In short, the NBN national productivity improvement is founded on very shaky studies that are no longer accepted by the rest of the world.

Or

Labor's latest policy is founded more on spin than substance.

When have we heard this before?

Where start. let's start with the obvious Australia is a much bigger place then the UK. The remoteness of many of Australian towns and industry is something that the UK doesn't face.

"And the early growth of the Internet occurred incrementally in a short period of time, without great government command or subsidy."

Wrong wrong wrong. It happen in Australian ( and UK)with lots and lots of government money. The internet was accessed by the telephone line. In other words copper-to-the-premises CTTP. We have well and truly maxed out on the copper lines and now we need to replace it with fibre which will see us through for the next 100 years or so.
Free marketers just have to accept that something s do not happen unless governments do them. That something’s do not make much economical sense at first and that it would be hard to make a buck out of them at first. It’s called nation building

Federal politicians are expected by the electorate to steer the ship of state. They have proved themselves too dangerous to actually set about achieving constructive goals, the latest example of this theory is the stupidity of NBN.

What I think would be a sensible priority which, if any of the above were actually human, would be to invest figures like $48b (disputed NBN cost) in public housing or health for example, and other similar and useful areas that socially advantage the electorate.

I am firmly convinced the NBN is a Labor ploy at taxpayers expense, to burrow into rural electorates

Overkill Inc.

It seems to me as though the NBN will prove to be too expensive for the 'average' user, in excess of requirements for those who can perhaps use the speeds offered and finally, an on-going, never ending cost to the taxpayer. All at a time when debt needs to be reigned in thanks to the recent extravagances of amateur government, Rudd, Gillard et al.

And all because it was part of a campaign to paint the Labor party as a party of the future on the idea that the costs today for broadband will be the same as the NBN costs tomorrow, patently untrue. But it is typical that in a politically driven environment, once committed and having gone back on many other promises, ad nauseum, there was no turning back.

I cannot recall seeing an accurate statement of what it will cost the user but any government of any persuasion will try and charge what the traffic will allow, so we can be sure that the NBN will become the federal milking cow just as the poor old motorist has become the milking cow in all the states and territories.

I am waiting for the day when a policy is struck, spun to death, used as an election winner, promoted and committed to and then overturned because of a rational rethink as opposed to being overturned because of a disaster such as Home Insulation and the 'jobs for my mates" Education Revolution.

It may be a long wait.

As a retiree with a long life expectancy, I did not expect to retire from a business in the CBD with high speed broadband to a place in the suburbs with no high speed access.
I have more time to be creative than I had before and would welcome the National Broadband Network. Roll it out.

The article, as well as quite a few responders, have suggested that the government is stupid.

I cannot give them this credit.
I cannot believe that anyone with even half a brain, enough for making a speech in parliament, can overlook all evidence.

No, they are not stupid - they are cruel.
They are not wasting $43,000,000,000 - they invest it.
They invest our tax-money (which they never cared about anyway) in certain goals that must be very important to them.

What could those goals be?

One obvious goal is to take revenge on Telstra.
Another obvious goal is to show people who is the boss (see the great Egyptian "nation-building" project, the pyramids).

Smaller hidden goals could include petty corruption, such as to provide technical/managerial jobs to their friends, or perhaps to cling to a bed-time-story promise to a minister's little daughter ("sleep now, for by the time you go to high-school, every home will have a very fast network").

But even all those goals together are not likely to be the whole story.
More likely, there is something big, dark and sinister in the lurk.
More likely, it is only the first step in a bigger master-plan.
Why would the government want such a fast connection to every home?
Is it perhaps, for video surveilence in every room?
Or for sending them images of our brain-wave patterns, so they can find anyone who thinks out of line?
Big Brother keeps a watchful eye!