By Larry Pickering
When you think of something terrific to do when you’re pissed, don’t pretend its just as terrific when you’re sober.
In 2008, Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy were enjoying a few after dinner wines in Qantas first class when Conroy came up with a crazy NBN idea.
He drew a few diagrams on the back of an envelope. Kev squinted at it and told Conroy to go ahead. Kev has since given up drinking on Qantas.
It would prove to be a very expensive absurdity, even for an ex Pom union buffoon like Conroy.
His idea was simply this: Use the half-century old technology of glass fibre to deliver fast broadband to every house in Australia and then flog the system off to some rich bastard.
The problem was that digging trenches to every house in Oz sounded easy with a belly-full of red.
In reality its rapidly proving to be a nightmare and union buffoons with single digit IQs are averse to admitting they were pissed at the time.
So, Aunty Dot and Uncle Arthur in Arden Street North Melbourne will have the same access to the same high-speed broadband as the iconic Childrens Hospital over the road.
The trouble is that Uncle Arthur cant figure out how email works yet and Aunty Dot would kill him if he forked out $7,000 for anything.
Perhaps we should put ninety five billion in numbers so Conroy can understand the extent of his folly: $95,000,000,000.00.
Now thats just a bunch of noughts to Conroy but to us its our grandchildrens taxing interest payments.
When you see Conroy, Gillard and Independents all cheering and pressing a big orange NBN button with lights flashing everywhere and nothing connected to bloody anything, then you know you are in the process of being conned.
And those who promised to prop up Gillard are naturally first cabs off the rank.
Take-up rates in the first part of Australia to get the NBN was flatlining last year, with just over 100 extra customers signing up over the previous year.
The whole drunken thought bubble of a project is going backwards at terabyte speed.
Of the very first Tasmanian towns to get the NBN (Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point) 702 premises had signed up out of a possible 3,987 that were passed by the network.
The fact is that hard glass to the node allows those who want, or need, such high-speed broadband to access it. But to connect hard glass to every single house where it may not be needed or wanted is lunacy only Labor is capable of.
Anyway if you think that Conroys glass fibre to the premises wont be obsolete by his completion date of 2021 (more likely 2051) then you better have a quick look at this: