Greens, Labor, slam Coalition’s NBN “train wreck”

1. “I encourage readers to abandon all hope” :( Aye true another political football match.

   • Those that bought into the BS, despite all the evidence of continuous failure, are now shocked that it is not deliverable.

     Yet only politicans are to blame.

2. Fibre to the bag, farcical appointments of his friends for independent reviews. All this to get back at Labor for having a genuinely good idea that was slow to start but slowly gathering momentum. They were just teething problems, we all know that.
   Malcolm could have had it all you know. He could have saved the project and been universally praised if only he could make the transition from opposing in opposition to championing in his ministerial capacity.
   He has no lack of negative adjectives for the NBN he has systematically dismantled.
   It’s all on his head now. Drop the politics and it would have all been subtly his win.

   • “Fibre to the bag”

     Hah. Nice one.

     • More like ‘Fiber to the bin’

3. It seems no matter how much we protest nothing will make these wankers admit they’re wrong.

   Strikes me as just plain wrong that a few idiots can make such a mess with OUR money, despite what the overwhelming expert opinion is. (real experts not the stooges Turnbull has)

   Is there nothing we can do?

   • Peoples revolution? Serious.

     • If enough people believe this Government is incapable of governing, you can have a vote of no confidence which essentially sacks the Government. Good luck getting enough people in this country to agree on something like that, though.

       • Sry but this is asinine…

         A vote of no confidence is made in the house of reps and requires a majority to get up. Currently, the LNP coalition holds 90 seats. 15 LNP members at least would have to cross the floor against their own party for it to succeed + all xbenchers + all ALP members.

         In short, it isn’t going to happen…

         • LNP couldn’t pull it off against the ‘worst government in Australian history’ and they held more seats. Don’t think it would work with the current majority the LNP have.

           The likely upcoming WA senate election however might be a wake up call for them.

         • I don’t disagree, I was merely pointing out the only legal option of deposing a sitting Government. I’d think that would be preferable to civil war, don’t you?

           And no, I don’t think a coup d’état is even remotely plausible – it was the context of the previous comment.

         • Not true the GG can dissolve the house of reps any time he or she chooses. Not likely to happen and has only happened once.

4. ‘According to Greens Communications Spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam, the committee effectively “dismantled” the technical and financial underpinnings of the Strategic Review’

   To give credit where its due, the assembled cast of NBNCo and Telstra people did a lot of that dismantling themselves.

5. Summary of yesterdays findings in the Senate Committee, from what I can tell…

   + gigabit FTTP available now to anyone who already has FTTP on NBN – one positive!

   – $8million spent on the Strategic Review which has been shown to be full of dodgy financial figures and factually incorrect rollout figures
   – Cost of Telstra CAN not included in MTM & FTTN plans
   – Cost of Telstra & Optus HFC networks not included in MTM & FTTN plans
   – Telstra claims CAN is in great shape, then admits that 2mbps on a 20mbps ADSL connection is considered acceptable
   – Malcolm Turnbull has advised NBN co to not release the figures to Senate Select committee under any circumstances, even a closed in camera session
   – Telstra shareholdings for execs in NBN Co aren’t required to be disclosed as conflicts of interest despite execs pushing for more of the funds to go to Telstra
   – Ziggy and JB Rousselot think there is no demand for higher speed (up to 1gbps) connectivity
   – 25/10 and 50/20 as ideal VDSL2+ speeds, but not guaranteed
   – The HFC networks will not need to be resold through RSPs – it will be Telstra and Optus HFC only
   – no upgrades to the HFC networks costed into the MTM plans
   – When questioned about option 4 in the strategic review, no answer was given as to why option 6 was preferred
   – NBN Co board members and exec team hired due to personal relationship with Malcolm Turnbull, not due to skill or competence
   – JB Rousselot confirms that places with bad broadband access currently will not be prioritised for the NBN rollout, and that they will be focussing on the more profitable areas, whilst not rolling out the product which can provide the largest profit margin (FTTP)
   – Internal house-hold wiring remediation will need to be done at the cost of the end-user
   – VDSL2 modems will need to be purchased by consumers for their FTTN connections
   – The Strategic Review found no material issues with NBN Co’s FTTP rollout expenses to date yet states the rollout cost blowout to $73bn
   – Many of the Telstra execs involved in halting the FTTP rollout due to asbestos issues are now working as execs for NBN Co
   – The CFO of NBN Co is conveniently on holiday out of the country, and the chairman of the board/ acting CEO thinks his input isn’t relevant to the Strategic Review
   – NBN Co have slowed the rollout of FTTP at the direct instruction of Malcolm Turnbull which adds $11b to the cost of the projection of a full FTTP rollout
   – Rollout is currently going approximately 20% slower than directly before the election compared to present day (5000 premises to ~4000 premises per day). No confirmation when the slow down started and vague information as to what has caused it.
   – Admission that maximum 700m – 900m in length Copper tails were used to estimate the cost of Option 6 in the Strategic Review.
   – No confirmation of the number of nodes required for Option 6
   and finally
   – $41b* (final figure not confirmed due to aforementioned omissions) to guarantee no speeds to anyone.

