You'll get those like benelsmore that will look at it purely from a "how many tickets will it sell?" point of view. If it was feasible from that alone, the private sector would have already built the thing. You have to look at a more broader range of benefits to see if it's worthwhile for the government to contribute towards. This is not something that anyone here can just put their finger in the air and say "not feasible" or the converse.

I know there have been feasibility studies in the past but conditions are changing all the time so they need to be kept updated. At the very least the land to be used to built it has to be reserved.

Try from the position of an engineer who has worked on Trackstar projects in QLD and NSW as well as several of the biggest infrastructure projects in QLD in the last decade :)

Even without ticket sales you have to consider even just the geotechnical and logistical issues associated with this kind of project. There are a range of conditions to deal with, large scale areas of compressible ground which could require preloading for up to 10 years (dependent on wick-drain installation etc). Getting equipment to site, expensive rail bridges, slope stability issues, the list is endless. Then there is maintenance, particularly regarding the NSW Government considerations for slope stability and slope maintenance which are rigourous.

Given the population size and 'social' benefits vs. the ridiculous cost outlay, likely project time over runs (lets face it, if you're drilling boreholes every km you're still going to have infinite problems in design) and cost over runs, it's really just not a sound decision.

Make all the assumptions about my motives that you want, it doesn't change the challenges that the project will face.

Try from the position of an engineer who has worked on Trackstar projects in QLD and NSW as well as several of the biggest infrastructure projects in QLD in the last decade :)

Even without ticket sales you have to consider even just the geotechnical and logistical issues associated with this kind of project. There are a range of conditions to deal with, large scale areas of compressible ground which could require preloading for up to 10 years (dependent on wick-drain installation etc). Getting equipment to site, expensive rail bridges, slope stability issues, the list is endless. Then there is maintenance, particularly regarding the NSW Government considerations for slope stability and slope maintenance which are rigourous.

Given the population size and 'social' benefits vs. the ridiculous cost outlay, likely project time over runs (lets face it, if you're drilling boreholes every km you're still going to have infinite problems in design) and cost over runs, it's really just not a sound decision.

Make all the assumptions about my motives that you want, it doesn't change the challenges that the project will face.

I didn't make any assumptions about your motives. All I was saying is, if you look at ticket sales as the only metric then it's at best borderline feasible. If it was more than that then it would already have been done. Thanks for at least outlining why it's expensive. I'll defer to the last infrastructure departments feasibility study done in 2010 for more solid facts.

The argument Pala and others have put forward is that it's never going to be cheaper than now to get the money to build something like this but this current "train wreck" of a government has trash talked our situation so much there's no chance they'll invest in anything genuinely stimulating.

The sad thing is, we had a far more cut and dry infrastructure project already in action (the NBN) and politics were played on the relatively modest costs for the scope of it and now we're getting something completely pointless for almost the same cost. Doesn't fill me with much hope for anything significant to be done in this country.

UK's first 'poo bus' goes into regular service
Bio-Bus fuelled by human and household waste, which first ran between Bristol and Bath, will operate 15-mile route four days a week

10,000 passengers a month from poo gas from 32,000 households.

How many poos per passenger?


Let's suppose each household produces three poos a day, so 900 poos a month. And so 32,000 households produce 32,000x 900 poos a month = 28.8 million poos. But that is for 10,000 passengers, so it takes 2880 poos per passenger carried. If each passenger averages 10 miles we have 288 poos per passenger mile.

That works out as 5.88 passenger metres per poo, to get the story into perspective.

Let the poo take the strain, sez I!

[size=6]Costa Rica powered with 100% renewable energy for 75 straight days[/size]
And it's mostly thanks to heavy rains and geothermal energy.
MYLES GOUGH
20 MAR 2015


Well done Costa Rica, well done.

The Cental American country has achieved a major clean energy milestone, meeting 100 percent of its power demand with renewable energy for 75 straight days.

“The year 2015 has been one of electricity totally friendly to the environment for Costa Rica,” the state-owned power supplier Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) said in a press release.

The ICE says the country's zero-emission milestone was enabled thanks to heavy rainfalls at four hydroelectric power facilities in the first quarter of 2015. These downpours have meant that, for the months of January, February and so far March, there has been no need to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Instead, Costa Rica has been powered primarily by hydro power - both pumped storage and run-of-the-river plants - and a mixture of geothermal, wind, biomass and solar energy.

