First common mistake: Yes, Australia is geographically huge. No, it is not sparce. it is a highly urbanized economy in terms of geographic concentration of the population. Therefore, the oft-quoted extreme expense "oh, its so much more expensive to do it in OZ compared to ..." is bullshit: its not. There are of course some very expensive locations to service, but thats a USO problem. Overall, the cost of deployment of the CAN is within scale of any other urban economy. Higher than Singapore? Sure. But, comparable per head of population to NZ.

Second common mistake: The argument which led to the MTM replacing FTTP was not about technology. It was about the cost of capital works, and the economic model of recovery. Labor was stupid enough to float a mixed-economy pluralist argument hinting at a future independent non-utility model with zero cost (long term) to the government. This hung them because it allowed the Liberals to go hard on cost recovery and privatization. If the intent had been to reserve a national utility function in layers 1 and 2, and promote competition above this, we'd be in a different conversation.

That conversation was about structural separation of the former monopoly Telco. It was quashed by Labor, in a stupid reactive move. It was floated, and the banking sector indicated a preference. Reactively the union movement and Labor party moved to reject it: if the banks wanted it, it must be bad.

Talk about a huge missed opportunity.

The NZ model, by comparison is gold: structural separation. Crown holdings for the fiber. A pot of money, re-circulating to deploy to the cities, each region re-fills the pot to move to the next town. Far simpler. And.. fibre to (most) homes.