Other comments are blaming the Liberals, but the reality is if you are an effective leader trying to create a huge infrastructure project that you care deeply about, you need to come up with a solution that will last through a change in government, with aligned economic and political contingencies. If you are just governing for fun then you do what Rudd did. It always lets you blame the next government though, as he is doing now.
It's no secret that our political systems have problems, with this sort of thing. Factionalism, corporate interests and other monority special interest, continuity.
Sometimes policies have a chance of being coherent, usually through a small group of "authors" that have a clear idea of what they want to do. This is generally when a governing party gives free reign to some internal group.
The other option is bipartisan commitees & a "wide consulatation approach". This is how the vast majority of australian laws get made. There's an alarm-like flashing oof lights (red or green) in parliament when an attempt is made to do things otherwise (a split).
Anyways, the standard process means compromise. Specifically, comromise between all "relevant" participants. The two big parties, obviously. Several interested factions within those parties, and various corporate interests usually represented by specific industry chambers of commerce or similar. Everyone needs to get something.
Coherence and compromise just don't go together, not when it comes to policy/legislation.
Look at the americans. They've been fiddling with health policy for a decade. As far as I can tell, the more attention the issue gets, the worse it gets.
Anyway, apart from being "pro-internet" labour never really had a solid agenda. The parliamentary end of this sausage factory was basically "the internet is important!!" vs "why spend 100bn on streaming cat vids!?). The hyenas and crows did the rest.
Perfectly rightfully.
> if you are an effective leader trying to create a huge infrastructure project that you care deeply about, you need to come up with a solution that will last through a change in government, with aligned economic and political contingencies.
On the other hand, the opposition can either try to work with or lie your ass off and sabotage everything, the latter being exactly what the liberals did with the NBN.
Since the mid-90s the government has imposed many regulations for control that has impeded much of the free market progress for network infrastructure. Those regulations coupled with needed external transit installations have not helped. For a long period of time the government would pick and choose companies based on their ideals rather than their talent. This has hindered progress from both sides of the fence by liberal and conservative administrations.
I ran a semi successful ISP and consulting company for a decade in the US and I have always enjoyed the tiering system we setup vs other country Infrastructures. It wasn't until recently when the FCC gained control that states started to use the new regulation power to hinder progress. I am still on the fence about the whole thing because the exploitation has not been bad in my area but the horror stores I have heard in other states make me sad. Hopefully it will get back to normal.