The major point of contention in this thread is about what actually constitutes a CBA?

As many here have already said, a treasury costing is not a CBA, and nor are policy costings commissioned by a private accounting firm, which was the method of accountability chosen by the coalition, prior to the last election, which proved to be unacceptable to all but the die hard coalition supporters, who never honestly question any policy or action that emanates from the side of politics that they support.

The opposition failed to get a CBA  provided by the Productivity commission, and at the time the head of the consumer watchdog, the ACCC made this comment, "What happens is you have a cost-benefit analysis done by whoever it might be, but then someone says 'yes, but we don't agree with that assumption', and therefore that makes that cost-benefit analysis somewhat worthless."

So, that undoubtedly being the case, one has to ask just what benefits do opponents of the NBN expect to arise from spending even more money on a report that would for all intents and purpose, be pretty useless?

If you were going to do any enquiry into the NBN, you would want a SROI, (Social Return On Investment), because the NBN is not a strictly commercial enterprise, but rather a National Infrastructure project that has goals outside of merely providing the highest financial return on investment.

Now the plain truth is that nobody knows what all the benefits that may emerge from having a truly National High Speed Internet Network, will be, as none of us have crystal balls.
The benefits for both Health and Education are areas where benefits have been speculated upon, and the ability for those benefits to be shared by people in communities where no "Commercially" only viable internet network would ever get off the ground.
That is why the government decided to undertake the NBN project in the way they have, so that these people do not get overlooked and ignored, as being commercially unworthy to be included in our National Network, and that is why the only benefit to come from imposing guidelines derived solely on financial returns, would be to continue to exclude these people from being able to access high speed broadband.
That is all this whole debate is really over, whether it is wrong for a government to spend money to ensure that people outside of high density urban environments, should also have the chance to access modern communication services?

I think they should, so support the NBN, and I think that those who oppose it should at least be upfront and admit that their attitude is "bugger the bush", and openly announce their opposition to all government subsidised services, including health, and education, and promote their user pays philosophy for every aspect of society, because that appears to be the only argument they uniformly support.

What about a Cost Benefit Analysis on importing petrol instead of using gas?

I don't know of any Aussie Govt. that has ever done one.

Why do we use petrol & then sell gas to the Chinese for 4 cents per litre?

longweekend58 wrote on Dec 30^th, 2010 at 11:14am:



longweekend58 wrote on Dec 30^th, 2010 at 11:15am:



What do you mean both both of these is it your $43 billion or not

Equitist wrote on Dec 30^th, 2010 at 11:34am:


I havent seen one from the soft c o c k greens either

Equitist wrote on Dec 30^th, 2010 at 11:49am:

More pissing in the wind from you   

There would be no objection to a CBA, if there`s nothing to hide?

aussiefree2ride wrote on Dec 30^th, 2010 at 1:12pm:





That's just it.
Julia Gillard doesn't want all the costs to be revealed, and Julai Gillard wants a cost-centre for Wayne Swan to dump some other costs in.
That way Wayne Swan will be able to 'cover up' other unrelated costs and pass them off as NBN related.
Wayne Swan & Julia Gillard know full well that when the BER costs blew through the roof of which they have not explained, and the costs of the pink batts, the cash for clunkers and the boat people, costs are driving Australia further into the red.
Wayne Swan is continuing his charade that the ALP will have the Australian economy back in the black in 2-3 years times.
Wayen Swan knows he cannot deliver that.
Wayne Swan needs that cost centre to write off excess costs, and that is why Wayne Swan wants to stop the release of any CBA.
The benefits just do not exceed the costs, as the costs are not yet defined, and are growing all the time.

sir prince duke alevine wrote on Dec 30^th, 2010 at 1:50pm:






And the IT in year 1 is already out of date, so why on earth would anyone want to spend $4.16 billion for year 2 and onwards?


And you're suggesting pay $4.16 billion for another 7 years!!!!!!!!


A complete white elephant.