In a move designed to delay further the roll-out of a national broadband network (NBN), the Federal Opposition has set up a Senate Committee to inquire into Labor’s nation building project.
The Opposition has used its current numbers in the Senate – due to change at the end of this month – to set up a Senate Select Committee which is not scheduled to report back to Parliament until March 2009, well after the date October 2008 date that the Government originally set for its NBN decision.
That decision date has already blown out in response to pressure from the industry which claims it does not have enough information about Telstra’s network to make alternate bids. If the Opposition has its way, the start date will be well into next year.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy accused the Opposition of “economic vandalism”. And he is right.
Labor’s NBN project – one of the central planks of the platform it took to the last election – will deliver new services to communications users, will create work in the industry and will boost the capacities of the Australian economy.
It is already three years since a national fibre roll-out was first proposed by Telstra, a proposal the then Coalition Government saw as a distraction from the main game of privatising the company. The attempts by the same forces now to stretch the decision-making process out is not in Australia’s best interests.
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