Spot on.

Why do racists and bigots think it's ok to attack someone because of their religion ?

If you earn over 100k a year in super earnings then for fucks sake you're a rich fuck that will barely miss the tax.

I had a laugh at the Howard comment. I guess you like drowning refugees.

Edited by theselectfew: 6/4/2013 01:08:54 AM

[youtube]a6OBxph4iak[/youtube]

Anyone see Adam Hills at the logies?

The only ones who like drowning refugees are those who encourage them to get into leaky boats. So it's on your head, sunshine.

[size=6]Coalition NBN plan won't help flats: SCA[/size]

APARTMENT dwellers in urban centres will be the big losers under the federal coalition's high speed national broadband network plan (NBN), the peak body representing strata sector says.

The coalition plans to run fibre optic cable to "nodes" - or boxes on street corners - and use the existing copper wire network to link the rest of the way to buildings to save money.

But Strata Community Australia (SCA) says this disadvantages apartment building residents because the aging copper wire infrastructure within such premises won't be able to cope.

"For apartments, they are dreaming if they think they are going to get 25 megabits per second (Mbps)," SCA chief Mark Lever told AAP on Wednesday.

"Most residents in Bondi will have worse internet connections than in Boggabilla," (in far north of inland NSW).

Under Labor, the network builder NBN Co Ltd will run fibre all the way to residential buildings which will then run through the existing copper wire conduits to individual apartments.

But under the plan announced by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull, that won't happen.

"Apartment residents will not get high speed broadband under this plan," Mr Lever said.

The opposition has said residents can pay for fibre to run all the way to premises if they want.

However, this won't help individual flat residents wanting to pay the extra because there is no avenue to act without the agreement of owner corporations, which control building infrastructure.

As well, Mr Lever fears most won't want to spend the money.

"You require 75 per cent of owners to agree, and individual owners can't go out and pay," he said.

"Certainly, for apartment dwellers this is a policy that doesn't guarantee deliverable high speed broadband."

Mr Abbott has promised to deliver fast broadband to Australians earlier and cheaper than under Labor's NBN.

The plan has been dubbed a "lemon" by some experts because it will only provide minimum speeds of 25Mbps, compared to Labor's 100Mbps.
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/breaking-news/coalition-nbn-plan-wont-help-flats-sca/story-fnhrvfuw-1226617211919?from=public_rss

[size=6]How Malcolm Turnbull saved the NBN[/size]

Malcolm Turnbull, with the help of the polls, has turned the Liberals into an NBN party. His plan isn't perfect, but it's better than dismantling the whole thing, writes Alan Kohler.

It won't make it into his Wikipedia entry, and he won't get tweets of congratulation from techies, but Malcolm Turnbull's great achievement over the past two and a half years has been to save the National Broadband Network.

Nick Minchin, the Coalition's communications spokesman 2008-2009, had taken a hard line against both the NBN and the structural separation of Telstra, reversing the softer position of the previous shadow, Bruce Billson.

After Tony Abbott defeated Turnbull for the leadership by one vote in December 2009, destroying the NBN became one of the new Opposition Leader's singsong slogans, along with "stop the boats" and "drop the tax".

In May 2010, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey vowed that the Coalition would "dismantle the NBN", and the 2010 election policy, carried by the then shadow minister Tony Smith, involved $6.25 billion on some fibre backhaul and wireless - basically a dismantling of the NBN.

After the election, it was Malcolm Turnbull's turn to take up the cudgels against the NBN, and a few days after he was appointed shadow minister, he gave an interview to The Australian in which he promised to attack the $43 billion white elephant, describing it as a "colossal destruction of taxpayer's money". Appointing him, Tony Abbott said the NBN would be "absolute focus of the policy battle over the next 18 months".

I don't know how he did it, but Malcolm Turnbull has turned the Liberals under Tony Abbott into an NBN party. In the process, he has saved Abbott from a terrible mess if he had gone to the election still promising to dismantle the NBN.

Of course, it helped that polls showed that most of the public, especially people in rural areas, liked the NBN.

But anyway, whether it was the polls or Malcolm's silver tongue, there was Tony Abbott yesterday at a pay TV studio beside a hologram of a footballer as he launched the Coalition's NBN policy and basked in the wonders of broadband communications as if he invented it: "We believe in a national broadband network and we will deliver a better (one)."

Well, no, it won't be better, it will be worse - but this is politics, where you get to say anything you like. And it could have been a lot worse, instead of a little bit worse, as it is.

All the satellite and fixed wireless parts of the NBN will be retained, along with fibre to the premises in new estates. The difference is that the last mile of fibre will be made user pays and otherwise will remain copper.

One interesting addition yesterday was that state and local governments or private investors could "co-fund" a fibre to the premises rollout to a particular area by paying 50 per cent of the cost. So NBN Co would have to set up partnerships with other organisations that would presumably buy equity in part of the NBN. Complicated.

