On 14 August 2012, in my regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio, we spoke about the political misinformation surrounding Australia’s National Broadband Network.
The conversation was triggered by the previous week’s release of NBN Co’s updated corporate plan. The estimated capital cost had increased by 3.9%. Even before you take into account the many variations, this is within what any sensible accountant would call a more than acceptable variation.
Yet in the media this was almost universally reported as a “cost blowout”. Pathetic. I was angry. I’ve got a piece coming soon at ABC’s The Drum. This conversation is more or less a prelude.
Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, Mr Dobbie has posted the full episode.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:17 — 4.5MB)
You can of course hear us talk live every Tuesday night from 7pm AEST on Sydney’s FM 99.3 Northside Radio.
I’m fairly sure that copyright remains with Mr Dobbie rather than being transferred to Northside Radio, but I’ll figure that out later.