Costello to Rudd: hands off the Future Fund

By AAP
26 November 2007 10:34 AM
Tags: costello, election07, future fund, broadband, government, labor, network, service

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Talkback 5 comments

    Future Fund Simon -- 26/11/07

    To be of benefit to ALL Australians, this fund would be well spent compensating Telstra for the divesting of the PSTN and backbone networks.

    Simon Anonymous -- 26/11/07 (in reply to #320090523)

    Err. are you sure you are not mr lawrence?

    or Sol!

    Anon Simon -- 26/11/07 (in reply to #320090525)

    Most definitely not either!
    I have been a fierce supporter of the separation of the network from Telstra since well before the privatisation. I cannot see any alternate mechanism for delivering the infrastructure outcomes Australia needs to be both internationally and domestically competative.
    Clearly, market forces have failed Australia and if not corrected, the problem will only deteriorate.

    Future Fund Peter Fane -- 26/11/07

    To be of benefit to the people whose money it is, it should be left to professionals to find investments that maximise the return on the funds for a given level of risk. When politicians start to tell you where funds should be invested from outside the normal budget process, then you are heading toward corrupt outcomes.

    Future Fund Anonymous -- 28/11/07 (in reply to #320090529)

    Forget all the fighting over ULL, the ACCC, Telstra on a capital strike, separation of retail and infrastructure, raiding of the future-past fund, access to exchanges and so on...there's an easier answer....

    The future fund installs a nice big empty conduit under every footpath, and anybody can lease space inside the conduit for their own cables. That way any player can install copper, coax, cat7, fibre or whatever the market demands and the cable itself would be on their asset register. The cables do not even need to run back to a Telstra exchange, maybe just an ethernet switch with fibre backhaul to a datacentre.

    Plus the future fund gets a return on the conduit for decades to come, because wireless will never replace wires to the home when the wires are cheap and easy, that's not coutry areas though.

    It's too late to force Telstra to sell their conduits and pits, they are a private company now, but they might sell if the price is right, rather than complete.

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