[AusNOG] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/nbn-tender-halted-over-price-gouging/story-e6frgakx-1226031765304

[Jones, Rick]

In light of the fact that it IS April 1st, I'd thought I'd add my own commentary.

Surprise! Surprise! that the vendors elected to try and reap the rewards of working on a $50bn project.  What else did we expect?

The Government should look at this from a much broader perspective.  Firstly, the cost of labour is high, due mostly to the resources boom.  This is easily fixed.  Take a note from the Paul Keating playbook and create "the recession that the NBN had to have".  This will drive labour costs lower and incentivise people to accept the work.  "Thank God we have a job!".   A little bit of spin-doctoring and the Government can claim that NBN not only delivers real value, but has now created jobs in a tough economic environment.  Two wins for the price of one.

As soon as the contracts are locked in, the Treasurer (with the broad support of the PM of course) can "fix" the recession and restore the country to economic prosperity.  Win #3 - great economic management.

The people that applied for the jobs during the recession, will of course move on to other endeavours for a greater rate of pay, so they will be OK.  The companies that can no longer replace them at the required price will default and the NBN can take them over - Win #4 - NBN saves many Australian businesses from failure.  They hire the same people back at inflated prices (LOOK!  We did it again - saved more jobs), but that is OK because they now get to keep the 30-40% margin for themselves.

Thus they get the people at the right rate!! (Win #5 - we transform an industry to support us).

Easily fixed really.

Now, if Senator Conroy is reading this, please do not take it seriously, otherwise I'll have to leave the country.

Happy April Fool's Day everyone.

Rick

From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Peter Childs
Sent: Friday, 1 April 2011 12:07 PM
To: David Mitchell
Cc: <ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/nbn-tender-halted-over-price-gouging/story-e6frgakx-1226031765304


On 01/04/2011, at 10:51 AM, David Mitchell wrote:

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/nbn-co-ditches-gouging-bidders-20110331-1cngl.html

"NBN Co made the move because it believed the bidders were trying to
gouge excessive profits from the taxpayer-backed project, blaming rising
labour costs from the resources boom as a convenient excuse."

Surely we could use some components of the 'Pacific Solution' to maximise on the labour available in detention facilities to dig ditches and pull fibre for the NBN ... after a certain number of kilometres/splices we will consider refugee/skilled-entry status etc...

Some aspects of Work-for-the-Dole could be remodelled as 'Dig-for-the-Dole'.

(PS.  It is the 1st, so I'm assuming most of the commentary on this is in line with this)


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