It’s important to remember that Costa Rica is a small nation. It has a total area of about 51,000 square kilometres, which is about half the size of the US state of Kentucky, and it has a population of only 4.8 million people. Furthermore, its primary industries are tourism and agriculture, rather than heavy, more energy-intensive industries such as mining or manufacturing.

Still, Costa Rica has done an excellent job developing it electricity sector, and supplying affordable, reliable power to its citizens.

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2014 Global Competitiveness Index, Costa Rica ranks second in Latin American countries behind only Uruguay with regards to electricty and telecommunications infrastructure.

Reporter Sophie Vorrath from RenewEconomy writes that the country is “providing a household coverage rate of 99.4 percent at some of the region’s lowest prices”.

Costa Rica’s record on renewable generation also stands out. As recently as last year, hydropower accounted for 80 percent of all electricity production, while geothermal energy was reported back in 2010 to account for upwards of 13 percent of the country’s electricity profile.

And new geothermal projects are in the pipeline to help the volcano-rich country capitalise further on this subterranean energy source.

In mid-2014, the Costa Rican government approved a US$958 million geothermal energy project. According to Jake Richardson from CleanTechnica, "the first plants are expected to generate about 55 MW and cost approximately $333 million to build", and two other 50 MW plants will also be built nearby.

It’s good news that more geothermal will be coming on board, as there are obvious downsides of being too reliant on hydropower, especially run-of-the-river systems, which can be hindered by seasonal changes in water flow. Droughts can also severely impact power supplies. And there are also some environmental downsides to hydroelectric dams more generally, namely the impact on riparian ecosystems and passing fish.

Nevertheless, 100 percent renewable energy generation, for any extended period of time, is an enviable achievement.

Good on you, Costa Rica!

[size=6]Public transport blind-spot: Prime Minister Tony Abbott's approach is arbitrary and a shame, says Infrastructure NSW[/size]
March 31, 2015
Jacob Saulwick



The head of the state government's infrastructure advisory has criticised the Abbott government's refusal to fund public transport projects.

"I can't really understand the logic of saying we will only invest in a transport project if it involves bitumen as opposed to one that involves steel rails," Jim Betts, the chief executive of Infrastructure NSW, said on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, maintains it is not the federal government's role to provide funding for public transport.

He says public transport should be funded by the states, while the Commonwealth has a role in helping fund motorways and rail freight initiatives.

But speaking at a business lunch on Tuesday, Mr Betts called this policy "arbitrary" and a "shame".

"We've seen the successes that have come where in recent years when the Commonwealth government has reached into its fairly deep pockets to fund major projects like for instance the regional rail link public transport project in Melbourne which I was a big part of," Mr Betts, a former chief executive of Public Transport Victoria, said.

"It seems to be arbitrary," he said of Mr Abbott's stance.

"I can't understand how public transport is somehow beyond the pale," he said.

"It's a shame because particularly I would like to see bodies like Infrastructure Australia able to give modally agnostic advice."

Mr Betts mentioned his concerns about Mr Abbott's policy at a committee for economic development of Australia function, and expanded on them to Fairfax Media.

"The Commonwealth is at least investing very significantly in WestConnex and in Badgerys Creek. That takes the pressure off the state government having to fund those, it releases capacity for it to invest in public transport," he said.

The bureaucrat also used the lunch to give a ringing endorsement to the WestConnex motorway, a major point of contention at Saturday's state election.

"There is a school of thought in some quarters that motorway investment is somehow inconsistent with livability in a modern city," he said.

"When you think about the M4 and you think about Parramatta Road and you think about the M5 East, the choice is not about having motorways and some kind of sepia-tinted world in which we are all cycling everywhere or using public transport ... the choice is between a good motorway network and a bad motorway network."

Peter Regan, the chief executive of the Sydney Motorway Corporation, the company set up to finance WestConnex, spoke about the strategies needed to pay for the $14.9 billion project.

State and federal governments have already contributed about $5.3 billion for the project. Mr Regan said it could be possible to receive more public funding, but the corporation was working on the basis the rest of the money would be raised from the private sector.

Despite Mr Abbott's opposition to federal funding for public transport, part of the $2 billion incentive payment his government will provide NSW for privatising electricity assets will be spent on public transport projects.

