blog We can’t help but agree with wise comments by seasoned Informa telecommunications analyst Tony Brown, published in this morning’s Financial Review newspaper. In an opinionated article (we recommend you click here for the full story), Brown broadly argues that the NBN is pretty much a normal infrastructure project — but that the political debate swirling around it has obscured the actual project and outcomes. Perhaps our favourite paragraph:
“Unfortunately the NBN is going to remain a polarising political issue until Labor and the Coalition finally realise that the greater national interest would be best served by them coming to a sensible compromise agreement on the project’s future.”
We couldn’t agree more. Delimiter has been calling for bipartisan agreement on a commonly agreed version of the NBN policy for some years. As your writer wrote in September 2011:
“If there is one thing Australia desperately needs right now, it is for our elected representatives to stop making dramatic changes to our national telecommunications policy every few years and to come together around a set of universally agreed projects. The alternative is another half-decade worth of pointless wasted effort and industry chaos.
The long-term nature of infrastructure investment and the squabbling of the past half-decade has made it increasingly clear that a bi-partisan approach to telecommunications policy is needed in Australia. The only difficulty may be convincing our arrogant, indecisive, stubborn and incredibly own-party blinkered political leaders that they should sit across the table from each other and discuss the issue like adults. At times they appear to forget that they are all employed by the same person — the Australian taxpayer.”
Not everything is about politics, and massive infrastructure projects on the scale of the NBN certainly should not be about politics. You simply cannot run a decade-long infrastructure project on a three-year electoral cycle; good project governance just does not allow for this. But I suspect we’ll have a hard time convincing Australia’s politicians about this; in general, they tend to look out for their own desire to win power more than anything else. To a certain extent, the two sides of politics have come together recently, with the Coalition’s rival NBN policy supporting a large number of the fundamentals of Labor’s own. To analysts like Paul Budde, this is enough to say that the NBN more or less has bipartisan support these days. But I suspect that Brown, like myself, would like to see the two sides come together further and bicker over the project a lot less.
Image credit: Jim Crossley, Creative Commons
If there is any hot button issue that should have a bipartisan policy it is the asylum seeker dilemma. If both political parties aren’t mature enough to put politics aside on that most important humanitarian issue where lives are at stake, good luck on the NBN.
Bingo. Both parties are entrenched in making Asylum Seekers a political football. Neither have a good track record — and it’s only getting worse.
If you can’t both figure out this is actually a little bit important, enough that a more bipartisan view is sensible, you’ll have no chance in hell anywhere else.
There was a chance with the “Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers” of which the LNP did not want to put in the effort to be involved in what should have resulted in bipartisan policy. The simple fact is a significant portion of the main stream media have been rewarding the LNP for criticizing the Government instead of slamming the LNP for not doing their job. If you agree with Asylum Seeker Labor Asylum Seeker policy or not at least there was some effort to reach a good a policy as I as I tell some of my friends if you don’t want to be involved in the process you shouldn’t complain about the result.
Of course. However not unlike parking a Ford next to a Holden and expecting both sides to behave, both sides of the political divide have vastly different reasons for deploying some form of NBN and will surely wish to express that to the fullest.
“You simply cannot run a decade-long infrastructure project on a three-year electoral cycle; good project governance just does not allow for this.”
It won’t stop both sides of the house, arguing to the death over which model should be used. And when you get ridiculously inflammatory comments such as “90 billion!!!11” and “over 5000!!!!1” the message gets lost.
I think it’s also relevant that the media have been using the NBNco, and NBN as a platform to preach just about every hysterical view possible. MSM has pretty much picked a side and rode it all the way to the edge of the universe.
I may not agree with your viewpoints renai, but Delimiter has at least attempted to present both sides.
That the debate has been so.. vigorous.. shows just how important this actually is, to a very large number of people.
At my most cynical:
I think the article is naive. We live in a democracy, and any moderately big or controversial policy probably will – and should! – result in different parties offering different alternative visions. This can result in instability and uncertainty, but that is the price of democracy. This kind of uncertainty is not limited to telecommunications, it affects most big ticket areas of public life, from border protection to climate change, energy policy, public education policy, handling of crime, drugs, you name it.
Sure, it would be much easier for the telecommunications industry if we just had a single-party dictatorship that spelled out clearly and once exactly how everything was going to work. But in a democracy with a thriving and diverse public sphere with multiple viewpoints and approaches, industry just has to harden up and accept that policies change and differ, and uncertainty is going to happen.
Interesting that Tony Brown is taking this line now, whereas in the past he has very political about the project. I have been at the receiving end of such politically motived talk on Twitter by him more than once.
How so? I don’t see him as being politically motivated in nature — he’s been very objective.
Maybe he’s just a little more liberal in his “causal analysis” he undertakes on Twitter, because his articles, when I’ve read them, have been fairly objective.
My guess is he just doesn’t have his “filter” on when he’s on Twitter, which I can’t really blame him for, I know plenty of people who do that.
If I had the time, I would go through and find the tweets I’m referring to but they were well over a year ago now, and I no longer follow him.
Oh for sure, he is always bagging out everything Labor does, praising the Libs. Passing on suggestions to Turnbull on things. He told Turnbull about vectoring and suddenly Tunrbull starts pushing vectoring.
Yes, his articles are all objective, his Twitter posts are not.
Was that sarcasm? I honestly can’t tell.
Hmmm, went to the bottom for some reason.
No sarcasm, I have followed his tweets for a year or more. He tells Turnbull little bits and pieces, like about vectoring and next thing you know Turnbull is talking vectoring.