   In light of these revelations, go read http://nbnco.com.au/about-us/our-values.html#trust and see how ridiculous all this is.

   I despair for this country.

   • How is it we find ourselves so utterly powerless to do anything about this? The senate, the experts, the voters, the democratic process seem unable to stop this farce.

   • Hey JC. Do you have the sources for that info (a link). I’m curious in reading it. Thanks :)

     • It’s what I gleaned from reading the running commentary of yesterday’s Senate Committee meetings on Whirlpool and Twitter (the stream wasn’t working for me).

       Here’s the whirlpool thread: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2193846

       I’m waiting on the Hansard transcript to confirm it. When it’s done, it should be available here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/National_Broadband_Network/NBN/Public_Hearings

     • Here’s the Hansard. It’s a long read…

       http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/commsen/f27fdc68-c7e5-4056-b1bb-f2fbc5b9881c/toc_pdf/National%20Broadband%20Network%20Select%20Committee_2013_12_17_2173.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22committees/commsen/f27fdc68-c7e5-4056-b1bb-f2fbc5b9881c/0000%22

   • “Steve”, or whatever pseudonym he is going by now, will be here shortly to tell you how wrong you are, and how you have misunderstood the entire situation. You must just be another one of those FTTP Zealots who just doesn’t know the meaning of a hard days work!

     • Steve? You out there Steve boy? Hmmm…

       Probably bunkered down in the bowels of the Federal Parliamment basement offices with fellow Turnbull staff desperately trying to find an angle to cover Mal’s arse on the tech sites… without success…

   • The Greens and Labor are really doing the legwork on this. I’m impressed.

     Unfortunately, despite all they’ve uncovered / gotten an admission on, it’s not even the whole picture. There’s more yet.

   • Lol @ 700 – 900 meters. It’s no wonder they can’t guarantee 25 Mbps. You can’t do VDSL properly over 500 m. G.fast also requires maximum of 250 m.

6. Yep, best thing they could do now is just cancel it.

   • Totally agree with this. Cancel it now as a bad joke.

     • Whether this was the intent all along (to cancel FttP and then do nothing) has been touched upon previously…

       • Indeed. Can anyone else hear the future echoes of the Earl of Wentworth proclaiming “See? Not even IT people want the NBN. Shut it down.”

7. Silly sausages. 100mbit fttp would be obsolete the day it’s finished. So would gigabit too – there’s 10gbe out now, if you really want to pay, right?

   • 10GB FTTP is an upgrade path with true optic fibre into the home. So a 100/40 (now 1000/400 according to Ziggy) is a forerunner to that upgrade. Once the fibre is in then the capacity upgrades that can be had are mindblowingly huge.

     Now with old copper think two tin cans and a piece of string. Translation – bad joints and water water everywhere degrading signal quality.

     • VDSL2 is an upgrade pathway from ADSL2+ and VDSL. There will always be better versions of sending data over copper. That’s entirely not the point. 100mbit is obsolete, as is gigabit. They’re all only milestones to future upgrades.

