Right Pulse

NBN head Mike Quigley has compromised his role as the apolitical face of the government’s $43 billion + fibre to the node network.

Quigley cynically announced a day after the Coalition’s broadband policy was released that the NBN could achieve speeds 10 times initial estimates – upwards of 1 gps. It was a deliberate attempt to discredit the Coalition and take the wind out of their IT sails during an election. It is a flagrant breach of the APS code of conduct because it was clearly a political announcement designed to favour the government. Quigley claims it was just coincidental, but that is unlikely.

On the technical front Telstra already provides a 1 Gps connection to business customers that are prepared to pay for it. Telstra boss:

Thodey said “we already have a 1Gbps service for business however I see very little demand for it in the home”.

Mike Quigley’s announcement wasn’t some hot off the press great technological break through. Telstra already offers the service so it is likely that Quigley knew that the NBN could also offer the same speeds but was waiting for a time to maximise the political benefit of such an announcement. This event in and of it self is grounds for disciplinary action within the APS. Mike Quigley should be reprimanded for so blatantly entering the political arena.

NBN Co CEO, Mike Quigley, has defended the company’s decision to sign a multi-million dollar deal with Alcatel-Lucent, despite both Quigley and CFO, Jean-Pascal Beaufret, being former employees of the company.

In December, Leighton-owned Nextgen Networks won the lion’s share of a $250 million tender to provide fibre backhaul links in blackspots throughout regional Australia.

NBN Co CEO and chairman Mike Quigley is a former board member of Leighton.

Get set for Australia’s own cash for clunkers programme.

Let’s keep it simple.

Over a year ago Rudd gave Toyota a stack of money they didn’t know what to do with or need, to build Camry hybrids in Australia, because Kevin’s wife once complained the existing hybrids were not Australian made. True story.

Sales of the vehicles have been very slow with the Victorian government the only ones buying the cars. Probably because they make no financial sense for buyers. The average person would have to drive something like 200,000 km before they get their money back on the fuel savings. Not including when the battery inevitably fries when the warranty runs out. That is a $10,000 replacement.

Anyway, in order to boost sales Gillard is giving away $2000 to people with worthless cars to go into debt to buy one of these government funded hybrids. These are cars that cost in excess of $40k.

So let me get this straight. If a person can only afford to drive around in a car worth less than $2000, how are they going to be able to afford a car worth $40,000 – $2,000 = $38,000?

Has the ALP completely lost its mind?!?!? So much for Ford and Holden. According to Gillard you guys better start looking for a new job. Hopefully people in Adelaide are awake to the way Gillard has stabbed her own home town in the back.

There are also a range of balance of payment issues and the impact this initiative could have in creating a boom and bust industry, aka the home insulation industry right now.

The mining industry has gone into flat-spin mode with the secret preference deal the ALP has done with the Greens. This political deal basically does away with the Gillard ‘big three’ mining industry deal. Bob Brown wants to destroy the mining industry as part of his anti-carbon crusade and will not support the legislation through the Senate unless the tax is increased. What the left don’t understand is that tax destroys wealth and over the long-term government revenue. Higher tax rate =  less economic growth = less tax revenue for pet left-wing social government spending.

Liberal supporter and mining magnate Clive Palmer interview here. “The politics of envy will destroy the country.”

Sometimes ALP to apolitical mining magnate Andrew Forrest interview here. “…we can’t model for our stakeholders…” “…a major socialist agenda…”

Bob Brown is a fanatic. He does not care who is sacked, who he makes poor or what community he destroys as long as he gets his fundamentalist environmental agenda across the line.

Heather Ridout as an ALP apologist and head of the Australian Industry Group has been roundly sounded out by Peter Costello as a Rudd patsy:

Which brings us to the members of the Henry review. All, including Henry, have a public sector background except Heather Ridout, the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group. She was obviously appointed to give a business perspective.

After the report’s publication she talked warmly of the new mining tax. It was, she said, “a move in the right direction”. She must be the only business representative to think so.

A point I made a little while ago. Ridout is totally isolated on the mining tax. Any pretense she once had to representing the best interests of business has now gone.

The mining industry is aghast. The government’s business adviser, Rod Eddington, says it should restart the whole process. The chairman of the Future Fund, David Murray, said the tax ”should be abandoned” in its present form. The Business Council of Australia has come out against it. The ANZ Bank has warned about sovereign risk. Which leaves Ridout isolated.

