The Libs have totally lost their way and fucked the NBN totally.

Within the ideology of Labor, building publicly owned national infrastructure for the public good is a big win. Obviously if you are going to finance the thing with Government debt you want to arrive at something with low maintenance, longevity and high resale value for when you ultimately privatise it. So you choose the best technology.

Within the ideology of old school Liberals, private enterprise should own and build infrastructure like the NBN and they should be allowed to use whatever technology provides them the best return on investment. The role of the government is to encourage investment and reduce red tape.

So what does Turnbull do? He keeps the publicly owned model but chooses technology with the worst return on investment (due to maintenance costs and obsolescence) and prevents the private sector from competing but arranges for a few selected companies to get big payouts for assets or maintenance with little oversight.

It is a fucking joke. Under the ALP we would have a very equitable, high performance network built, perhaps a bit slowly and over budget. Under a true Liberal market system we would have a far less equitable network but likely even higher performance and quicker delivery. But instead we have the worst combination imaginable of a second rate network, financed by government debt which will be hard to recover as the network will be practically worthless before it is finished, meanwhile private companies wanting to provide better services are prevented from competition.

This whole government should resign. They are fucking incompetent.