Sorry I no longer read the Auastralian or anthing which is pasted from it.
Oh the joys of having a closed mind!
cgt, I looked at your figures in the budget papers. As far as I can see, there is no line item for the NBN. The largest amount they have set aside, the $13.6B in the contingency reserve, is not appropriated. There is no cost to the bottom line.
In theory there should be once funding has been allocated to a specific agency for appropriation. That means the NBN needs to be a specific line item under the budget, not hiding behind contingency reserves etc.
The $2.942B from the Building Australia fund is interesting. The website talks about many different infrastructure projects but nothing on the NBN. You have to delve down to page 53 of the Portfolio Budget Statements: budget paper no 1.9 Finance and Deregulation. It is under Portfolio Special Account, Transfers to BAF Communications PSA. $2.0B of the $2.9B occurs 2010-11.
Have they?
The paper you highlighted talks about a funding requirement of $22.4B for first 5 years. But only, if you can take government at face value, $16.8B has been allocated. Where do they plan to get the outstanding $5.5B from?
