At 01:31 PM 24/04/2013, Jim Birch you wrote: >One thing that worries me is that Labor plan - I guess, the Liberal plan >too - includes selling the NBN when it is built.
hmmm....not sure if that is a major issue -- if the money comes back via capital investors of an on-going concern (and a monopoly at that), as Telstra is re copper, then we are just in an ebb and flow of public capital versus private. If the return is then used to fund the next piece of developing critical infrastructure, then it is money well used instead of just crowing about having a AAA rating. What is the value of that if you don't leverage it for the public good? That is what government bonds are for. We don't hear about them much any more since Costello pretty much destroyed that market single handedly, but what better investment than government backed bonds? It's how the US pays for capital works all the time, but Australia because of the lack of state/local taxation powers doesn't seem to have as part of its psyche. Also, re who will pay at the consumer level for a capital improvement that is going to be owned by someone else -- I don't think that has been discussed enough. The regulation around this is going to be horrible so that even if streets of neighbours said they wanted to create a co-op to only dig the street once, would that be allowed? What if it's installed, but the end users don't all want to connect to it? What if it's an age-mixed, owner/renter-mixed street like mine? There is a huge advantage having those variables completely set aside and washed through the government finance domain to avoid all the crappy hassles of individual belief systems. That's what govt incentive programs are for, ffs. Someone needs to remind Malcolm that not everyone who needs infrastructure lives on the North Shore of Sydney and can write a cheque to cover it over and over again without ownership. At least with solar panels, they belong to the property, not out in the street. Jan Melbourne, Victoria, Australia [email protected] blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/ business: http://www.janwhitaker.com Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth. ~Madeline L'Engle, writer _ __________________ _ _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
