Andrew Robb: Maestro of Bullshit

There’s no sign of the Coalition’s NBN smear campaign slowing down, with their latest effort being a disgusting attempt to use the Queensland floods as a tool to stop the network that cost them the last election, and could well cost them the next one.

My guess is that Abbott and the Parties of No are beginning to realise that by the 2013 federal election, the NBN will be well underway and employing tens-of-thousands of Australians. Should they go to an election with a policy that will result in the dismissal of 20-30,000 people, it could cause some problems! So better to nip it in the bud before it’s too late!

In response to Finance Minister Penny Wong’s explanation as to why NBN funding couldn’t simply be diverted to flood relief, shadow Minister Andrew Robb issued a response which was so full of bullshit that he could sell it as fertiliser:

Penny Wong’s absurd denials that the billions to be borrowed for the NBN will not affect the budget bottom line and could not be redirected to flood recovery efforts demonstrate that she is disingenuous, out of her depth or both.

For the benefit of the new Finance Minister here are the facts about the NBN.

If the following ‘answers’ are Robb’s idea of facts, then Australian politics is a scarier place than I ever imagined. He’s either totally incompetent or the most accomplished bullshit artist in Australian history. And that’s a big statement!

Question: Where will Penny Wong get the at least $27.5 billion that the NBN Co requires in government equity?

Answer: She will have to borrow it.

Question: Is the money interest free?

Answer: Of course it’s not. Treasury conservatively assumed an interest rate of 4.9 per cent.

Note the weasel words in there. “Treasury conservatively assumed”. Let me translate to what he wants the reader to see: “Those moronic stooges at Treasury took a rough guess and think it will be at least 4.9%”.

Bullshit. Treasury are well aware of the Australian Long Term Bond rates, which is how the NBN will be funded. If Robb isn’t, then maybe he can speak to his broker.

Question: Do the interest repayments hit the Budget bottom line?

Answer: They certainly do and could amount up to $2.4 billion alone by 2013-14.

Now that one redefines bullshit!

$2.4bn by 2013/14???? I don’t know what planet Andrew Robb is on, but it’s not Earth. Even if every cent of the Government’s $27bn is invested in NBN Co by 2013/14 (which it won’t be), the Government Bond Rate would have to increase by 100% in two years for Robb’s figures to be accurate. It’s like saying NASA could achieve faster-than-light travel by 2013!

Robb also conveniently leaves out the fact that NBN will have a higher return than the bond rate. In other words, it will earn more than the interest charges.

Question: Could the money she will borrow for the NBN be redirected to assist the flood reconstruction effort?


Answer: Of course it could. And if it was via public/private partnerships it would remain off budget.

More bullshit. You can’t redirect the NBN debt to flood relief. Or more accurately, there’s no point doing so. The NBN will earn a positive return. That is, the income from it will be more than the interest charges on the debt that’s funding it.

As for the next paragraph…What is this moron thinking? “Keep it off-budget via public-private partnerships”? The NBN is off-budget because it makes a positive return. If Robb can explain how the rebuilding of publicly-owned infrastructure by private industry can make a positive return to Government (without imposing a toll), then I’ll eat my Akubra.

Is Robb just lying, or does he seriously not have any comprehension of finance? Either way it’s a worry that this guy could one day be a Government minister.

Question: Could the government reschedule the NBN construction timetable?


Answer: Yes. In the same way it has brought forward plans to build NBN satellites by five years in response to political pressure.

Yes, the NBN could be delayed. It just wouldn’t make any difference to the flood rebuild.

While the timetable for satellite construction is totally irrelevant to the floods, it’s worth noting that Robb is inaccurate in his claim that the satellite build was brought forward by 5 years, further demonstrating his dishonesty and incompetence on the NBN topic. The satellites are scheduled for launch in 2015, which is about 2 years earlier than first planned. What has been advanced by 5 years is that NBN Co will begin offering a temporary satellite service using existing satellites until their own can be launched. So  Robb is either incompetent, in that he apparently didn’t know the difference between building and operating satellites. Or he’s just being dishonest in simply making incorrect claims.

Question: Will the NBN generate income over time to taxpayers?


Answer: Nobody knows, because the government refuses to subject it to a cost-benefit analysis.

Bullshit meter off the scale. As a finance spokesman, Robb is aware that a CBA is most certainly not required to predict a return or not. Such a claim is beyond absurd. When international accounting firm KPMG studied the NBN, they found that not only would it generate a return, but that the fibre component could be increased beyond the proposed 90% coverage to 93%, and it would still earn a return of 7%pa.