It’s all those politicians fault; ignore any political view espoused from the media. We’re unbiased*.
*of course.
“political” = dont agree with every single thing i say?
No, political as in attempting to push a certain ideology, and attempting to discredit those who pointed him out for doing so.
Tony Brown has the same “voice” on Twitter as he does in his articles. In the hundred or so tweets of his I’ve read, never…. not once have I ever encountered any attempt to push any “political ideology” of any form. This is just a completely false and offensive accusation.
100 or so tweets? So like one week?
I am not surprised you couldn’t spot any bias. He is a lot milder than you in his bagging of Labor.
“offensive accusation”
How are you offended?
The NBN itself is pure ideology.
It is the socialist ideology that government should own and control communications networks as expressed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels over 150 years ago:
I’ve brought up data from the ABS pointing out that private enterprise has demonstrably done a better job. The NBN itself has repeatedly adjusted it’s rollout criteria to lower and lower standards. Plenty of people have shown that the entire enterprise is not commercially viable at current uptake, and anyway more and more people are buying wireless services instead.
And there’s the fact that NBN advocates simply will not discuss costing, value for money, nor is it possible to even approach these issues.
*sigh*
We just sit and wait for an election. That’s the last thing left to do.
The NBN itself is pure ideology.
It is objectively better in some areas, except obvious ones like short term cost and government intervention, than what is offered by the opposition. Since those areas are subjective, and ideology driven, then the Coalition plan is as much ideology as the NBN. Neither of them, however, are “pure” ideology.
It is the socialist ideology that government should own and control communications networks as expressed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels over 150 years ago
Wrong, that ideology would imply something akin to PMG/Telecom Australia, a state run provider of service, rather than a state run provider of infrastructure.
I’ve brought up data from the ABS pointing out that private enterprise has demonstrably done a better job. The NBN itself has repeatedly adjusted it’s rollout criteria to lower and lower standards. Plenty of people have shown that the entire enterprise is not commercially viable at current uptake, and anyway more and more people are buying wireless services instead.
Compared to what exactly? When broadband was becoming popular, worldwide, Australia was undergoing Privatisation. Instead of dealing with the problem, the government just gave the problem to the private sector. Of course the private sector were going to solve the problem, as they were the only ones who actually bothered to tackle it.
And there’s the fact that NBN advocates simply will not discuss costing, value for money, nor is it possible to even approach these issues.
Wrong, we discuss them, at great length, and you fail to convince us that the NBN will cost significantly more than the proposed alternative over the long term.
‘The NBN itself is pure ideology.”
Maybe, this is the perspective from planet far right.
You have no idea with socialism is. Get a grip on reality. The Labor party doesn’t even begin to be anything vaguely resembling a socialist party. But don’t take my word, go and check under the bed. Who knows, the reds might be hiding there.
No, political as turning a huge infrastructure deployment, into an expedient political football to score points.
The coalition *are* attempting to run it on a 3 year election cycle though. Both targets are at the end of terms in office.
Also if we go way back in the memory banks Kevin 07’s plan was for the (then FTTN) NBN to finish in 2013, ie at the end of 2 terms.
Even the current iteration was meant to hit some pretty big milestones is 2013 (around 600k premises or something ridiculous like that from memory).
Term focused decision making is often criticized but its a reality of politics, government just does not handle long term projects very well as changes in parties destabilize them so much.
Its worth having a look at the finale of the reboot of Yes Minister. When realising he has absolute no chance of negotiating a solution to the euro debt crisis he decides to launch a big policy that will take effect so far into the future that “someone else will have to pay for it”
No sarcasm, I have followed his tweets for a year or more. He tells Turnbull little bits and pieces, like about vectoring and next thing you know Turnbull is talking vectoring.
Unfortunately it IS about politics, and if it’s not about politics, then it’s about ideology. Abbott has found success where Turnbull failed by differentiating his party from Labor as much as possible – by being as negative, as opposite, as contrary as possible. As much as we ridicule Abbott for leading the “Noalition”, it has been an effective strategy for them thus far. That’s why it is about politics and little else – even though the NBN is objectively and comprehensively better than the LBN, the Coalition can’t very well support a Labor project, so they’ll fight it every step of the way – and they have loyal footsoldiers like Deep Thinker and Fibroid to do the grunt work for them. Although at this point I think that Deep Thinker and Fibroid are well-due for a promotion for their dogged commitment to the cause.
Other than that, a government-owned wholesale monopoly does go against the whole ‘small government’, ‘leave it to the free market’ ideology of the Liberal party. Even though it is a good idea, the Liberal party can barely stomach it. I mean, isn’t that why if elected they plan to re-open infrastructure competition and privatise the NBN sooner? If the NBN weren’t such a popular policy (for good reason), they’d have scrapped it entirely.
The fact is, the controlling elements of the Liberal party are too committed to their ideals, despite those ideals being incongruent with reality. For the current Liberal party, their reasons for their relentless campaign against the NBN are both due to political expediency and blind ideology. The current Liberal party would never support the NBN, even if it weren’t a Labor project, but especially because it’s a Labor project.
+1
It is not difficult to agree that bipartisanship should always apply when it benefits the country as a whole.
Like many things in life, putting into practice is something else.
Just imagine what could have happen if the opposition, starting from a position of destroying the NBN as concept, had done what a decent opposition would do and made sure that the project proceed as well as possible financially and otherwise. Instead, all they have done is move from their original goal of destroying the concept to try and destroy Labor NBN.
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