Come back in 2014 and tell us all about how it worked out exactly as you brilliantly forecast…

Without wishing the wrath of you know who… I find it despeartely pathetic.

Can this futile part of the discussion now be put to bed?

Was going to complain about NeverBuiltNetwork, but realised he/she is just too much value to let it go to waste.

Comedy gold.

Which doesn’t make the NBN a bad thing, it’s just built by the wrong party, so….

Got it.

So wait. You’re saying the reason the NBN won’t succeed is politics, because if it was irrelevant as to whether Labor wins or not, it’d get built? And the Liberals will build it better by giving it to Telstra?

I enjoy your trolling. Please continue. It’s entertaining. Seriously, that’s brilliant.

Oh by the way, Labor aren’t building the NBN. NBNCo are. And their board isn’t at all politically motivated. Please, find my some evidence otherwise.

Meanwhile, I’m gonna go read the Telegraph. It’s slightly less biased than yourself. Cheers.

But reality may not be like this. Consider the questions:-

Is the nBn essentially an invention of the Labor Party ?

Is the Labor Party the only party that is actively supporting the nBn ?

Is the nBn being used as a political “football ie is the nBn very much dependent on the political fortunes of the Labor Party ?

Will the Labor Party win the lower house election in 2013 (or will it lose so badly it may even be replaced by the Greens as the 2nd party in Australia) ?

Is it realistic to say that if the ALP goes then so does the nBn ?

Is it advantageous or detrimental to the nBn that it totally ignores the major growth in communications – the mobile market ?

It is all very well to wax lyrical about the many imagined wonderful things that might be possible with an all powerful broadband system but if the political winds are not blowing in the right direction then it is all to no avail as favorable political intent is essential to get the necessary funds allocated.

Seriously the disrespect they show to the talented people running NBNco sets my blood boiling, especially when they bring up shysters like Telstra which have done all they can in the past 20 years to hold Australia to ransom and let us become a communications backwater, then propose that we send taxpayer money to them to develop an inferior network with no guarantee that we’ll be any better off than the direction we are heading in now?

It’s baffling, infuriating and downright sad that these people cannot see or show willingness to understand the positive impacts of the NBN just because it was devised by “the other party”. Sorry for the rant, I’m sure these things have been said a million times..

If one purchases a house with borrowed money that house does not really become an asset until it is paid for. In accounting terms it will be called an asset.

Now if that house was built by a ex-unionist Labor builder who forgot to put those metal covers on the house foundations and the house then fills up with white ants the house becomes a liability.

This is very much the case with the NeverBuiltNetwork which is very much a liability as it is costing huge amounts and there is very little to show for it. Honest accounting (totally unknown to Labor) would also show the operating costs as liabilities.

I am sure even Miss Gillard would be amazed at your acrobatic discursive dexterity.

“You acknowledge the money for the NBN is being borrowed. Yet in another sentence you point to urgent infrastructure, not realising that if you borrow money to build the NBN, then the money needed to build roads is still there in the form of ordinary tax revenue.”

Your statement is so Laborlike. Labor has wasted so much taxpayers money that there is no taxpayers money left and they are trying to increase their borrowing limit. So the Coalition will start in 2013 with no taxpayers funds and some $200bn borrowings to start to pay back. So to fund government asset projects the Coalition will either have to borrow more money or reallocate existing borrowed funds in a more responsible way – hence bye bye nBn.

“Then you suggest the Liberals should cancel the NBN, thus cancelling the revenue stream that the NBN will create. Now what you’re saying is they should scrap the NBN, use money that would have been used to pay for roads to pay back what was borrowed, and then let Telstra make the billions of dollars that would have been made by NBNco.”

You surely jest when you talk about the revenue from the NeverBuiltNetwork which has achieved nothing but to be a massive liability and will stay that way certainly until the election.

The Coalition will alter the NeverBuiltNetwork to their much cheaper and much quicker to achieve practical version. By building a much cheaper network the borrowed money saved can be diverted to much more urgent government asset projects.

Taxpayers money is the only way to pay back borrowed money+interest unless the borrowed money+interest is handed back. The other way is to devalue the currency like USA but this option is not all that suitable for Australia. Unfortunately the Coalition will start with no taxpayers funds courtesy of the profligate ALP.

The Coalition is substituting the much more experienced and efficient Telstra for the woefully incompetent NeverBuiltNetwork bloated bureaucracy and their multiplicity of rapacious consultants. The benefits to Telstra will be passed onto the Coalition as increased taxation revenue.

To restore taxation revenue the Coalition has to restore business confidence to get people off welfare and back to work. There will be a massive reduction in government waste such as the asylum problem and a return of the tax system to a sensible affordable arrangement.

This one feels like an Andrew Bolt denizen. You get similar sounding rants on his blog.

You also see it in the climate denial blogs.

It will be far easier for the Liberals politically to simply use their power as shareholder of NBNco to direct it to sell itself off – which essentially means transferring control to Telstra.

The Liberals certainly don’t want to “own” the mess that will result if NBNco were to actually engage in redesign.

It suits the Liberals down to the ground to sell off NBNco. It marries with their ideology and it gets the whole problem out of their hands.

And what happens then? Well Telstra will then own (indirectly) NBNco and this new subsidiary won’t be constrained by the terms of the Telstra sale act. Telstra will have itself a brand new monopoly and as such will have no constraints in continuing with the basically fibre design.

The future? A privately owned, fibre based monopoly. And instead of paying (say) $59.95 for access, it’ll cost you more like $99.95.

You were warned.

Do yourself a favour and research the home insulation program (Pink Bats) and discover that not only did it meet its objective of reducing energy consumption but also that houses that had insulation installed under the program are actually many times less likely to catch fire than those with insulation installed before the program. Reality contradicts the beat up. But one of the first things you’ll hear from the Liberals when you mention the NBN is the presumption that this government is somehow incompetent and the batts will be trotted out.

Do yourself a favour and research the success story that is the BER. Then compare it to the Liberals’ rhetoric. Ditto.

On and on it goes. A persistent narrative trying to portray a mostly good government as hopeless, incompetent. The lie-mongering that goes on about the NBN is simply part of this picture.

Let me help you out.

If you borrow money to build something – say a house – then that house is an asset right?

Yep, thought so.

You acknowledge the money for the NBN is being borrowed. Yet in another sentence you point to urgent infrastructure, not realising that if you borrow money to build the NBN, then the money needed to build roads is still there in the form of ordinary tax revenue.

Then you suggest the Liberals should cancel the NBN, thus cancelling the revenue stream that the NBN will create. Now what you’re saying is they should scrap the NBN, use money that would have been used to pay for roads to pay back what was borrowed, and then let Telstra make the billions of dollars that would have been made by NBNco.

Epic fail! :)