       It’s the ridiculous rhetoric while chasing for soundbites that is really bugging me about the NBN being so politicised. 100/1000mbps is obsolete, calling vdsl2 obsolete is redundant. Just like talk of FTTP creating a digital divide, when even FTTP was doing the same thing to people stuck on stationary wireless and satelite. Useless rhetoric needs to stop, it’s just clouding the debate with jingoism.

       • “100mbit fttp would be obsolete the day it’s finished” — very true, well done good sir. Beauty of FttP though is that the upgrade from 100 Mbps to 1000 Mbps (or 1 Gbps as its better known) is simply a change of plugs at the exchange, pretty much the same as the upgrade of Dialup –> ADSL –> ADSL2.

         So at the point of it being redundant (ie the day its finished), the upgrade path is a matter of weeks/months, rather than years to replace the FttN rollout. Fundamental problem with FttN – how do you upgrade 10 million premises when you have to do it individually?

         Its not just a case of popping an NTU on the wall and widgeting the fiber line connected to it to the fiber outside, it involves fiber line being run back to the node as well, assuming whatever FttN we get can be upgraded that easily.

         Its running the lines thats the expensive part, and the Liberal plan is to require it to be done twice. Once to the node, and then at a later date, once again from the node to the property.

         • Ziggy, from Hansard: “In areas where FTTN is rolled out, this review expects that NBN Co. will not need to upgrade to a second access technology—presumably all fibre or fibre to the distribution point—sooner than five years after the construction of the first access technology. We have modelled and concluded that it is economically more efficient to upgrade over time rather than attempt to build a future proof network in a field where fast-changing technology is the norm.”

           Would love to hear his reasoning on that…

         • Apologies for using a Canadian metaphor, but at least they’re Commonwealth too :)

           Ziggy is a master of skating to where the puck was: strategic reviews, uptake monitoring, gradated rollouts, demand-based capacity upgrades.

           The FTTP network is about skating to where the puck is going to be: strategic vision, capacity planning, up-front rollouts, demand-boosting capacity upgrades.

           We already have networks in our offices that are running at 100Mbps-10Gbps, imagine how easy it could be to have a decentralised office with FTTP? What if you could happily run an accounting firm from a country town with easy access to large blocks of land, good schools, great cafés and low rent? Hook up a VPN over your gigabit link from Narranderra to Mossman, have your rank-and-file accounting & bookkeeping staff stationed in Narranderra where the rents are small and the air is clean, only needing to pay exorbitant rents for the offices of the principals.

           Run a national ISP? Have your call centre staff live wherever the hell they want, they can connect to the office to do their L1/L2 call centre support from Wagga, Woy Woy, Lenora, Broome or Denmark where they can live they way they want, have the job they want and not be forced to live in cardboard boxes on the hillside.

           Decentralising our population will reduce the load on any single piece of infrastructure such as fresh water supply, electricity, sewage, or even just roads into the industrial areas.

           The FTTP NBN would have brought us much more than just “faster” Internet (in scare quotes because none actually believes that Telstra’s copper can provide the same performance as cat5).

       • Thanks to physics, all “better versions of sending data over copper” involve moving the fibre node closer to the termination point. This will make network upgrades a non-trivial cost.

         • Not only that Tinman, but all the “better versions of sending data over copper” are developed in laboratory conditions with very short loops and very high quality brand-new copper. Generally Cat5e or Cat6. Yet, FTTN apologists will ignore this and still tell us that the government can use the Telstra CAN to provide the same outcome. Regardless of whether the Telstra CAN is of good or bad quality, the copper wires are NOT Cat5e or Cat6.

       • I think what you are trying to say is, one metric is a speed, the other is a technology. You cant ever have an obsolescence of ‘speed’ though you can never have too much of it. You can on the other hand, run out of uses for a technology, and/or the technology can run out of supply of speed.

       • 93% of the population would have FTTP, with the possibility of more being upgraded if their communities helped fund the rollout. Another 4% in extremely rural areas would eventually be on LTE Advanced, which can do 1 gbps over 66 MHz of bandwidth. That’s shared of course, but it works well in sparsely populated rural areas. So 3% would be stuck on slow satellite. There’s your divide.