[size=6]Time has come for high-speed rail for Sydney-Melbourne: Maurice Newman[/size]
APRIL 09, 2015 12:00AM
Rick Wallace


A bullet train in Japan. Source: Supplied

Business leader Maurice Newman has become the first corporate heavyweight to throw their weight behind a high-speed rail link between Sydney and Melbourne.

Dr Newman said the high-speed rail link was an “idea whose time had come” and it could be achieved using Japanese technology and capital.

Mr Newman, who heads the Prime Minister’s Business ­Advisory Council, said the journey from Sydney to Newcastle by rail was now slower than it was under steam.

A $110 billion high-speed rail link would tackle the “diseconomies of scale” in traffic-choked Sydney and Melbourne while providing a boost for regions along the route.

“I am an extremely dry and hard-nosed person when it comes to government projects … but the time that you waste in a car or a bus between your place of residence and your work, that has a cost, and that cost is clearly rising,’’ the former ASX and ABC chairman said.

Mr Newman recently visited Japan as a guest of the shinkansen (bullet train) operator Central Japan Railway Company and said the company’s maglev technology, being rolled out ­between Tokyo and Nagoya, ­allowed speeds of up 600km/h.

The company, which has a branch office in Sydney, is interested in building high-speed rail in Australia and believes the project can stack up even without government funding, providing the tickets are priced akin to a business-class airfare between Melbourne and Sydney, one of the busiest and most lucrative air routes in the world.

“Clearly the Japanese railway companies would be interested in providing their expertise,’’ Dr Newman said. “In this case there’s a likelihood you would get significant funding because, if we are talking about the Japanese, the Japanese government has its development bank.”

The Bank of Japan’s monetary easing and the Abe government’s outward-focused export policies mean government and corporate lenders in Japan have piles of cash to lend at low rates.

The Australian has previously revealed Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb is a supporter of high-speed rail in Australia, although he believes it must be done with little or no input of taxpayers’ funds.

Dr Newman, when asked whether Tony Abbott was convinced of the merit of high-speed rail, said it “it’s not a question of being convinced”.

“It’s about how you pay for it. The PM has been rightfully protective of the budget. There have been so many competing things. There has been a lot of money going into roads, airports and other infrastructure projects,’’ he said. “The government would feel much happier if they felt there was interest from the ­private sector that it would be ­appropriate to put some capital up. Japan would be prepared to lend capital on affordable terms.”

Dr Newman believes that even aviation companies, such as Virgin, may wish to get involved in the project, pointing out that Virgin, while known to many as any aviation company, runs trains in the US.

[size=6]Metro Rail tunnel to be built under Melbourne's Swanston Street, Victorian Government says amid warnings of years of disruption[/size]
By state political reporter Alison Savage


Metro Rail key points:
Tunnel will be built under Swanston Street
Expected cost is up to $11 billion
Major construction to begin in 2018
The project includes five new underground stations
Disruptions to Swanston Street could last for "some years"


The project will result in major disruptions over "some years", Mr Andrews says. (ABC News: Alison Savage)

The Victorian Government has confirmed the planned multi-billion-dollar Metro Rail tunnel will be built under Swanston Street, a plan the previous government warned would split Melbourne in two.

The proposed metro project includes five new underground stations at Arden, Parkville, CBD North, CBD South and Domain, connected by nine kilometres of underground rail tunnels.

The project, which includes five new railway stations in the city, is expected to cost up to $11 billion, with major construction to start in 2018.

It is due to be finished by 2026.

The announcement comes a day after the contracts for the controversial East West Link tunnel were scrapped.

Premier Daniel Andrews told 774 ABC Melbourne the Government considered a range of options for the alignment of the rail project.

"It means we will go over the City Loop and over the CityLink tunnels."

The previous government criticised the plan to build under Swanston Street, comparing the disruption caused by the construction to the Berlin Wall.

Mr Andrews confirmed the project would result in major disruptions.

"There'll be some years where Swanston Street will be significantly disrupted and we'll have to put alternative tram routes in place," he said.

He said CBD traders who were affected by the road closure could be compensated.

"We will absolutely treat people fairly. Everyone impacted by this will be treated fairly and appropriately," he said.

"If compensation is recommended to us, that we need to entertain those ideas, we will look at them in a balanced way."

