Dispelling Turnbull's lies: under $50M/year for the extra cost to the taxpayer for the Full Fibre NBN vs mangled mess FTTN/HFC/tin-cans

Turnbull's Big Lie in the 2013 election campaign, and underlying the subsequent Reviews, is simple, profound and very, very deliberate:

What will it "cost" (implied, 'the taxpayer') to build the NBN?[that's the Network rollout, not the company]

Turnbull always knew that the one and only difference in cost to the taxpayer between his mangled copper mess and the Quigley Full Fibre plan was the yearly interest on the difference in Equity 'injected' by the Government into NBN Co. It's why he's worked so hard to discredit the 2012 FTTP business plan, to disguise the real difference between the Plans.

Budget Impact of NBN: it's only Equity investment, no Fiscal Budget Impact. [2015-16]

Sources, quotes and links for Equity Funding of NBN Co.

NOTE:

• income from Future Fund (earnings) noted in fwd estimates
• nothing for NBN. [but millions of subs]

The AASB rules differentiate clearly between investments and expenses as only investments provide a return. Investments appear as Capital or Assets on the Balance Sheet, while expenses appear as Expenditures in the Profit and Loss Statement. Depreciation of Investments, their reduction in value, is an expense.

Turnbull's Swearing Staffer, Ellis, charged with indecent act and drug possession.

Post on Pre-election Blog. Turnbull senior adviser, Ellis, has quit. I'm still to get an apology.

There are two issues for me with Turnbull's Ministerial Office and his actions:

• Anyone in a Ministerial Office, let alone "a senior advisor", doing drugs and behaving badly enough in public to get charged is not a fit and proper person to be on the public payroll or involved in making public policy. This is not "a private matter", this goes directly to the suitability for office and the poor character of the person.

• Turnbull never offered an apology, never contacted me in any way (nor any of his staff, nor Ellis or Lynch) and issues a rather misleading twitter that "calm restored". Only in his mind and  his staffers.

Turnbull still misleading, obfuscating and spinning over NBN.

Turnbull is again talking rabid nonsense while the mainstream media fail to call him out on it. Turnbull is executing his brief to "Destroy the NBN" and his spin, deception and smoke-screens are still allowed to stand.

What's completely missing in anything Turnbull has ever said on NBN Co is profitability and revenues.

Ledgers have two sides: expenses and revenues. Pretending they don't, that expenses only matter, is the chief deception and mislead that Turnbull has perpetrated.

Follow-up: Why we should've had Full Fibre NBN by now if the LNP hadn't actively quashed it

Yesterday's updated post (on 2013) with the actual text from Telstra ASX reports in April 2012 mentioned a 1995 Strategy Paper to replace the PSTN by 2010. It amazed me is that it was retweeted.

Perhaps the ALP can acquire and publish a copy of Frank Blount’s Strategy Paper, if it doesn’t already have one from the Keating era.

It’d make interesting reading and, if tabled, poses a rather embarrassing question for the Party of Small Business:

This deliberate and perverse ignoring of sound commercial advice, not once but twice, happened on their watch, costing the T2 investors (they'd suckered?) two-thirds of their money.

It’s not like Howard/Costello were strapped for Cash, they had $300+ billion in unanticipated revenue from the Chinese Mining Boom sloshing around looking for a way to be spent.

Telstra CEO's 1995 Strategy Paper: "No (copper) PSTN by 2010"

Sources for my quote on Telstra planning to have replaced it's Copper Customer Access Network by 2010. Quoted in http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2013/09/19/3851924.htm.

Fibre to the Farm: Co-Op purchase & install possible and affordable

I sent this email to Fairfax journalist, Andrew Crothers (andrea.crothers@fairfaxmedia.com.au) and copied to Senator Sullivan, mentioned in the article.
Update: 08-May-2015. Fibre to the Farm on Paul Budde's Blog.

The Future is not a consequence-free zone for Modelling Consultants

Will Abbott be a one-term PM, will the Coalition gain a second term under a new leader? The satisfaction polls have never looked good for Abbott and on-line betting odds aren't too flash, either.

If Labor is elected in 2016 or 2019, will they follow the Coalition and initiate a round of Royal Commissions? Game Theory, especially "the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma", suggests that "Tit for Tat" is close to an optimum strategy for a co-operation/trust game like Politics. It should be odds-on that Bill Shorten will initiate an NBN Royal Commission in his first 90 days, it's "just good business" for them.

Will the various Ministers, especially Turnbull, face especial treatment, as misleading the Parliament is taken seriously by them? Almost certainly.

But what about the various consultants, like Communications Chambers (UK) and Henry Ergas? Would an NBN Royal Commission find them guilty of any criminal offences?

Ergas: Using "Economics" to Lie to the Australian public

How do you turn a profitable high-growth, high gross-margin business at the centre of the current rapid transformation of the global economy into an overall negative investment? If you're Henry Ergas, you concoct a deeply flawed Economic Cost Benefit Analysis.

Henry Ergas calculated in 2009 that retail prices for NBN subscribers would be $170/mth, with $133 in the metro areas and $380/mth in non-metro areas. The costs & pricing were modelled for him by an experienced ex-Telstra employee who became the General Manager, Pricing, of NBN Co from Nov-2009 to June-2014, while actual retail prices today are one-third his 5 years old prediction.

Thus, for the most likely estimate of $170 per month, unit costs in metropolitan areas are of $133 per month, while those in non-metropolitan areas are just under $380.

Ergas quotes his own study, now proven to be wildly incorrect, in the NBN Cost Benefit Analysis, as "fact". That's the start of his falsehoods and misrepresentations.

Sanity Checking Ergas NBN Benefits: Turnbull says "very large benefits", Ergas/Vertigan find under 0.05%

Publicly, Minister for Communications, Turnbull, says of the NBN:

Fast broadband provides very large benefits for the economy and society, ... [emphasis added]

Under Turnbull, government funding for NBN Co is "strictly limited" to $29.4 billion, which over 25 years is under 0.05% of Australian GDP at current trends. Not by any definition "large".