Monday, May 27, 2013

Come back, Ken

Don't look now, the white elephants are multiplying

Gosh.  The normally reliably Labor supporting Kenneth Davidson has a column saying that the Coalition has better policies on the NBN and superannuation.

Actually, I suspect that many of the claims he makes regarding the NBN will be hotly disputed by tech people in the industry.   I doubt that this is a Davidson area of special knowledge, and this part of the column reads suspiciously like a list of questionable talking points prepared by some consultant who is against the NBN.

That said, I have always felt that the NBN is the riskiest of Labor's policies.  It's just that I have tended to be persuaded that enough people in the IT industry had come on side that it was probably was a worthwhile thing. 

6 comments:

  1. Steve,
    Both Joshua Gans and Stephen King have written critical articles of the NBN at core economics only for their arguments to be demolished by commenters ( mainly engineers).

    Stephen King agreed that he was wrong however Gans didn't.

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  2. Thanks, I'll go looking later...

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  3. I get the impression that people in the IT industry like getting free stuff from the government, not that they necessarily think the NBN is brilliant.

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  4. SteveC1:16 pm

    Everybody likes free stuff TimT! But which part of the NBN is "free" ?

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  5. Oh of course it's not free ultimately, taxpayers still pay for it. Free in the sense that it's a service the government decided on under Kevin Rudd that's not linked to any commercial imperatives or private providers.

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  6. SteveC11:44 pm

    Tim,
    I don't think that's how it works. No-one gets access to it without paying. ISP's pay NBN, Users pay their ISP.

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