Part of the tunnel will run under the Yarra River, involving complicated geotechnical work.

Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said it was not clear yet how deep the tunnel would need to go underneath the river.

"The topography along the route changes, it's not a consistent depth all the way along," she said.

"This is why we're getting the best advice from the engineers.

"They're telling us the best way to put in the Melbourne Metro tunnel is to go over the city loop tunnels, over the CityLink tunnels and under the Yarra."

The Government said the full cost-benefit analysis and business case for the project would be released once it was completed.

[size=6]Andrews concedes federal funds will not go to Metro Rail[/size]

Mr Andrews said he conceded the Federal Government would not contribute any funding to the Melbourne Metro.

The original funding plan for the $11 billion project would have seen a three-way split between the State Government, Commonwealth and the private sector.

Mr Andrews said the current Federal Government had made it clear it would not fund Melbourne Metro.

"I see no point in continuing that argument with the current Federal Government," he said.

"But perhaps the people who start this project won't be there to see it finish.

"I don't know who the federal government will be at the end of this project and I remain hopeful that maybe a different federal government at a different time will have a different set of priorities."

Mr Andrews said he would continue to have discussion with Prime Minister Tony Abbott about potential road projects the commonwealth could partner with Victoria on.

"There may be other road projects, for instance the Western Ring Road which was shelved by the previous government," he said.


The planned rail tunnel will be built at a depth of 10 metres taking over the top of the City Loop. (ABC News: Alison Savage)

"We haven't finalised those matters, they're going to be finalised.

"I take the Prime Minister at his word - he says he wants to have a positive conversation and I'm really confident that we can have that discussion."

The Commonwealth had already given Victoria $1.5 billion for the now scrapped East West Link and had promised a further $1.5 billion for the second stage of the project.

Mr Abbott said he was willing to work with Victoria on other projects now that the East West Link is officially off the table.

But he said he did not believe there were any "shovel ready" projects that could be eligible for the federal funds.

"We're happy to talk to the Andrews Government about other projects of national significance. The problem is there is no major project that is ready to go," he said.

"It's all very well to talk about this urban rail project but it can't begin until 2018 at the absolute earliest, that means three years of nothing."

The Premier said he and the and Prime Minister had a "productive" phone conversation yesterday after the deal to cancel the East West Link contracts was announced.

The two men will meet at a dinner in Canberra tonight ahead of the COAG meeting tomorrow.

[size=6]Japan maglev train breaks world speed record again[/size]

A Japanese magnetic levitation train has broken its own world speed record, hitting 603km/h (374mph) in a test run near Mount Fuji.
The train beat the 590km/h speed it had set last week in another test.
Maglev trains use electrically charged magnets to lift and move carriages above the rail tracks.
Central Japan Railway (JR Central), which owns the trains, wants to introduce the service between Tokyo and the central city of Nagoya by 2027.
The 280km journey would take only about 40 minutes, less than half the current time.
However, passengers will not get to experience the maglev's record-breaking speeds because the company said its trains will operate at a maximum of 505km/h. In comparison, the fasting operating speed of a Japanese shinkansen, or "bullet train" is is 320km/h.


The test run was conducted on an experimental track in Yamanashi prefecture in central Japan

Construction is estimated at nearly $100bn (£67bn) just for the stretch to Nagoya, with more than 80% of the route expected to go through costly tunnels, reported AFP news agency.
By 2045, maglev trains are expected to link Tokyo and Osaka in just one hour, slashing the journey time in half.
About 200 train enthusiasts gathered along the route to witness Tuesday's test run. "It gave me chills. I really want to ride on the train... It's like I witnessed a new page in history," one woman told public broadcaster NHK.
"The faster the train runs, the more stable it becomes - I think the quality of the train ride has improved," said JR Central's head of research Yasukazu Endo.


The train uses electrically charged magnets to lift and move carriages above the rail tracks


Japan's magnetic levitation train first set a 581km/h world record back in 2003.

Japan is known for its shinkansen that run on steel rails, but has been investing in maglev technology which it is hoping to sell overseas.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting the US on Sunday where he is expected to pitch for a role in building a new high-speed rail line between New York and Washington.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/6396864-3x2-940x627.jpg

Shallow is better? Do you guys in Melbourne have cavernous rock formation under the young geology or something?