Robb is just using this question to continue the party line that a CBA can predict as-yet unknown benefits. Thank God Robb wasn’t running the show when the telephone was proposed, or we’d still be using smoke signals!

After reading the above collection of absolute bullshit, I truly doubt that Andrew Robb can lie straight in bed. Considering the plethora of embarrassing gaffs he made during a pre-election press conference, I wonder how long the party will keep this moron on the front bench.

If you can't build it, smear it

It’s become quite clear which tactics the Liberal-National Coalition will be using to stop Australia’s National Broadband Network. In the absence of any realistic alternative plan or a technical argument against the NBN, they have stooped to what every politician knows best – The smear campaign.

It began back in August when outspoken Liberal pollie, Andrew Robb, described the NBN Company’s staff as “talentless”, and the organisation “incapable of attracting quality staff”. A cheap, ill-informed slur which is typical of Robb, who has a habit of resorting to FUD when he can’t find any facts to support his agenda. It probably backfired though, given that just about every IT news site (and even a few mainstream media publications) quickly ridiculed his statements, pointing to the fact that the NBN’s staff were in fact highly qualified and respected industry heavyweights.

The NBN Co’s Kevin Brown noted that more than half of NBN’s top 100 staff were senior veterans of global telecommunication companies. Over 50% held two university degrees and there were also 4 doctorates and 27 engineers amongst the management team.

Even NBN opponents jumped to their defence, with Pipe Networks founder Bevan Slattery describing NBN Co as a “brains trust” who have “really got their you-know-what together”.

Fast-forward to December 2010, and the Coalition belatedly becomes aware of bribery charges levelled against a few Alcatel-Lucent subsidiaries between 2001 and 2006. I’ll bet Abbott & Co are kicking themselves that they didn’t pick this up when Alcatel announced it (along with the dismissal of those responsible) in their 2008 annual report! What finally tipped them off was the United States SEC announcing the fines of $137M that Alcatel-Lucent would pay for the crimes.

Why was this so exciting for Abbott, Turnbull and Robb? Because the NBN’s acclaimed CEO, Michael Quigley and their CFO, Jean-Pascal Beaufret both held senior positions at Alcatel during the period of the offences. The fact they had nothing to do with the rogue actions of a couple of morons working for company subsidiaries didn’t dent the Libs’ enthusiasm one little bit. The fact that the SEC were so convinced of their innocence that they didn’t even seek to interview the pair mattered even less. Like sharks circling a hapless swimmer, Turnbull and Robb smelt blood and saw a chance to finally sink their teeth into the project that cost them the 2010 federal election.

The initial attack came from Malcolm Turnbull, but he became suddenly silent and was quickly replaced by Robb. A curious move, considering that opposing the NBN is Turnbull’s responsibility. What could have caused such a rapid and unexpected withdrawal?

And then the answer came, courtesy of the #nbn tag twitter stream. Turns out that during Turnbull’s 3-year position as a global Partner at the massive investment bank Goldman-Sachs, the company broke numerous laws relating to insider trading, laddering and other financial fraud. Resulting in numerous prosecutions (and fines totalling hundreds of millions of dollars) from…. wait for it… the SEC! (Links here and here and here and here) I guess Malcolm found it just a tiny bit hypocritical to attack Quigley when he was in an almost identical position himself, and so left Robb to do the dirty work.

And dirty it was. Of course there were the expected inferences that Quigley must have known what was going on (after all, we all know that the 2IC of every major corporation knows everything that his 100,000 employees are up to). However, there were also Robb’s outright lies, like telling a couple of radio audiences that Alcatel had been made the “sole supplier” of telco equipment to NBN Co. Apparently Robb’s first rule when smearing is “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”. The fact is that NBN equipment contracts have gone to several providers, including contracts to Alcatel-Lucent’s biggest rivals, Nokia-Siemens (A$400Million) and Cisco Systems (A$10Million).

Interestingly, Opposition leader Tony Abbott didn’t mind jumping on the bandwagon, despite facing a bribery scandal of his own. Worse, one of Abbott’s own MPs has tried to secure a $12million kickback for brokering a coal deal in Queensland. One wonders why Abbott considers Quicgley responsible for the corrupt conduct of a subsidiary employee, but doesn’t consider himself responsible for the corrupt actions of a senior Liberal MP whom he personally endorsed?

No doubt we can look forward to at least a couple more years of lies, smear and FUD from the technological incompetents at the Coalition, who are becoming increasingly confused about how to oppose the almost universally-wanted NBN. The only question is: Will they finally wake up and let NBN Co get on with it? Or will the coalition broadband policy comprise a piece of string and a couple of tin cans long after the rest of the world has left us in the dust?