         And btw, copper has reached its limits. Next gen “G.fast” requires copper lengths to max out at 250 meters to achieve 250 Mbps in ideal circumstances.

   • Silly sausage. Obsolete means “no longer produced or used; out of date”; not whatever you seem to think it means.

     100Mbps today is not out of date, it is still being provided, and its capacity has not been saturated. 100Mbps today is in fact well ahead of the curve (and this is a good thing). 100Mbps WILL BE obsolete IN THE FUTURE, but not the near-near future, and certainly not ‘as soon as it is built’: unless, of course, we start rolling it out later like the Coalition would like us to.

     • No need to replace ADSL2+ then, excellent!

       • The actual pertinent point is, copper as a medium for broadband delievry is obsolete… it has been replaced by fibre…

         Obsolete – verb: cause (a product or idea) to become obsolete by replacing it with something new.

         BTW – I believe that’s now Malcolm’s catchcry, if it wasn’t all along…

       • 1) ADSL2+ is out of date.
         2) New ADSL2+ connections are rarely being provided.
         3) ADSL2+ connections have become saturated.

         Conclusion: ADSL2+ is obsolete or quickly becoming obsolete, and must be replaced.

8. Basically, the way I see it, one of several possible things are going to happen between now and the next election:

   Turnbull’s Fibre-To-The-Few network goes ahead. Most of Australia gets nothing within the next 2.5 years, while those very few people that do get upgraded will have only marginally better performance than what they have now. At the 2016 election:

   1) The Coalition will be booted out, in which case Labor will almost certainly attempt to restore the FTTH network, but will face EXTREME difficulty with having to YET AGAIN renegotiate with Telstra to go back to the original agreement. This will delay the roll for at least another year, possibly longer, leading to either the cancellation of FTTH entirely, or a massive blow out in the already high costs of building the network as originally intended, thus once again putting the project at risk at the following election.

   2) The Coalition will be re-elected, proving both that Australians a) have the memory capacity of a gnat, and b) don’t deserve world-leading broadband infrastructure.

   Alternatively, the whole project might get binned between now and 2016, with the Coalition claiming that it’s better to just pay out Telstra’s $11bil contract and get nothing in return than to spend $41bil building the “NBN”.

   • Paying out the $11 billion contract would actually be ideal. Then labor wouldn’t have to renegotiate with Telstra if they’re elected in 2016 and could resume the FTTH rollout much faster. Of course, turnbull knows this and will undoubtedly cancel the contract.

   • i just had a worrying thought as I reread everything. Could the LNP plan up until 2016 and the next election just be to set T$ and Optus (more by accident) up in a commercially positive way and not actually progress the NoBN any further than what has been done today?

     So we won’t see any FTTN implementations at all or HFC upgrades before 2016 – could this be just a play to put additional money in T$ pocket – “thanks for the support” type thing?

9. Remember the custodians of the “broadband train-wreck” here folks.

   The LNP did nothing for 11 years, and whilst the ALP took their sweet time about it – thankly as it turned out, else THEY would have delivered FTTN – the facts are quite clear that the LNP were only ever interested in delaying this thing for as long as possible and deliver a cheap half-baked solution (remember OPEL?).

   They even gave a name to the policy that they have since embraced – “Fraudband” (Google Fiona Nash)

   So the investigation found that the FTTP network would take another 3 years?

   I say “So What”. We would mostly get a truly world-class, scalable network that would probably last for longer than a century, and remove an incumbent from the access landscape.

   What we are going to get is a half-baked and unreliable network that has been acknowledged as requiring an upgrade in perhaps 10 years for nearly the same cost as doing it properly in the first instance!

   Better “economic managers” may arse! the LNP are leading us to ruin with this proposal, and we will regret this debacle for decades to come!

   As someone above has said, I too despair for our country and it’s future.

   :(

10. Cancel the nbn asap.. This has gone too far..

11. Governments once said “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

    Now they say “FTTP too hard, it would never have been delivered anyway” – almost a direct quote from the senate enquiry yesterday (I don’t remember the exact words used)

    If a government wants to spend 41 billion dollars delivering *up to* 25 mbit when I already have *up to* 24 mbit I don’t see the point, not when for a mere 10 billion more they can cover the same area (ignoring the same 30% the MTM doesn’t cover – sorry hfc people) and give me exactly 12/25/50/100/1000 mbit (whichever I chose)

    • It wasn’t ‘Governments’ as such that made that famous speech – it was John F Kennedy as President of the USA. Kennedy was not only a lateral thinker – he was a Democrat, and as such, loosely equivalent to a Labor politician in Oz. See where I’m going here? I’m not sure that at the time the speech was made, the Republicans (loosely equivalent to Australian ‘Liberals’) wouldn’t have been screaming about the sheer waste of money; the country can’t afford it; why isn’t it done by a private company etc etc……

      Well, I think we all know where that argument went! Still considered one of mankind’s most breath-taking achievements. Defined the USA for more than a generation.

      What do we have? A pumped up, pompous ass as a Communication Minister, full of his own importance. And, please, don’t ever let me hear Turnbull describe how he ‘looks up’ to Kennedy’s legacy, as I think I’d explode! Kennedy was a lion – Turnbull would be lucky to be described as a RAT.

      • Umm, they went to the moon to show up Russia. JFK opposed the space program when he was a senator. Billions spent on a space program which, albeit one of man’s greatest achievements, was all motivated by a pissing contest…

        The inspirational speeches were needed to get the people onside with such a huge expenditure with very little in actual returns.

        • All true, but we could have done with some ‘inspirational speeches’ to get the country on-side over the NBN (and numerous other vastly beneficial Labor projects that have either gone unnoticed or grossly misunderstood by the majority of people).

12. Of course they’ve backed out of their promise to deliver minimum download speeds – they know what a true pile of shit the telstra copper network is .

    If they didn’t walk away from that promise then every building further than 100m from a FTTN cabinet would have required a free fibre upgrade.

13. I see many others are stirring up the Royal Commission suggestion.. I totally agree.. It’s time..

14. The only hope I can see now is for Tony Abbott’s hubris to get the better of him and a double-dissolution getting triggered.

15. The NBN project has truly descended into a political farce at this point. I encourage readers to abandon all hope that it will ever be delivered in any kind of rational fashion. We must face reality: The politicians have royally screwed this one up. It may be a decade or more before the situation resolves itself into any semblance of normality and Australia sees meaningful broadband service upgrades. Hell, it’s taken a decade to get to this point, where virtually nothing has been done.

    One of the most accurate and insightful things I think I’ve seen you post Renai, though it makes me very sad to say it.

    Australia will be a digital “also ran” in the future world economy.

    • +1000

16. The most ridiculous element of this is that they will do the cost/benefit analysis AFTER Malcolm has already determined which route to take which means Henry Ergas et al will enthusiastically build some models to make Malcolm’s choice the right one.

    As obvious as it was that Malcolm was never going to meet his election promise, I also don’t need any models to tell me that the productivity benefits to the economy are blown to pieces in their mixed broadband network with no minimum speed guarantees, and high maintenance and running costs. It’s all cost and bugger all benefit.

17. Well done to the Liberal party for systematically destroying the greatest infrastructure project this country has ever seen. And well done for killing off all the economic, social and cultural benefits that would have arisen from a fibre-connected society. Abbott has truly gotten his wish, NBN: destroyed.

18. I’ve practically lost interest in the whole thing ever since the farce that was the review came out.

    We all know nothing will happen and any discussion just revolves around blind ideology now anyway… one only hopes in about 10-20 years we get a new batch of pollies on both sides that can actually for once learn the meaning of “bipartisanship” and get a proper policy going.

    I mean for craps sake where are all the people ranting 41billion was “too expensive” for FTTP? Their now busy throwing mud on the “70+ billion” figure w/o even giving a cursory glance at the fact the plan their backing is priced at the same “too expensive” basket as FTTP a few months ago…

    But it’s ok because the other one was more expensive anyway! It’s soul crushing because there’s always some excuse, some loop hole and the obligatory Labor/Lefty/Socialist bad mmkay! rhetoric over and over again to avoid the actual questions that need to be answered.