I'm still sad that the Fisherman's Bend station plan was scrapped, it seems like this government has designed all their infrastructure plans specifically to inconvenience me

It's in the article above, apparently it's far cheaper for that stretch, and goes above the City Loop tunnels.

Putting a tunnel on top of a tunnel........ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I imagine they'd be boring under it at Flinders St as it's not a tunnel at that side of the loop, just underneath the road, but yeah they'd be going over the tunnel at the northern side, but conversely they'll be using the cut and cover method on Swanston St there and if you've ever taken the three levels of escalators down to Melbourne Central station you'd know how deep it is there, so they'll be well above it, so really the plan sounds solid.

[size=6]Australians flock to Melbourne as Victoria becomes Australia's fastest growing state[/size]
June 26, 2015 - 5:35AM
Peter Martin
Economics Editor, The Age




Melbourne has become Australia's biggest-growing city and is set to overtake Sydney as the country's biggest city in 2056, according to the latest Bureau of Statistics projections.

And Victoria has overtaken Western Australia to become Australia's fastest-growing state.

New figures from the bureau show Victoria gained an extra 101,500 residents in the year to December, and Melbourne an extra 95,600. At 1.8 per cent, Victoria's growth rate surpassed Western Australia's 1.6 per cent and the 1.4 per cent recorded in NSW and Queensland, which was the Australian average. South Australia grew 0.9 per cent, Tasmania 0.3 per cent, the Northern Territory 0.4 per cent and the Australian Capital Territory 1.1 per cent.

Melbourne's gain allowed it to further narrow the population gap with Sydney, whose population climbed 84,200. Bureau of Statistics projections have Melbourne overtaking Sydney to become Australia's biggest city in 2056. In December greater Melbourne housed 4.4 million residents and the bureau says this population will almost double to 8.2 million by 2056.

The figures show Victoria pulling in far more migrants from the rest of Australia than any other state. In the year to December Victoria gained a net 9340 new arrivals from interstate. Queensland gained a net 5600 and every other state lost population to interstate migration. NSW suffered net emigration of 5570.

South Australians were particularly keen to move to Victoria, with a net 2100 crossing the border in the year to December, almost as many as the 2750 who came from NSW. A net 1400 came from Western Australia.

Job vacancy figures released at the same time paint Victoria's jobs market as one of the best in the nation, with 4.8 unemployed people searching for each vacant job, a result only bettered by NSW which has 4.4 unemployed per vacancy. The odds of finding a job are far worse in Western Australia (5.2 unemployed per vacancy), Queensland (5.6), South Australia (7.5), and Tasmania (8.5).

Nationally job vacancies are growing in real estate (up 28 per cent in the past year), finance (up 11 per cent) and retail trade (up 6 per cent). Vacancies are falling in mining (down 29 per cent), manufacturing (down 8 per cent) and construction (down 5 per cent).

The national population growth rate of 1.4 per cent is the slowest since 2011. Australia had fewer births than at any time since 2006. Around 289,000 Australians left Australia to live overseas in 2014, the biggest number on record.

The NBN: why it’s slow, expensive and obsolete

The Abbott Coalition government came to power two years ago this week with a promise to change Labor’s fibre to the premises (FTTP) National Broadband Network (NBN) to one using less-expensive fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) technologies, spruiking its network with the three-word slogan: “Fast. Affordable. Sooner.”

But with the release in August of the 2016 NBN corporate plan and in the light of overseas developments, it is clear that the Coalition’s broadband network will not provide adequate bandwidth, will be no more affordable than Labor’s FTTP network and will take almost as long to roll out.

With the benefits of two years' hindsight since 2013, let’s look at the Coalition’s performance against each of the three assertions in their 2013 slogan.

Affordable

The graph (below) shows funding estimates for the NBN from December 2010 to August 2015. Labor’s funding estimates for its FTTP NBN rose from A$40.9 billion in December 2010 to A$44.9 billion in September 2013, an increase of 10%. By comparison, the Coalition’s funding estimates, both for FTTP and the so-called multi-technology mix (MTM), have fluctuated wildly.