Structural separation of Telstra appears to have been compromised, and there are going to be some messy twists and turns along the way as some of the complications are ironed out. But it's an NBN nevertheless, and the NBN Co will remain intact (minus Mike Quigley, presumably).

Last August I wrote that the Coalition's NBN policy was "madness" and would have to be dumped, mainly because a new deal would have to be negotiated with Telstra against the background of an election promise. Telstra, I believed, would have the Abbott government over a barrel.

Turnbull has dealt with that problem - he hopes - by allowing Telstra to continue to operate its hybrid fibre-coaxial cable (HFC) network in competition with the NBN, as foreshadowed in Business Spectator last week.

But it's messy. The idea is that Telstra will rent/sell the copper necessary for the proposed fibre to the node (FTTN) network for the same price as it's currently getting to transfer customers to NBN Co, so the payments to Telstra won't have to change.

The way yesterday's document puts it is this: "Telstra has stated publicly the copper has minimal economic value, leading us to anticipate cost-effective access will be attainable."

Right. Except an asset is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. If a Government is bound by an election promise to buy your asset, then that asset may suddenly be worth more than "minimal". Against that, Minister Turnbull will be offering faster payment as well as permitting Telstra to continue to operate the HFC.

Actually, the plan about the HFC is confusing. On the one hand, the Coalition's policy says: "Our goal would be to remove any contractual impediments to the use of existing HFC networks for broadband and voice."

On the other hand, it says: "Completion of the NBN will implement the structural separation of Telstra."

The only way both things - infrastructure competition and structural separation - are possible is if Telstra is actually separated, and a new company owns and provides wholesale access to the HFC.

Apart from that complication, Telstra should be a big winner from the Coalition's NBN: get paid quicker, continue to be a wholesaler over the HFC in competition with the NBN, as well as retailing the HFC service and reselling the NBN as well. David Thodey will sign on the dotted line and try to keep a straight face.

The other reason I said the policy was madness was that the ALP's NBN is a mechanism for subsidising cheaper broadband in regional areas. This was, in fact, the key reason Labor won the support of the regional independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor in 2010 and was able, therefore, to form government.

Yesterday, Windsor was incandescent about the Coalition's policy because it will mean cheaper broadband in the cities. But he won't have the balance of power after September, and Turnbull is hoping that a nationwide price cap will make the plan acceptable to the Nationals even if city prices turn out to be cheaper than the bush because of competition.

As I have argued here and directly to Malcolm Turnbull, the NBN might seem expensive, but it's not a cost to the budget - it's an investment, using cheap government borrowings, so the ROI hurdle is lower than privately funded projects.

And the FTTP network would end up being be a great investment, in my view, because of the rapid increase in broadband traffic as the internet carries more and more video. For example, yesterday the Swedish cloud-based pay TV service, Magine, said it was going to launch in Germany and Spain this year. In time, all pay TV will be delivered over the internet from the cloud via fibre cable.

Is carrying video into lounge rooms a worthwhile social purpose? No, but it's going to be a good business.

Making the last bit of fibre user pays, as opposed to taxpayer funded, is a dumb, short-sighted decision in my view, but no big deal. It's certainly better than dismantling the whole thing, as would have happened if Malcolm Turnbull hadn't ensured that Tony Abbott WAS for turning.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-10/kohler-how-malcolm-turnbull-saved-the-nbn/4619868

A 2011 NICTA submission to the Inquiry into the National Broadband Network charted typical modem speeds in recent decades, jumping from 300 bits per second in 1984 to 31 megabits per second with a cable modem in 2010, a 100,000-fold increase. If current trends continue, NICTA forecast that by 2020 it was conceivable some users would consume 1000 megabits per second.

Still cheaper than taking fibre all the way to homes and units, most of whom would just end up with a whole bunch of excess capacity?
Its the last part that is the most expensive and unnecessary for most users.
The ones crying about it are the minority who want the rest to subsidise their fat pipes :P

Wonder if the Coalition have factored in the cost to do the light->electrical conversion at each of these nodes (plus electrical costs and other problems involved with using copper based services).

-PB

And running fibre 90-95% and copper the rest will save that much money?

No it won't, specially seeing as they will have to buy the infrastructure back off Telstra at cut throat rates.

As for "whole bunch of excess capacity", NBN to begin with and still is an opt-in process, if people don't want it, don't give it to them.

Simple as that.

-PB

The Coalition doesn't need to release policies yet. just sit back and watch the ALP continue to knife each other

I'm in a safe LNP seat, so I'll be running copper until 2089

I'm in a safe LNP seat, so I'll be running copper until 2089

I'm in a safe LNP seat, so I'll be running copper until 2089

My division has been safely conservative since it existed in 1948. Not enough people are aware that they can vote informally if you ask me.

Maybe some people want to see their vote count?