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Opinion - Written by Renai LeMay on Sunday, August 14, 2011 10:30 - 44 Comments
Dated Treasury advice does not invalidate the NBN
opinion If there is one thing we can absolutely rely on with respect to the debate about the National Broadband Network, it is that every week, some minor interest group, technically illiterate Coalition politician or blow-in journalist will find some new and completely spurious reason why the project shouldn’t go ahead.
This week it’s the turn of a reporter from Melbourne newspaper The Age, who breathlessly reports on internal Treasury advice regarding Labor’s flagship project:
“PREVIOUSLY secret documents show the federal government was warned that the national broadband network would expose taxpayers to ”considerable financial risks”, only weeks after the ambitious high-speed internet plan was unveiled.”
Wow. Heady stuff, and a ripping news yarn. Many of the issues raised — especially the need to protect the NBN from market competition and the reversal of successive governments’ long-held policy on bolstering infrastructure-based competition in the telco sector — are valid concerns which I and many other commentators share.
But there’s just one problem. The documents in question which are being reported in this article were handed by Treasury to the Federal Government more than two years ago — in mid-2009, months after the current NBN policy was announced.
As a spokesperson for Treasurer Wayne Swan points out in the article — and we’re sure Communications Minister Stephen Conroy would agree — in the two years since mid-2009 the Government, the private sector and NBN Co itself have conducted countless studies into the NBN’s future viability and its likely future impact on the telco sector as a whole. The debate has moved on — and going back two years to raise issues which have already been discussed ad nauseum is simply a fruitless endeavour.
In short, gentle reader, do not be fooled. The fact that a “journalist” files a “freedom of information request” and obtains “previously secret documents”, does not make those documents newsworthy or an important injection of fresh information into the current national debate. At best, the documents which The Age revealed this week will be used by the Opposition (wait, they already have been) as a poorly thought out attempt to smear the NBN policy again.
But more realistically, the release of this “previously secret” Treasury advice — and bear in mind that The Age hasn’t published the documents in full, so we’re not privy to what else Treasury might have said about the NBN — will ultimately become a minor footnote in an eventual history of the NBN written by a university historian in about ten years’ time.
Why is the article so excited about the release of these documents? Because journalists see it as their role to hold those in power to account, and to expose previously hidden information. And rightly so. I personally am feeling pretty full of this righteousness after recently watching a classic film on the subject, The Insider, which deals with journalists exposing big tobacco in the US.
But often in taking this approach, as journalists, we lose sight of the broader national debate happening around us. If The Age had released these documents back in 2009, they would have constituted an important item of information in a fraught debate, and would have been very damaging to the Government and Stephen Conroy’s pet project. Today, they merely represent a fly buzzing around Conroy’s nose — which he didn’t even bother to swat.
It’s a pity, but we have to realise not everything that you read in the newspaper or online is important — sometimes it is merely words filling what would otherwise have been a blank space on a page. The pen is moving — but the mind is not.
Image credit: Andrzej Pobiedziński, royalty free
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http://www.treasury.gov.au/contentitem.asp?NavId=087&ContentID=2120
The Age doesn’t need to publish the documents: http://www.treasury.gov.au/contentitem.asp?NavId=087&ContentID=2120
Light reading for you Renai?
Very interesting. Didn’t realize this had gone up; looks like there arenuch more recent documents included there which The Age didn’t discuss. Will have to do some reading there.
Wonder whether there is some more fruitful material in the 2011 stuff. The document titles alone look quite alluring :)
“If there is one thing we can absolutely rely on with respect to the debate about the National Broadband Network, it is that every week, some minor interest group, technically illiterate Coalition politician or blow-in journalist will find some new and completely spurious reason why the project shouldn’t go ahead.”
Substitute the political party name to Labor and the exact same accusation could apply to why the ‘project should go ahead’.
But the difference is here, political bickering aside, Labor is right, the NBN should go ahead. All attempts Turnbull has made at convincing the Australian public otherwise have been flawed and are quite frankly pathetic attempts at furthering his political career. Regardless of wether he does manage to dupe the majority of the voters.
You are going to have to do a lot better then claim “Labor is right”
Micheal Wyres has covered it to death. I thought that was implied, sorry.
Micheal Wyres also has a habit of being incorrect on a lot of matters, such as the CVC
I have a different “opinion” to you. That does not make either of us “right” or “wrong”. This is why you have so little credibility – your opinion is “the truth above all others”.
Yes, and your ‘opinion’ happens to be incorrect
Sorry Michael, but Google never forgets.
“Each POI will be connected together in a two-way backbone ring, allowing each and every provider access to the entire national infrastructure through as little as a single POI….to say that every ISP will need to have backhaul to every single POI is rubbish – the network itself IS the backhaul.”
http://delimiter.com.au/2010/09/08/god-help-australia-says-linton-on-nbn/#comment-18659
I thought you were banned?
Renai, did you happen to have IP banned RS or what exactly is going on?
RS is with Bigpond… dynamic IPs…..
Give them a break RS. It’s the only way they know how to debate, every other argument they have put forward has been utterly destroyed and shot down, their self esteem no doubt must be in tatters as the coalition have disappointed & embarrassed them with their inadequate patchwork plan.
(I’ve added The Age article to the Hall of Shame btw)
Nothing bewildering about it for me. Perhaps you are mistaking your own shortcomings and are projecting, it’s a real psychological problem… yes yes too much fibre is scary, must keep copper blah blah blah taxpayers roads hospitals etc. We’ve heard it all before.
You can ban IP ranges
Ban every BigPond ID? That’s using a nuke to kill a moth.
Bring on Disqus!
