Published on the 11/03/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
The Coalition Government has announced it has begun a probe into the history of Labor’s NBN…
It’s long been rumoured – and long denied – that the former Australian Labor Government’s plan for a fibre-to-the-premises national broadband network to 93 percent of Australian premises was dreamed up by then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, and communications minister, Stephen Conroy, on the ‘back of an envelope’ on a flight from Sydney to Brisbane.
Now the truth might finally come out. The Coalition Government has initiated an audit into the processes by which that decision was arrived at, ostensibly to ensure that what it sees as a hugely costly mistake can never happen again. Not surprisingly, the move has been branded a witch-hunt by the Labor Opposition, and by a number of observers.
This is the second move by the current Government to expose what it believes were the failings of the previous government. It has initiated a Royal Commission into a scheme to subsidise installation of roofing material in Australian homes, put in place to ameliorate the impacts of the Global Financial Crisis.
The scheme was ill managed, attracted shonky operators and four installers died from electrocution or heat stroke. In an unprecedented move, the Royal Commission will have access to Cabinet papers related to the programme.
The NBN audit will be headed by Bill Scales, a former group managing director for regulatory and corporate affairs at Telstra. It will cover the period from April 2008, when the Labor Government issued a tender for a fibre to the node network, until May 2010 when the implementation study for what by then had morphed into an FTTP network was released. It will outline the public policy process undertaken and the advice received to support the decisions that lead to this policy.
The proposed FTTN network would have been heavily reliant on Telstra copper so it was widely expected that Telstra would win the tender. However Telstra’s bid was ruled non-compliant, in December 2008.
An expert panel had been appointed to review the valid tenders and for the first three months of 2009 the nation waited on its decision. Then, in early April 2009, the Labor Government dropped its bombshell. It released only a few pages of the expert panel’s report, in which the panel declined to recommend any of the proposals, and announced plans for the FTTP network and the formation of a government-owned company to build it. The processes by which that decision was reached, and the advice on which it was based have never been made public.
Scales has been given four months to complete the audit. The Government has not said how much it will cost.
