During these two decades of opposition, Peter, what will comprise government?
Can the present opposition, given power, prevent the trillion dollar private debt time bomb, buried in the fabric of the economy by a enabling Howard administration, from blowing up under the pressures of higher interest rates and tens of thousands of sacked public servants?
I recommend to you the works of the father of economics, a Moral Philosopher whose life work was to understand commercial society and better it.
Come to that, in the coming Abbott Recession there will be a lot of people who will have all the time in the world to read "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations".
Your lectures on the subject might have more credibility were they based on your knowledge of the above.
Take a couple of decades and do some catching up, enjoy your GFC, by the way, now there's a school of hard knocks for you!

You are entitled to your opinions but I do not share your view of the "loony schemes" such as carbon pricing, NBN etc. I think they are sensible and modest measures that will benefit this nation.

Carbon pricing and NBN are not sensible or modest.

The Australian ETS would cost $10 for every $1 of projected saving to 2050. But the $1 of projected saving would only be achieved if the world participates, and there is near 100% participation. However, global carbon pricing almost certainly will not happen so the ETS will deliver no benefits but huge costs to Australia.

The NBN is a disaster. Australia’s Labor government decided only the government could give us fast broadband. So they have passed legislation to ensure a government monopoly provides broadband - competition is banned.

The government is rolling out a fibre optic system to reach 93% of the Australian population.

Rollout began in 2011 and was due to be complete by 2011. By June 2013 they were scheduled to connect to, and later changed to 'pass', 1.26 million dewellings. Now they say they will pass about 200,000 dwellings by that date. And there has been little take up of connections so the government is trying to bribe people to connect to make the figures look better before the election.

At the current rate of progress (200,000 instead of 1.26 million) the project will take over 63 years instead of 10 years. So it will be finished in about 2074 instead of 2021.

The original cost estimate was $50 billion. What will the final cost be?

The government thought that after they’d built it they’d be able to sell it to the private sector. What chance of that?

Guess who’ll be paying for this debacle?

That’s just one example of “we need MORE government”

p.s., I haven’t mentioned that it was revealed today that US is selling satellite bands to Indonesia that will be able to do the job of some of what the National Broadband Network is supposed to do. I wonder what will be the situation with alternative technologies and broadband speeds by the time the project is likely to finish - if it continues.

I suggest you remove your blinkers about what this government has done to Australia. How long it will take to undo the damage, stop the rot, stop the waste?

Why is it that Geologists and Engineers have such strong negative feelings about issues their training does not equip them to understand, such as the Environment, IT and Economics.

I think we would all do well to respect the training and experience of professional Scientists, Information Technologists and Economists rather than party political spin.

Mr Lang,

The NBN rollout is 3 months behind their schedule. I'm sure you have been involved in big projects so would understand that does not necessarily mean 'disaster', nor a 2074 completion. Such an extrapolation is unjustified without stating your assumptions.

Connection take-up is fine, and will increase as people come off their current contracts and look around at what is available.

"The original cost was $50 billion." No, it wasn't. It was revised to just under $40 billion and there is no reason to expect it to increase. It is also mostly funded by loans, to be repaid from earnings.

"The government thought that after they'd built it they'd be able to sell it to the private sector. What chance of that?" Quite good, I'd say, based on past experience of selling other infrastructure.

"Guess who'll be paying for this debacle?" The users? After all, as you said, it's a monopoly. The users will have no choice. Much like electricity poles and wires or the existing Telstra phone lines. No competition there, either.

"That's just one example of"we need MORE government"" And a very good one it is too. Total market failure caused the Howard government to create the OPEL project out of shear desperation and frustration with Telstra. But then, Telstra in its current form (a vertically integrated monopoly) was a creation of those economic whizz kids, Howard, Alston and Costello, so it must be OK, mustn't it?

And you saved the best to last - very thoughtful.
In fact, those NBN chaps are well ahead of you. They are launching satellites to provide services to the 3% of our countrymen who are unable to access internet by FttP or wireless. Unfortunately the earth-satellite distance means there is very long latency which is why people are not thrilled about it.
Undoubtedly there are alternative technologies to all sorts of things out there, but that's not an excuse to do nothing. Wireless broadband is only important as an adjunct to fibre. There is simply not enough capacity in available wireless spectrum to displace fibre as the medium of the future.

I note that you have passed judgement elsewhere about people commenting outside of their field of expertise. You said:
"Likewise, scientists, environmental activists, psychologists and information technologists would do well to confine their comments to what they understand and stay right out of politics and policy. They have no training and little understanding of these." I suspect network engineering is outside of yours.

>" I suspect network engineering is outside of yours."

True. But project management is not. And this si about a project that has never been properly planned, is totally political and totally out of control.

>"The NBN rollout is 3 months behind their schedule. I'm sure you have been involved in big projects so would understand that does not necessarily mean 'disaster',"

Do you understand the difference between completion date projections from critical path schedule and schedule performance?
For those who don't, if milestone or activity on the critical path slips by 3 months, the project is delayed 3 months. However, using schedule performance analysis, if the work is being achieved at only 1/6 the rate on the schedule, and if that rate of under performance continues for the whole project, the project will take six times longer to complete than scheduled. Fifty years of well documented experience on the worlds largest projects shows that by the time a project is 10% to 20% complete, the performance indices give a reliable forecasts and they are seldom bettered. Th NBN is now over 2 years in to a 10 year project. it has completed virtually nothing.

The NBN project is out of control and anyone with any experience can recognise that.

>""The original cost was $50 billion." No, it wasn't. It was revised to just under $40 billion"

Plus $13 billion to Telstra and $1 billion to Optus!. Why did you ignore those?

>"After all, as you said, it's a monopoly. The users will have no choice."

So you think that's a good thing do you? Would you advocate we return to the days of the PMG, operated by public servants and unionist (with productivity about 25% what should be)?

Yes, the project is running behind schedule and yes, I can see that your experience as a project manager would make you very concerned about its progress. I agree it is very worrying.

The money paid, over a period of years, to Telstra and Optus is listed as Operational Expenditure, which is why I did not count it.

"Would you advocate we return to the days of the PMG..?" No, and it doesn't represent any such return. NBNCo is a builder and wholesaler, not a retailer, so the situation is more like the state electricity company which builds and runs the poles and wires.

The whole project is being paid over years. The fact is the original cost estimate was $36.7bn + $13bn + $0.8bn = $50.5bn.

Most of that is being added to the government debt - which has gone from $0 to $300 billion in 5 years (three times as high as the black hole Keating left Howard Costello to clean up), even though the NBN hasn't added much of that yet, but would if it continued as a government funded project.

Remember that a proper business case and cost-benefits analysis has never been done. The NBN is an example of the complete incompetence of Labor. They have no skills, no knowledge and no understanding about managing anything.

You may believe the NBN would be saleable at close to cost, but I don't. In fact, the evidence to date suggests, if it was allowed to continue the cost would blow out by a fact of 2 to 5. Of course, it will never be completed no matter who is the government. It is one of the greatest project stuff ups ever. The enthusiasts just don't realise it yet

I guess you know about the six phases of a project:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. panic
4. search for the guilty
5. punishment of the innocent
6. praise and honours for the non-participants

You are still at stage 1.