    *facepalm*

19. I said it before and everyone thought it was over the top, but if I was in an FTTP zone now I’d be pretty stoked at the value of my house. These houses are going to be a lot more desirable down the track and there will be a real difference for FTTP areas vs the crap the rest of us are going to get, especially since the promised fibre on demand will probably never happen or be prohibitively expensive.

    Not to mention that people in FTTP will be able to establish a connection for free. I just moved into a new rental and am getting hit with the old one-two punch of telstra’s $300 ‘connection fee’ plus the ISP establishment fee. I’ve moved a bunch of times and I’ve never found a place which is already connected. It’s almost as if telstra has a financial incentive to disconnect lines and force customers to pay the higher fee…

    I really can’t express how sad and upset I am that this is the path the government is taking. Let’s be honest, it’s all because the liberals will never allow themselves to admit labor got anything right.

    When I finish my study (post-grad) I am leaving this country. I have dual citizenship and I don’t really want to stay here anymore. I want to go to a country where I can successfully telecommute. That just isn’t possible here now unless I can move into an FTTP area… I think there will be a bit of a brain drain over the coming decade and when the mining industry winds down and China’s demand falls off we are going to be absolutely screwed.

    • So just South Perth and Victoria Park, then. House prices and rent there were pretty high to begin with…

      • Yeah, plus mandurah and I think like busselton or something.

        My comment is an overreaction for sure, I am just so sad about the whole situation.

        Down the track when people realise the value in a dependable internet connection with a guaranteed high speed those areas will be much more highly sought after. It isn’t in the forefront of everyone’s mind now but it’s easy to see how attitudes towards the internet change. I remember being the only one I knew who used the internet for social purposes, like irc and other chat programs. Down the track facebook became mainstream and now it’s something everyone does so everyone needs the internet, admittedly not much bandwidth is required for facebook though.

        Cue the next killer app, one that requires a shitload of bandwidth and a low latency connection. One that has the wide mainstream appeal of facebook. Then it won’t just be us diehards who are lamenting the loss of this opportunity and looking to get into a property in an FTTP footprint…

20. I’m hoping to bail on this country too. It’s inept, naval gazing, rascist, and both major political parties are useless. Hell even South Africa is starting to look more attractive.

21. as much as I like ludlam, im surprised the greens want an nbn. after all, that will increase the devices that use the internet, increasing use of electricity, increasing poluution and accelerating global warming.

    • That is a very silly comment.

    • So you’re going to conveniently ignore the electricity required to run the current telephone network, the savings made from telecommuting, the social benefits from tele-health and the quality of life benefit of telecommuting from a low-pollution town?

    • Apparently creating electricity through green methods must be impossible then right? Also, a high speed broadband network across the nation will allow more and more people to telecommute to work from their homes, so will reduce the number of cars on the road, which in turn will reduce pollution.

      I think you need to go back to troll school, you clearly haven’t yet even mastered the basics.

    • You didn’t give that comment much thought, did you Guest?

      If people are using renewable energy, the “devices” would help cut down on travel etc (without even looking at the social benefits, which the Greens also favour). Modern Greens aren’t the rag-tag pack of hippies that used to make up the party, and “tech” can actually help bring about good environmental outcomes if implemented right.

22. @Guest It will always take less energy to move electrons around than it will be to move people. Think of the possible infrastructure savings alone.

    If only it took us this long to get there each time we got invited to a war, then the war would be over by the time we arrived.

    Always look on the bright side of life.

    My two year old grandson can find his way around an iPad. Perhaps he’ll be the one to fix this disaster. It looks as if it will still be awaiting his attention.

23. The Greens (well most of them) are not anti-electricity from renewable sources.
    Some are even pro nuclear.

    It’s brown coal plants that really get them arced up.

24. What ever happened to the great Aussie spirit?, in the sixties and seventies people would take to the streets and I remember with great fondness being involved in the convoy into Canberra to demand legalization of CB radio , vehicles as far as the eye could see in every direction.
    We got what we wanted because we did more than just talk about it, we did something.

