One of the promises made by the Labor party during the last election was that there would be more transparency in government. I guess that means being honest about information sources, advice received, funding, and who will benefit from what.

That was obviously a non-core promise.

Senator Nick Minchin discusses this in relation to the government’s vastly overpriced and already outdated fibre optic broadband plan.

Mr Rudd and Senator Conroy have repeatedly said they are simply following the advice of an expert panel and also the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Yet they have produced no solid evidence to confirm that to be the case. ..

Its refusal to release key advice in relation to this proposal makes a mockery of its pledge to deliver a new age of transparency. And despite the scale of this project and the billions of taxpayer dollars that will be risked on it, the Government arrogantly dismisses the need for a cost benefit analysis.  It claims this network will be commercially viable, yet has also failed to produce a scrap of credible evidence to support these evangelical assertions.

And the key problem with the whole dumb idea:

The Government has no idea how many customers may choose to use this network and how much they will have to pay to do so in order for it to be viable.

It is not as if we have a spare $43 billion floating around that we couldn’t use for hospitals, roads, schools, or research.