Labor and Coalition peak funding estimates from December 2010 to August 2015. *December 2013 data adjusted to account for different contingency. Rod Tucker, Author provided
The estimated funding required for the Coalition’s NBN has almost doubled from A$28.5 billion before the 2013 election to between A$46 billion and A$56 billion in August. Before the 2013 election, the Coalition claimed that its proposed multi-technology-mix network would cost less than one-third (30%) of Labor’s FTTP-based NBN.

But in new estimates released in the 2016 corporate plan, the cost of the multi-technology mix favoured by the Coalition blew out and rose to two-thirds (66%) of the cost of a FTTP-based network.

Also, the cost of repairing and maintaining Telstra’s ageing copper network was likely underestimated, as was the cost of retraining and maintaining a workforce with the wider range of skills needed to install and maintain the multi-technology-mix network – costs that are unique to the MTM.

In the space of two years, the lower-cost deal the Coalition spruiked to Australian voters has turned out to be not so affordable after all.

Sooner

The Coalition probably underestimated the predictably lengthy delays in re-negotiating the agreement with Telstra as well as delays in re-designing the network the new IT systems needed to manage a more complicated network with multiple technologies.

The graph (below) shows the actual and planned number of premises passed (or in today’s parlance – ready for service) for the original FTTP network and the Coalition’s network.


Premises ready for service, plans and actual, as published by Labor and the Coalition. Rod Tucker, Author provided
The Coalition’s original target was to bring at least 25 Mbps to all 13 million Australian premises by 2016. That target has now been quietly dropped and replaced with a target of more than 50 Mbps to 90% of premises by 2020.

At the end of July 2015, almost two years after the 2013 election, only 67 premises had been served by multi-technology-mix technologies. In the meantime, as shown (in the graph above), the roll-out of FTTP has continued, albeit at a lower rate than Labor originally intended.

This lower roll-out rate has led to fewer connected customers and lower revenue. It will be interesting to see if the newly released targets for premises ready for service will be achieved (blue broken line in the graph above).

Labor certainly had its problems when it was in charge. For example, slow negotiations with Telstra and asbestos in Telstra’s infrastructure caused delays of around one year. The funding requirements for Labor’s FTTP network crept up by about 10% from 2010 to 2013.

But the delays and cost blowouts have been very much worse under the Coalition than under Labor.

Fast

Australia’s broadband capabilities are falling behind its international peers. According to internet companies Ookla and Akami, Australia’s broadband speed lags well behind other advanced and even emerging economies.

In 2009, Ookla ranked Australia’s average broadband download speed as 39th in the world. Since then, our international ranking has steadily declined and slipped to 59th place earlier this year.

What’s worse, my studies of trends in internet speed in Australia and in a range of developed and developing countries show that FTTN technology – a key part of the Coalition’s MTM – will not be enough to meet the needs of Australian broadband customers.

In short, FTTN technology will cement Australia’s place as an internet backwater. Our world ranking could fall as low as 100th by 2020.

In many forward-looking nations, fibre-to-the-node technology has never been entertained as an option. In some countries where it has been installed, network operators are planning to move away from FTTN in favour of more advanced broadband technologies like FTTP. In doing the opposite, Australia is moving backwards.

If FTTN magically appeared on our doorsteps by 2016, as originally promised by the Coalition, there would certainly be a short-term advantage. But the 2016 target has been missed and the FTTN component of the network will be obsolete by the time the roll-out is completed.

Of course, there is no point in speed just for speed’s sake. Studies in Europe and the United States have shown a strong correlation between GDP growth and internet speed.

In the US and elsewhere, increasing numbers of homes and businesses are receiving services at 1 Gbps and higher. A recent study presents evidence that communities served by 1 Gbps and more are faring better economically than communities with slow-speed broadband.

If in 2013 the Coalition had simply allowed NBN Co to get on with the job of rolling out its fibre-to-the-premises NBN, rather than changing it to an inferior multi-technology mix, it may well have ended up spending less money and delivered Australia a much better network.

The Coalition sold the Australian public a product that was supposed to be fast, one-third the cost and arrive sooner than what Labor was offering us. Instead the Coalition’s NBN will be so slow that it is obsolete by the time it’s in place, it will cost about the same as Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises NBN, and it won’t arrive on our doorsteps much sooner.

By my reckoning, we didn’t get a good deal.

https://theconversation.com/the-nbn-why-its-slow-expensive-and-obsolete-47191

"Authorised by Rod Tucker for the Australian Labor Party, Canberra"