    • Too many factions, too many distractions, and ignorance is bliss.

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      • Faceplam is the only way I know how to describe this debacle…… This countries economic future is dependent on this bunch of noobs !!!!!

        They just don’t get INTERNET !!!!!…

26. Ineptitude in spades
    Bad enough Labor let Ford quit Aus, but Hockey, Abbott and the Murdoch Mafia were ranting about the taxpayer subsidies (what – $500Mill) the MSM is carrying on over the few thousand Holden employees and our hero he man Vladimir Abbott is generously offering them assistance). That is not the real story, the car makers are largely assemblers of parts made by all the Australian Parts manufacturers who also make parts and components and engineering projects for other industries. The auto industry is their bread and butter. Plus their suppliers, the factories and office equipment and machinery.

    Costs to Toyota will have to rise as volumes gutted, plus the latest EBA.
    Toyota will also be gone 2016, more than likely announcement in New year

    At least 50,000 maybe closer to 100,000 lost high paid skilled jobs, companies shutting shop, maybe moving overseas (my mate supplies auto industry with patented products, has diversified to other industries – however will follow the Auto manufacturers and planning to set up a plant in Thailand)

    Plus flow ons throughout the economy

    Lost income and company tax and GST at least $6Bill p.a
    Plus the mining slowdown as mines come on line quoted 92,000 highly paid workers.

    All happening after 2016, so do Murdoch and the Libs put Labor back to carry the can, having ensured the FTTP NBN is no longer viable (cherry picked and HFC activated and upgrading occurring with all new contracts and incompetents running the show)
    Or use the opportunity to destroy the unions (AMWU Crippled) by putting the blame on them (Labors financial backers) and making major cuts to working conditions and wages.

    The conservative business sector will save the day with cheaper Labour – how?
    The conservative Readers Digest recent Australian awards had Hills Industries for invention for the Hills Rotary Hoist – an example of how.
    Pity they didn’t pay attention to the that socialist ABC who had Australia’s inventions. – Hill just renewed an expired Australian Patent by another Australian – ????

    • One way to save the auto industry is to apply similar tariffs to imported vehicles as our vehicles receive when we export them to those countries. So 70% tariffs on cars made in Thailand, for example.

      • Here here! Yes people have short memories, It all started with John Howard! and his plan to go free trade by dropping the import tariffs! The farmers and the manufacturing industry cried that it would destroy them, But the Libs said thats ok we will look after you we will pay you a handout when you need it? So instead of the government reaping a benefit from people who don’t buy Australian made, They used good taxpayers money to try and keep the local industry going on what was now an unlevel playing field? Moronic to the extreme!!!!
        And to add insult to injury Abbot has turned his back on them now and said you are not getting anymore money, and all from a government that supposedly stands for business ???

27. A quarry, a farm, and a nation of consumers. This is the Coalition vision for Australia.

28. How can we get the Telco Union officials to speak to the media on the state of the in ground copper which will give Senators Ludlum, Conroy et al the ammunition they need to present the media with the key to reveal the ticking time bomb in the review?

    • “How can we get the Telco Union officials to speak to the media on the state of the in ground copper ”

      The media is either not interested or has an interest in killing the real NBN.

      Turnbull’s job is to not only neuter the NBN, but to make sure a stake is driven through its heart so it can never be resuscitated.

      When we have Australia’s interests on one side and Rupert Murdoch’s on the other, guess who wins?

29. What does it take to refer something to ICAC?

30. So long as Murdoch’s propaganda continues to dominate what the average person reads & sees this will continue to be a lost cause as an uneducated vote carries equal value. Most of the general public tends to accept what they’re fed by their choice of media & vote accordingly.
    I suspect this will only change upon the demise of Murdoch’s empire.