I said ban IP ranges, not the entire bigpond IP range
Deteego, in order to ensure that RS’s ban sticks if he has a dynamic IP, you’ll need to ban every IP that he could possibly be allocated. Even if you can reliably assume he’ll only be allocated from a subset of BigPond’s pool, that still is considerable overkill.
@HC
“I’ve added The Age article to the Hall of Shame btw)”
Adding it to your self created biased pro-NBN troll fest in Forums has some meaning? LOL
BTW It’s a Treasury paper not a ‘Age Article’ , but why change the habit of a lifetime of letting BS spin rule the day eh?
Nope. You are wrong again there is an article on The Age and that is what has ended up in the Hall of Shame due to the authors idiocy, look here is the URL:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/treasury-warned-of-risk-to-taxpayers-on-broadband-20110812-1ir23.html
btw it’s good to have a centralised place to refer to so people know which NBN articles will provide the most laughs. Consider what I am doing a community service.
ISP’s that do dynamic IP allocation usually have specific subnets per person, although I have no idea if thats the case for Bigpond or not
ISP’s do not base their dynamic allocation of IP addresses on “specific subnets per person”.
“Micheal Wyres also has a habit of being incorrect on a lot of matters, such as the CVC”
Actually I find usually Michael is on the money on most things.
Well that’s the nice thing about Delimiter is that not everyone agrees, and I do not agree with that at all.
That comment was supposed to follow Renai’s about MW at the end, I have to get used to this new system hierarchy.
“…the private sector and NBN Co itself have conducted countless studies into the NBN’s future viability and its likely future impact on the telco sector as a whole…”
I was under the impression they still haven’t done a cost/benefit analysis; did I miss something and has that changed?
*a minor footnote in an eventual history of the NBN written by a university historian in about ten years’ time.*
R.I.P.
NBNco
2009 – 2013
The treasury documents are still as valid now as they were in 2009, nothing has changed in the NBN, its still a government owned intrusive monopoly with 93% FTTH, 7% wireless paid for by taxpayers until the time NBN makes enough money to pay back the debt
Yes I liked the headline ‘Dated Treasury advice’, 2009 makes it dated?, what has happened between then and now which invalidates that advice, only 18 residences using the NBN in trial mode and the Telstra agreement yet to be ratified, still sounds valid to me.
When was Pythagoras’ Theorem written? At least 3000 years ago, maybe more…
Obviously out of date rubbish, triangles are newer and better now.
Come to think of it, I might try the same trick with my bank. You know that mortgage contract I signed? Mate, that’s years old, no longer relevant. You can’t possibly expect me to keep paying that!
“Dated Treasury advice does not invalidate the NBN”
you know what…. this title is kinda loaded or presumptious…. it basically takes as a starting point that the NBN has some “validity”…. and then frames the argument on top of this starting assumption and proclaims that “event X” does not “invalidate” an “existing valid concept Y”. it already presupposes a positive disposition towards the subject.
And as per normal Deteego and Tosh is out to bag the NBN as per normal.
Rather than giving anyone some advice, except when bagging the NBN.
Regardless of what these so called “secret documents tell” i do wonder how far people are willing to stretch their arms to get any traction on their seats.
You realize you can use this argument both ways (you are going to have to try harder then that)
advice? don’t build white elephants (esp. with taxpayers’ money).
While Australia debates whether to build the NBN or not, countries such as Vietnam are using FTTP as i type. I’m in Vietnam at the moment and can’t help noticed their economy booms ahead. B2B, B2C bringing in $45bn USD in the first quarter, and this is a developing third world country. What a backward thinking bunch you Aussies are….no wonder the country is full of drunks.
What, Vietnam is ahead of Australia? I hardly think so ;)
Probably used AUSAID dollars to build it too….
i noticed you said “Probably”, meaning your education about the world around you is very limited. I suggest you do some research and open your narrow mind a little bit more, just a little.
Interesting POV Renai…
Of course it’s more interesting that the government disregarded advice and didn’t dot it’s i’s and cross it’s t’s back before the NBN actually started up… And that these doubts were hidden until someone bothered to dig them up under FOI. And that the suspicion that Conjob and co. were flying the NBN by the seat of their pants was correct.
You’re passingly familiar with the fast trains project they are looking at atm? 100+ bn and it’s already had 3 feasibility studies and an implementation study starting now AND THERE IS STILL NO COMPANY NAME! /shock horror If it were run up as the NBN was, the newly minted company would be laying test track without a study being completed…
Labor may have lucked out, or they may have paid to have their studies turn out as they expected (never mind that there are still plenty of contradications, eg. NBNco originally spec’ing 200+ POI’s for example). But they SHOULD have done the due dilligence back when the decision was being made, and it speaks volumes about their credibility on creating and delivering on big projects that they didn’t.
So while it may be old news, it’s still relevant.
Sorry what?
“Of course it’s more interesting that the government disregarded advice and didn’t dot it’s i’s and cross it’s t’s back before the NBN actually started up.”
So they disregarded the advice and didn’t stop competitors?
And trains… ok that’s NBN related.. somehow I’m sure…
Not to mention NBNco specced something closer to 14 POI’s first up. Fibre backhaul providers specced the NBN for 200+ POIs (by submission to the ACCC). The ACCC determined that ~100 was an acceptable compromise.
It is old news, the questions raised have been catered for, costed, debated some more, planned for, laws have been written and passed regarding and resources allocated towards implementing the resolution for the “issues”.
Sorry Renai. The rhetoric in the comments here is having its intended effect. Every time I come here I read a bunch of nonsense over-exaggeration. There is no debate any more, just shrill shouting. I post less and less on this topic as time goes on, I simply don’t have the time to waste answering rubbish.
I’m not sure I am even going to bother looking at comments any more. Just depresses me how negative some people are.