Abbott NBN view 'a danger' to Oz: Conroy
Summary: Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has slammed calls from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to cancel the National Broadband Network (NBN) in order to fund recovery efforts for the disastrous Queensland floods, stating Abbott was "robbing" Australia of its future.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has slammed calls from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to cancel the National Broadband Network (NBN) in order to fund recovery efforts for the disastrous Queensland floods, stating Abbott was "robbing" Australia of its future.
In the days after the horrific floods that ravaged parts of Queensland, Abbott called for the government to scrap the $36.5 billion project to fund the repairs. Following Prime Minister Julia Gillard's announcement yesterday of a new levy to pay for the costs of repair (estimated at $5.6 billion), Abbott once again called for the cancellation of the project.
"So, look, I'm against the NBN and I certainly think that as far as the general public of flood-ravaged Queensland and Victoria are concerned, what they want is restored roads, restored railways, bridges that you can safely cross," Abbott said at a press conference in Sydney yesterday. "They don't necessarily want more interactive gambling or more movie downloads."
Conroy today labelled the opposition leader's calls as an attempt to "rob Australia's future in order to score a cheap — and tasteless — political point.
"Tony Abbott's repeated calls to scrap investment in the NBN — now shamefully using the devastating floods as his latest justification — demonstrate not only his inability to grasp basic economic principles, but a woeful ignorance of the productivity benefits that the NBN will create," Conroy said in a statement.
"Investing in infrastructure like the NBN is exactly what we need to build a strong economy — and it's a strong economy that will help communities affected by the floods rebuild and recover."
Conroy said that taxpayer investment in the project would repay itself "many times over".
"Mr Abbott's short-sightedness is a danger to Australia's future prosperity and security," he said. "Imagine if politicians in the 19th and 20th centuries had stopped building crucial economic infrastructure every time there was a natural disaster."
The Coalition is not alone in calling for a review of the project. The Australian Business Council has also called for the NBN project to be re-evaluated in light of the floods.
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Talkback
All you have to do is look at Singapore, a country with zero natual resources that has flourished in our modern times, remembering Singapore had 10mb connections in 1997 when Ziggy Switkowski said all Australians would never need a faster connection than 56k. How wrong was he!
Some see the outages in Queensland and Victoria as an opportunity to rip out the copper and 'update' with fibre. However, I expect many people there who previously had held on to fixed services will migrate to and ramp up mobile phone/data usage out of necessity and will not bother to return to fixed, exacerbating Telstra's fixed line woes, but kicking along their (and Optus') mobile revenues....
... oh and proving again that NBN FTTH is the solution to the problem that few people will have, ie it is the Great White Elephant.
Ditch the NBN - iots just another ploy for Herr Conroy and his Nanny State intercept and content filtering.
Wake up and smell the paranoid politicians.
As Ms Gillard said - we need to defer and reprioritize the NBN back to its bottle and use the money to fix normal infrastructure that people use daily.
As such, tell us how great wireless is again and that everyone will ditch fixed... as it suits your debate at the time...
Then in the next thread (to suit your debate, at that time) tell us the opposite, tell us all about your wonderful new "fixed plan" again Phil, that was my favourite of yours.
Ah contradictions, the NBN FUDsters second best friend behind, lies...!
LOL...! I bet it cost them less!
You need to get off the idea that wireless can handle everything.
No telco uses copper to mobile towers. Copper provides at most 1.5 mbps symmetrical through a T1. This is shared among hundreds of users. Today all telcos use either microwave (if they're cashstrapped), or fiber for tower backhaul.
This is one advantage of the NBN. Because the government provides the fiber, smaller wireless providers enjoy significant cost reductions in deploying new towers.
One interesting consequence of the Liberal party's obstinance is the borrowed money method of funding the NBN. Presumably after a $5-10 billion initial capital outlay, the rest of the rollout could be entirely funded through subscriber revenue. It would take significantly longer to deploy the network, and you would have to start in the cities, but this would ensure no one would have to worry about potential funding problems due to revenue shortfalls.
However, the Liberal party is completely against FTTH, forcing Labor to maximize rollout speed and compromise with Independents to rollout in the bush first.
So here's your "articulation". Your favorite party's leader is corrupted by incumbent business interests.
If we are going to tax any one, why not the people that live in the flood effected areas? They should have a GST increase by at least 1% - they chose to live in a flood prone area - they should pay to fix it.
We all will but some of us will get it sooner than others. Seems my town is one of the ones next on the list to receive FTTH. So how does it feel knowing in a few months time I'll be enjoying a stunning 100/40mbps connection while you are still stuck on dial-up bitching about NBN all day long?