the love for tony grows, page-48

According to a research note recently published by the Parliamentary Library of Australia, Labor is technically correct on this matter, and the Coalition is wrong. “Australia has adopted internationally accepted accounting standards, and these are applied in the budget treatment of the NBN,” the library’s Brian Dalzell, who works in its economics division, wrote in the report (available online here in PDF format).

I laugh eveytime somone brings this up. It just shows your total lack of understanding. Who cares whether internationally adopted standards are being applied. Concentrate on CASH ON HAND. The raw fact is, if you have $1 billion in the bank, and you spend it on infrastructure NOW, you NOW have ZERO dollars in the bank. Just because you claim the expense (being capital expenditure) over future years (in fact in normal business you can't claim it all as an expense in the current year anyay) , doesn't mean you suddenly have $1bill in the bank again. From an accounting point of view, you are pushing the CLAIMING of expenditure into future years, but your actual CASH position is not a surplus.

The whole NBN business model is a farce. The assumptions are ridiculous and already been proven to be very optimistic, even this early into the project.

The FACT is that the government will not be in surplus at the end of this financial year because they are excluding the massive NBn spend in their surplus calculation. They won't make a surplus regardless, even with this missing expense. Out by $80bill on their budget forecasts over the last 4 budgets. What chance of getting this one right to within #1bill?