….Ridout will have to account to her members. Henry will not be on the ballot paper at the election. Rudd and Swan will be. The government has to fix this problem.

Costello makes the point that Ridout should have stood against the tax from the very beginning. She has since disappeared on the issue.

Initial pricing has been released for the Tasmanian component of the National Broadband Network:

….Internode has undercut its rivals to claim the best value monthly broadband plan starting at $29.95 for 15 gigabytes of data at a download speed of 25Mbps with 2Mbps upload.

Internode’s most expensive plan costs $139.95 a month for 200GB of data at 100Mbps (8Mbps upload).

So Internode’s cheap plan is no different from ADSL 2 while the monthly download restrictions on both plans make the download speed almost irrelevant.  Furthermore, unless the entire world is hooked up to a fibre to the node optic system then your never going to get any where near those download speeds. The whole system seems an even bigger waste of money than first thought.

So the latest on Rudd’s mining tax. Okay so over $100 billion in mining projects have either been canceled or are facing delay, the entire mining industry is opposed to the tax, nearly the entire financial sector including the Future Fund Chairman David Murray and by extension most of the Superannuation industry and the government’s own business adviser Sir Rod Eddington oppose the tax,  every state government except Tasmania opposed to the tax – including having QLD ALP Premier Anna Bligh publicly wanting Rudd to dump the tax altogether, every business lobby group except Rudd apologist Heather Ridout oppose the tax, with virtually the entire financial press opposing the tax – including the WSJ, even the ABC is running critical stories on the tax, the government’s own Resources Minister Martin Ferguson privately opposed to the tax and any economist with a slight free-market ilk also opposing the tax. So when Xstrata announces the closure of multi-million dollar projects and the loss of thousands of jobs because of the tax, how does Rudd respond?

“All I can say is you should take what big mining companies, very big mining companies have to say in this big debate about them paying more tax with a bit of a grain of salt sometimes,” Mr Rudd told the Seven Network’s Sunrise program.

So in other words Xstrata and by implication everyone else opposed to the tax is just lying. Tricking the public. Some grand conspiracy. Absolutely absurd. Rudd is desperate. Apart from a bunch of rang tag die hard socialist unionists and economists like Ken Henry and foreign governments that hope to benefit from capital flight from Australia, it seems everyone that is in the know thinks the Rudd tax is a bad idea.

The Business Council of Australia has come out against the Rudd mining tax

The head of the council’s tax taskforce, Robert Milliner, said: ”Of most concern to the BCA is the failure of the [super-profits tax] to meet the principle that the taxation framework be characterised by stability and predictability, with any change prospective so as not to adversely affect existing investments or create perceptions of sovereign risk.

”The growing perception of sovereign risk has extended well beyond the resources sector to affect the business environment in Australia more widely. This is harming our international standing, and if not addressed will reduce investment and impede our growth prospects.”

This shows in a stark fashion to the ineptitude of the BCA’s main rival the Australian Industry Group, headed by ALP stooge Heather Ridout. This is what she said last month:

…the weight of expert opinion seems to be in support of this type of tax…

I mentioned at the time what an absurd claim this was, and the claim keeps on getting more and more absurd by the day. Just consider how Ridout is spinning it for Rudd on the news that the AIG’s own manufacturing index had recently dropped:

“The recovery remains patchy and consumer sectors in particular are clearly being affected by continuous interest rate rises, and there’s some undermining of confidence due to world conditions,”

So any cause other than Rudd’s record government debt and spending driving up the cost of borrowing and crowding out private sector investment. And as the BCA has pointed out, Rudd’s mining tax is undermining overall business confidence. Ridout’s ALP bias has become even more transparent. There seems to be – this is speculation – something suspicious about the relationship between Ridout and Rudd. Deals done? Maybe. Eventually what ever is really driving Ridout will come out in the wash.

It took a while, but a bunch of left-wing academics have come out in support of Rudd’s mining tax.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce openly dismissed the open letter.

“It wouldn’t be surprising in a globe of about six billion people that you could find a few people to support the mining tax,” he said.

Virtually every single investment adviser, major banks, hedge funds, international press, the entire mining industry, 5 state governments, superannuation managers, any economist with a free market ilk, etc… are opposed to the tax increase. It simply shows how out of touch and irrelevant the group of 20 economists that support the tax are.

Andrew Robb hits back at the ALP.

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