At least on climate change.
Kevin Rudd started work on Climate Change on Sunday, and we haven’t seen much follow on from there yet.
However, he does seem keen to get some action happening, trying to bring together his government as quick as possible to start acting as quick as possible.
No idea why he wants to move so quickly, considering he doesn’t actually have to start on anything until next year when they pick up again.
I sit curiously looking at Conroy, curiously wondering how he plans to get his network up and running inside of 6 months. It’s possible, no one is arguing that. What’s the problem is what the long term effects of his rushed, and poorly thought of FTTN plan are.
There’s not a big doubt in my mind that the builder of the FTTN network will be Telstra. Who will be pressured into lower prices through tougher regulation imposed upon it by the government should it take the hard road, and that will be bad news for Telstra, but good news for me, in fact I’d have gone out of my way to vote them in 20 times over if I was sure they’d screw Telstra.
There is however problems with the long term effects of rolling out FTTN. It will screw competition for now, and well into the future, at the FTTH level.
The ONLY solution is to get on with the inevitable. It’s gonna have to happen sooner or later, that is, splitting Telstra.
Keeping it together is simply a recipe for competitive troubles down the track, espiecially if they get to roll out FTTN, which will destroy competition in Australia for many decades to come, due to the upgrade to FTTH being a follow on effect from FTTN.
Splitting Telstra is going to happen. It’s got to, if we are to continue to support a competitive telecommunications industry, then Telstra needs to no longer have control of the national infrastructure. It needs to be pulled right away from them, the only way to do that is with stronger seperation, and closely monitored seperation.
You can do stronger operational seperation, or structural seperation, but either way, we will need a lot stronger seperation, and all of Telstra’s retail bodies must purchase via the wholesale bodies, or, they can purchase from the network body, so long as others can also purchase from the network body, and supply equal services (and setup competition to Telstra Wholesale).
Structural seperation gets the problem solved for good. There’s no point bothering with half arsed solutions at the national level. If you are going to do a job, get the job done properly first time. Spend them dollars, and over time, recoup them and invest in further infrastructure. Repeat that process until Australia is either world leading, or government funding projects would go against the national interest, whatever happens the first.
The simple point here is: There’s no point stuffing around with minor “fake” seperation. Split the crap out of it now, and save doing it later on.
And to anyone who disagrees, what year do they propose the split happens? It’s going to have to happen sooner or later for the good of the nation. Get a move on with it.
I’m keen to see Kevin Rudd move on with his promises. I’m keen for him to demonstrate the true costs of his promises to the nation.
When the nation has a debt, and he gets the rear end, I’m keen to hear a campaign as to why we should let him back in.
I do agree with one however, we do need to spend money in Australia, so Kevin has my support there, and also, not rolling out nuclear power, another win from me. In fact it was nuclear power that turned me away from Howard in the first place. Then the news that Labor would be crawling up Telstra’s arse pushed me back to Howard, and then I thought perhaps Telstra running with FTTN isn’t too bad anyway (I had that thought months before hand at least).
But now I do indeed put that position out there, that once you roll out infrastructure unnecessarily, with pigs on the board looking for fat returns, you should look at either turning back away on that plan, or looking to gain the upper hand to ensure the prices of the services don’t rise as a result of the poorly thought out plan.
Enjoy!