Julia Gillard and the unions
Earlier in the year, writing in On Line Opinion, I thought that Labor’s “Forward With Fairness” industrial relations policy was best interpreted as an attempt to entrench a new workplace settlement...
View ArticleThe National Broadband Network, Telstra and "market forces"
Telstra has been playing a high-risk strategy over tendering for the National Broadband Network, submitting a deliberate non-compliant tender which the government has now confirmed excludes it from the...
View ArticleThe structural separation we've always wanted?
The government’s announced that it’s given up on the original form of its national broadband network scheme, and is now proposing “a new public/private company to build a national network”. They’ve...
View ArticleIs the existing copper network at its speed limit?
In this lengthy discussion of the “National Broadband Network”, it was generally assumed that the existing copper network had essentially reached its speed limit, and that it could never provide the...
View ArticleAbbott harsher on the public sector than Howard
There’ll be oodles of commentary tomorrow about Tony Abbott’s Budget Reply speech, and I’ve already added some of my own [see also Bernard Keane for a potted summary, and the full text of the address...
View ArticleThe Telstra-NBNco deal
Trying to get one’s head around the detail of the deal between Telstra and the National Broadband Network company – the vehicle set up by the government to build the NBN – has been a mind-bending...
View ArticleMarginal seat polling and the Rudd government's position
Paul Norton observed here at LP yesterday that we’re in uncharted psephological waters, with both major parties on low primaries and both leaders relatively unpopular. A host of questions have...
View ArticleAn alternative telco plan
Peter Martin reports on the Coalition’s proposed amendments to the NBN legislation currently before the parliament. It’s a fairly transparent attempt to kill the financial viability of the NBN by...
View Article