember it was the Labor who spent every penny of our reserves (which was saved by the Howard Government and Liberal Party). The Labor planned unrealistic things such like the 50 year bullet train and the impossible to achieve NBN FTTP in a short period of time. How need a bullet train that's 50 years behind? or in another 20 years do you really need FTTP while the rest of the world is in the next stage of having faster internet connections?
which was saved by the Howard Government and Liberal Party
Ha!
Howard reigned through the easiest economic period EVER.
China was going nuts buying everything at any price and as a result, somehow Howard is a genius?
Howard was also the biggest spending PM!
It's not necessarily mutually exclusive that you can't spend and still save, but arguably (if you think saving is a good thing) he could have saved a hell of a lot more!
So he spent the most and spun a tale that Liberals are good economic managers that people like you blurt out occasionally without thinking about the facts.
It's also conveniently forgotten that half the debt Howard "inherited" was debt that the previous Labor governments had also "inherited" from the Fraser Liberal government.
So much for Liberal's economic prowess?
Finally - I'm not arguing that Labor are necessarily better. Both have their ups and downs and some people are good at their jobs, others not so much.
PS: nearly forgot.. guess who was treasurer in that Fraser government that left Labor a $40 billion (in 1983 dollars) debt?
Yep, your mate, the economic genius, John Howard!
He also left the country with double digit unemployment and Mortgage Interest rates of 21%!
I agree scubacoles, he is praised as an economic pariah yet it was under his watch that Telecom was sold off and not divided into retail and structural entities. He believed in the 'market circumstances' to dictate whether or not Australia should improve broadband, rather than go off what consumers want and to catch up with other countries with vastly superior broadband compared to ours. Telstra's natural monopoly has been detrimental to the progression of broadband quality in Australia. Telstra didn't rollout FTTN because the government wanted it to provide cheap wholesale access to other providers, which obviously it wouldn't want to to do to protect it's vested interests, however this has screwed us over, as it allowed Telstra to keep charging their high prices.
The internet economy in Australia has been estimated by economists to provide us with 3.6% of our GDP in 2011, which equates to approximately $50 Billion dollars per annum. We need to diversify away from mining long term to ensure stable employment, growth and revenue from industries set to stay.
Out government debt is a small sum compared to other OECD countries, and we should really be concerning ourselves with building infrastructure and establishing and encouraging institutions that will fuel growth in the future, as we can borrow at low rates now. Bullet Trains, expanding public transport ( e.g as Melbourne is set to double in population in the next few decades), ensuring medicare is constantly updated to ensure out currently efficient medical system by international standards stays that way, ensuring we improve our children's education to be competitive with other nations in the OECD and in the region.
Despite who's in charge it is always the "end user" who suffers, going back to the NBN topic, it's gonna be us either paying premium or get shit speed,and by the time the project completed we will still be like 20 years behind eg. The states or even some part of China
You know nothing about economics. If Labor hadn't pumped the economy during the GFC, we'd have had the same disastrous recession as the rest of the developed world. Pretty much every economist of note has said that. And Labor even managed to cut nominal spending, something no modern Australian government had ever done.
The Libs confected a great lie for simple minded people who like to feel angry, and sadly, the low rent strategy paid off.
The beauty of democracy for conservatives is that low information voters get the same say as informed voters.
Shouldnt you be for libs not against
Both sides can celebrate the magnificent Menzian masterpieces.
Poo! Time to sell more units to get a business link then. :(