The NBN Cost Benefit Analysis is a Steaming Pile of Horeshit.

There seems to be this small section of my brain that’s completely disconnected from reality. At every turn with the Liberal’s and the NBN it’s been the part of my head that’s said “Don’t worry, I’m sure Turnbull and co will be honest this time around” and every single time it has turned out to be wrong. At every turn these “independent” reports have been stacked with personnel that all have vested interests in seeing Turnbull’s views come to light no matter how hard they have to bend the facts in order to do so. Thus all the reports that have come out slamming Labor’s solution are not to be trusted and the latest report, the vaulted cost benefit analysis that the Liberals have always harped on about, is a another drop on the gigantic turd pile that is the Liberal’s NBN.

The problems with this cost-benefit analysis started long before the actual report was released. Late last year Turnbull appointed Henry Ergas as the head of the panel of experts that would be doing the cost-benefit analysis. The problem with this appointment is that he’d already published many pieces on the NBN before which where not only critical of the NBN but were also riddled with factual inaccuracies. So his opinion of the NBN was already well known prior to starting this engagement and thus he was not capable of providing a truly independent analysis, regardless of how he might want to present it. However in the interests of fairness (even though Turnbull won’t be doing so) let’s judge the report on it’s merits so we can see just how big this pile of horseshit is.

The report hinges primarily on a metric called “Willingness to Pay (WTP)” which is what Australians would be willing to pay for higher broadband speeds. The metric is primarily based around data gathered by the Institute for Choice which surveyed around 3,000 Australians about their current broadband usage and then showed them some alternative plans that would be available under the NBN. Problem is the way these were presented were not representative of all the plans available nor did they factor in things like the speed not being guaranteed on FTTN vs guaranteed speed on FTTP. So essentially all this was judging was people’s willingness to change to another kind of plan and honestly was not reflective of whether or not they’d want to pay more for higher broadband speeds.

Indeed this is even further reflected in the blended rate of probabilities used to determine the estimation of benefits with a 50% weighting applied to the Institute for Choice data and a 25% modifier to the other data (take-up demand and technical bandwidth demand) which, funnily enough, find in favour of the FTTP NBN solution. Indeed Table I makes it pretty clear that whenever there was multiple points of data the panel of experts decided to swing the percentages in ways that were favourable to them rather than providing an honest view of the data that they had. If the appointment of a long anti-NBN campaigner wasn’t enough to convince you this report was a total farce then this should do the trick.

However what really got me about this report was summed up perfectly in this quote:

The panel would not disclose the costs of upgrading [to] FTTP compared with other options, which were redacted from the report, citing “commercial confidentiality associated with NBN Co’s proprietary data”.

What the actual fuck.

So a completely government owned company is citing commercial in confidence for not disclosing data in a report that was commissioned by the government? Seriously, what the fuck are you guys playing at here? It’s obvious that if you included the cost of upgrading a FTTN network to FTTP, which has been estimated to cost at least $21 billion extra, then the cost-benefit would swing wildly in the direction of FTTP. Honestly I shouldn’t be surprised at this point as the report has already taken every step possible to avoid admitting that a FTTP solution is the better option. Hiding the upgrade cost, which by other reports commissioned by the Liberals is to be required in less than 5 years after completion of their FTTN NBN, is just another fact they want they want to keep buried.

Seriously, fuck everything about Turnbull and his bullshit. They’ve commissioned report after report, done by people who have vested interests or are in Turnbull’s favour, that have done nothing to reflect the reality of what the NBN was and what it should be. This is just the latest heaping on the pile, showcasing that the Liberals have no intention of being honest nor implementing a solution that’s to the benefit of all Australians. Instead they’re still focused on winning last year’s election and we’re all going to suffer because of it.