The sporting metaphore is good, but the article forget to mention that PM Rudd was responsible for Australia's 4-0 loss in the football (and perhaps even the Blues' poor performance last night).

Well, that's about as sneeringly cynical as you can get! In fairness, the author alerts the reader to his bias via the headline; he forgets our OECD position vis a vis the GFC, the intransigence of the Opposition controlled Senate (just another obstacle to allowing the Government to implement its vision for Australia) and the fact that at long last we have a Government that wants to get the country moving.

The "fiascos" are the fault of incompetent or dishonest private business people. So go after them; normal practice is to sue the provider, not the Federal customer.

The equally smart-alec 'Nosworthy Report' adds a great deal of verbose regret without offering a vision for the future.

Please if you must opine, write something wrth reading.

Articles like this do nothing to improve the reputation of OLO. Mere ranting and slagging is not the informed opinion that we need on these important issues.

Perhaps "Henry Thornton"- aka "The Australian" could reflect on the Singapore Government's (aka Singtel in this mode) foray into NBN- see for example a recent article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/technology/15iht-rtechbroad.html?scp=1&sq=singapore%20broadband&st=cse.

Australians were seen as early adopters of dialup internet in the nineties because individuals could make their own (several hundred dollar) purchasing decisions on an existing copper wire system with no time-charges. Faster systems required increasingly expensive and aggregated infrastructure, which are beyond the financial capabilities of individual companies.

Despite many reviews and enquiries (see for example the Western Australian analysis Big Pipes: Connecting Western Australia to the Global Knowledge Economy April 2006 http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/sib_tiac/index.html), the Howard government squibbed on its responsibilities to provide infrastructure in the National interest, preferring instead to reduce taxes and extol individual choice.

Governments have to do a "Wayne Gretzky" (a much over-used, but perhaps apt metaphor) with infrastructure. Many chasms can't be overcome with a series of small steps. Did Wayne always get it right?

I, for one, won't be visiting the website of the Henry Thornton evangelicals and I will continue my boycott of The Australian, which continuously squibs its obligations to the Australian community- it presumes to use the Nation's name as its own, while being a mouthpiece for sectional interests.

There are two major components of the NBN. The first is the high speed fibre back bone to the major nodes, secondly there is the roll out of fibre to each house hold.

The first part is estimated to cost $16bn and the second part is to cost $26bn.

While I agree that there is a need for an improved backbone, the existing copper network is perfectly capable of providing up to 12Mb/s with ASDL. The percentage of households likely to want to subscribe to more than this is in the region of 10%.

So in order to be "fair" to everyone, our telecomms bill will be slugged with the cost of the fibre, or the 10% of those who use it will pay a fortune.

If you want any indication of how this will pan out, just ask yourself what has happened to the "laptops for every child" that are gathering dust in warehouses.

Well said Jedimaster.

""There's more to come before the election," our old friend said in a conspiratorial whisper. "The NBN is about to blow up big-time!""

Ill informed, badly written rubbish based on rumour!

This fundy christian zealot has no pucking idea. He actually seems scared of it. Probably all the porn stories he hears. Talk about a luddite. Nothing but third hand garbage.

Irrespective of anything else I predict that the NBN will be Rudds defining legacy like deregulation and floating the dollar were for Hawke and Keating. Like gun laws and the GST were for Howard.
No one knows exactly what it will bring but I am willing to bet it brings a lot of new and exciting and productive technologies to us all.

Mikk,

Rudd's legacy will be roofing insulation, the BER rort, the health policy sham, and the mining tax back flip, with a subtext of grocery and fuel watch, and the internet censorship debacles.

When I first heard Kevin Rudd's promise of a NBN I must admit that I wondered why we needed one. Anyway, after what seems like years, there is still no sign of one being delivered... so I had already consigned it to the basket containing Kevin's other big promises that he has been unable to deliver.

Hindrance from our obstructionist senate driven by the Liberals and their mates hasn't made it any easier to get anything big done of course. But even the things that have been done have been done with amazing incompetence... such as the home insulation scheme. And the current argument over the mining super profits tax illustrates that Kevin and his government have much to learn about the wisdom of introducing unpalatable measures gradually, by stealth, over time.

So, Kevin and his government are in danger of losing the coming election. A pity, considering the high hopes we had for him after our last dose of the Liberals... but does it really matter? Whoever Kevin might be replaced with will still be a politician, driven and constrained by the same forces that govern Kevin, and sure to become embroiled in government fiascos of their own.

The National Broadband Network was the one policy that I actually admired the Rudd government for ... but even during the election campaign I began to hae me doots.

Just little things: like the then shadow communications minister claiming on an ABC radio interview that the NBN would deliver internet speeds up to 40% faster than currently available - 'that's 400 times faster!'.

Basic maths fail. I was saddened but not surprised that the interviewer didn't pick it up, either.

Then there was the infamous 'Laptops! Laptops! Laptops for everybody!' policy, and the tell-tale hemming and hawing about details that followed.

Then of course came Rudd in office and the litter of backflips and broken policies *that* entailed, plus the Christian Conservative Rudd's determination to saddle Australia's internet with a think-of-the-children filter, and the NBN starts to look more and more unlikely to come to fruition.

As a CONSTITUTIONALIST I always start of with the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution who desired not to follow suit with the USA but to keep telecommunication in hands of the commonwealth. I am not aware any referendum was held to approve the sale of Telstra. While Telstra as part of the Commonwealth was entitled to use underground pipes free of taxes one has to ask why as a private company should it be free of taxes in regard of underground cabling when it charges the Commonwealth billions of dollars to use its underground network system?
What we need to do is to go back to the origins of the constitution and we may just avoid of wasteful expenditure being it the insulation programs, the school building fiasco’s and many other things because I am still asking under what constitutional power was all this money thrown away? The proposed SUPER TAX is likewise unconstitutional as to be constitutionally valid it must be a tax that applies to the whole of the commonwealth, not just mining profits. Moment now we get it the (UNCONSTITUTIONAL) Northern Territory Intervention Act was to be against Northern Territory Aboriginals who allegedly couldn’t manage their own affairs but now it spread amongst all welfare recipients even those who are on old age pensions. Well that is what you get when you allow yourself hoodwinked. So the SUPER TAX now promoted against mining companies may soon be applied to every other business! Just don’t complaint I didn’t warn you!
.Mr G. H. Schorel-Hlavka