31. I don’t know why Ziggy is staying so loyal to Turnbull. Turnbull just keeps throwing him under the bus.
    Turnbull willfully misled voters by promising minimum 25mbps for all by 2016. He has left it to Ziggy to admit that’s not possible and take the heat for it. Turnbull crowed in the media that the govt wanted an unredacted version of the Strategic Analysis released, but Ziggy wouldn’t allow it. Beep Beep, theres the bus again! Turnbull has made claims about the cost of his plan, with no Telstra deal, and no idea of actual copper remediation costs, and now Ziggy is going to have to wear the fall out when Telstra take them to the cleaners.
    Turnbulls politically driven promises are going to be the death of the MTMNBN

    • Ziggy get’s paid very well (and looked after in other ways, like new jobs in the future) by being willing to be thrown under that bus.

      And lets face it, when you have terminal lack of vision, what else could he do realistically?

32. “How is it we find ourselves so utterly powerless to do anything about this?”

    …How is it we think that a Government that takes our money direct from the source (a % of our income) …gives two flying $#!7$ what we think about anything? There is no consequence for them either way, proven again and again.

    We have it backwards in our thinking. In China they used to have a system where you paid your Doctor in small amounts, to keep you healthy; And if you DID get sick, they stopped paying him, and he had to treat them for free. What suddenly becomes his best interest? Keeping you in an optimum state. Preventative maintenance, encouraging healthy living. If he’s getting paid no matter what’s happening to you, why would he give a damn? Or, more importantly, if he gets more business WHEN YOU’RE SICK; how can we expect there to not be a conflict of interest?

    Substitute the Doctor for the Libs. If they get more money / favours / social rewards from their rich media buddies for shutting down their competition for media in Australia (which we all know is what’s happening;) how can we not expect a conflict of interest? Turnbull like so many pollies is at LEAST a Sociopath, you can’t tell outright lies like he has many, many times, and also be a normal human being with a conscience.

    Elect this one, elect that one; All based on lies and bribing us with our own freaking money, and if they renege on these promises – there is no consequence for this, they get paid either way, it’s just a matter of the amounts. Any private company that did this would loose all business (EXCEPT the major financial institutions, that are shielded by who? Oh yeah. Government.)

    • An interesting comment.

      What’s the alternative?

33. WTF every happened to patriotism in Australia?

    I’ve watched countless videos of the the two sides battling over the NBN, yet no-one has really stood up and tried to pioneer the NBN as “something YOU deserve, and YOUR CHIDLREN deserve”. Something to say “Australia is leading the world, not dragging it’s feet”. Australian’s believe in a fair go, and when you do something, you bloody well do it right.

    Yes, it’s lots of money, and it’s the single biggest infrastructure in Australia’s history, so why make it a half-arsed effort that makes us the laughing stock of the developed world.

    The debates, before and and after elections, were either very technical so average bogan Bob didn’t understand/care, or it was about the cost, and poor/rich people alike got cold feet.

    Stuff the costs, which have been exaggerated to suit whoever is in power and their own agenda. Let the PEOPLE decide if the cost is justified, and motivate them by making the NBN stand as a national icon, much like the Opera House and Sydney Harbor Bridge. Tell them if we build Labor’s NBN, we’ll be the envy of many bigger and richer countries, and once again prove that Australian’s punch above our weight.

    • IMO although I tend to agree Damien… I think NBNCo Mk1 did try to, via Mike Quigley…as much as they were allowed to…

      Allowed to meaning… whenever he/they tried to, they were shouted down by those opposing the NBN politically and financially (the current govt and sections of the MSM)…

      And guess who had the clout?

      Then at forums and blogs we had the same party faithful pawns, talking complete shit with analogies of the FttP/NBN being akin to giving every Australian a Ferrari, wastage, pink batts, we don’t need it, poor taxpayer me, overseas aren’t doing what we are (wtf) and any other complete and utter bullshit they could muster to help kill off the NBN…

      And so…

      Here we are now with the complete clusterfuck, we as dumb fuck, mindless follower Aussies, ergo deserve… now there’s patriotism for you..

      • “we as dumb fuck, mindless follower Aussies”

        Pass on that for some

        Those that betray and sabotage Australia will then appeal to our patriotism and mateship, stuff them

34. Mr Turncoat should pick up the batten ,and run with it

35. Wonderful blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo News.
    Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News?
    I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there!
    Thanks

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