Most obvious statement in a headline ever. But it raises an interesting question: Why are they failing so much? Industry expert Paul Budde has a superb piece in Business Spectator today which spells out the biggest issue with the Government’s message on the NBN.
The problem, Budde says, is that the government is sending mixed messages. On the one hand, it’s all about super fast broadband to everyone. On the other hand, it’s a utility, something that will drive industry forward and revolutionise the way Australian services are delivered.
But where the government really went wrong was in determining that the NBN was a type of utility being built for the good of the country, yet still needed to provide the government with a return. That creates the FUD that the opposition has been using so effectively over the past 12 months.
This approach by the government has resulted in their inability to sell the benefits of the NBN to the majority of people. And the demands of the opposition are done purely for disrupting the NBN’s rollout:
A watertight cost benefit analysis would be unachievable. In the same way as it would have been impossible to predict the economic and social consequences of electricity and the railways, any prediction you might make now could easily be shot down by any non-believer.
It’s a fantastic explanation of one of the NBN’s biggest problems – you should definitely go and read it.