The secrets of the magic pudding have been discovered by Kevin Rudd. Every time he gives millions of dollars away his popularity rating soars. How can there be a Global Financial Crisis when Kev is sending out cheques faster than his pointy-heads in Treasury can write them? It doesn’t matter who you are or where you live, Australia or overseas, you can get a cheque from Kev. You don’t even have to be alive!
The latest magic pudding is the daddy of them all – forty seven thousand seven hundred million dollars so that you can download movies in the blink of an eye! That’s over two million dollars for every man, woman and child in Australia or around seven million dollars for each family. We know that it takes around 25 years to pay off a mortgage of around half-a-million dollars. Based on this calculation we are about to be saddled with a 200 year mortgage! The pundits might well say ‘thank you Kev – you’ve got my vote’. Their kids, grand-kids and great-grand-kids will have a different view.
That’s if it works of course. Kev said it would only take 4.7 thousand million dollars for a national broadband system during his Kevin ’07 campaign. That figure has now increased ten-fold to 47 thousand million dollars. Given the propensity for budgets to blow out the debt we are about to be saddled with is mind-boggling.
Families paying around $50 for a monthly internet connection better start to plan for a monthly bill of at least $300 when the magic pudding turns out to be an illusion.
There is no doubt that increased Broadband speeds are necessary in a global economy. But technology is moving at such a pace there is no guarantee that Kev’s grand plan of ‘fibre to the home’ will not be obsolete before it is finished. The business model, funding projections and the validity of the technology are all dodgy at this stage.
Kev’s promise of a computer for every student does not give much hope for the government’s ability to manage projects in this area. Most are still sitting in boxes because it costs more to wire them up and load the necessary programs than the cost of the computers. Many will be obsolete before the school has the budget to take them out of the carton!
A new army of taxpayer funded cyber-crats is about to be raised to mix Kev’s latest magic pudding – snake-oil is sure to be a favourite ingredient!
Tags: Budget, Kevin Rudd, Labor, Stimulus
