The rising cost of Rudd's high-speed broadband Malcolm Colless From: The Australian April 06, 2010 12:00AM
THE determination of the federal government to go ahead with mandatory internet filtering is not only creating diplomatic tensions between Canberra and Washington but is casting a dark cloud over the beleaguered $43 billion national broadband project.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is believed to have been summoned to a meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last week after media reports revealed the US was concerned that this ran contrary to its policy of encouraging an open internet to promote economic growth and global security. One senior cabinet minister is said to have responded to the US reaction by telling Conroy: "With internet censorship you won't need a national broadband network."
Conroy believes internet companies should be required to block blacklisted websites carrying illegal and abhorrent material such as child pornography. His detractors say the impact of this action needs to be weighed against the economic, social and educational benefits of the internet. They also point out that there is a wide range of home-based filters commercially available to the community.
Google, which has been engaged in a political battle with the Chinese government over internet censorship, claims mandatory filtering may prevent the free flow of information and, in any case, would probably be ineffective in curbing its primary target. It believes the federal government's policy is of more concern than the Chinese censorship because Australia is a developed country closely aligned to the US.
Google and other critics of the filtering policy say the broad scope of material contained in the blacklist will slow internet speeds in Australia. Superfast broadband is the linchpin for the success of the fibre-optic cable rollout the government wants to take to 90 per cent of homes, businesses and schools across Australia. It will be a year ago tomorrow since Rudd unveiled this massive infrastructure project. In that time, and in the absence of any cost-benefit analysis, it has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the project before the rollout has even begun. The issue of internet filtering is one of an increasing number of question marks about the viability of this venture. For example, when Rudd, Conroy, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner announced the project last April, they predicted it would support up to 25,000 local jobs on average every year over the eight-year life of the scheme, peaking at 37,000. Since then the government has become locked in mortal combat with Telstra over its demands that the telco, which owns the copper communications backbone around Australia, separate its retail and wholesale businesses or be prevented from acquiring additional spectrum for advanced wireless broadband.
To support its policy that this cable connection will be mandatory, the government has introduced legislation requiring all new developments from July 1 to be certified at least as fibre-ready. The legislation bans the installation of copper cabling and provides severe financial penalties for individuals or organisations that ignore this requirement.
The scope of the rollout policy, which aims to reach more than nine million premises in eight years, will require thousands of connections each day. And it is not clear whether the same tradesman can work on underground cabling and aerial connections or whether above-ground workers must be electricians. But whatever the case, where is the qualified workforce needed to carry out this huge and complex project to come from, particularly if Telstra is not in the NBN tent? There has to be a real concern that this connection target will put speed of installation ahead of efficiency, and we have seen where that can lead from the home insulation program.
Installing the fibre-optic cable will inevitably require a significant upgrade in training to boost the number of accredited tradesmen that NBN Co, the operating body for the broadband network, will need. Even then this workforce will need to be supplemented by skilled tradesmen from neighbouring countries where there is a strong demand for broadband installation expertise.
To what extent local unions will support importing workers for this scheme is yet to be tested. But this project, plagued by unquantified variables, has the potential to blow wage levels through the roof. This should be a big worry for the government. However, it seems to be blinded by its own rhetoric. While Tanner has stepped around the fact NBN Co is operating free from budget constraints, senior bureaucrats in the Communications Department are concerned, particularly as the company seems set to take a billion-dollar plunge into satellite ownership to service regional Australia with its high-speed broadband.
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