Census 2016. Why the questions will be answers in themselves

They'll show how we're changing

You can tell a lot about a nation from its census - not only from the answers but also from the questions asked. Next census for the first time the Bureau of Statistics wants to ask about our second houses, and even our third ones.

“In the old days we all probably had a single house we lived in,” says census data director Jenny Telford. “But now many people have many places they call home. Children live in two houses in shared custody, workers fly in and fly out, many or us have holiday homes.”

The ABS isn’t sure how to word the new question - whether to ask whether there is another place we regard as home, or whether to ask whether there is another address we rest our heads so many nights a month. It’s begun a period of consultation that will last until May.

In 2016 it also wants to ask how we earn our money. Ever since 1911 the census has merely wanted to know how much we earned, on the safe assumption we made it from work. But these days Australians are increasingly earning money from investments and many live on government benefits. The ABS hopes a new question asking how we get our income will give it a handle on what type of people are beneficiaries and what type are investors. Ms Telford says eventually the form might ask us to tick a box to allow the Tax Office to hand over data that will detail dollar for dollar where our income comes from.

The Bureau also wants to ask the sort of questions a society asks when it gets old - who suffers from long-term health problems and where they live.

It also wants to change questions that are being rendered meaningless. "Asking whether your dwelling was connected to the internet made perfect sense when we first did it in 2001,” says Ms Telford... “But now people has iPads, multiple means of connecting to the internet. Our current question doesn’t capture the full picture. We need to work out what it is we want to know. Do we want to know about fixed connections, or about how much people are connecting and what they are doing whiel connected?”

Even the means of asking the questions will offer a window into changing times. The ABS will dispense with the army of 43,000 census collectors, posting letters with login details instead. “We are finding Australians increasingly want to interact with us online, Ms Telford says. “They would prefer not to have us knock at their door. At some homes we can’t get to the front door.”

In today's Canberra Times and Age


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There's an NBN information kit. Turnbull opens the box.

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Build the NBN if you must, but please don't destroy working assets

Wednesday column

The Optus high speed cable internet network is a national asset. Comprising 25,000 kilometres of coaxial cable strung across 550,000 poles in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane supported by 7000 kilometres of fibre the provided Telstra with its first genuine competition, putting its own wires direct into half a million homes.

Telstra fought back with FoxTel, Optus got burnt and has probably never recovered the cost of stringing the cables. But from an economic point of view what’s important is that the asset exists. Its costs have been sunk. What Optus has now is an asset that costs relatively little to operate and can deliver peak download speeds of 100 Mbps - far faster anything on Telstra’s copper wires.

Right now it has 496,000 customers. It is within connecting distance of another one million meaning that for very little cost Optus or a buyer of the network could provide a very fast very cheap internet service to as many as 1.4 million households - a service far faster than ADSL.

Only a vandal would destroy such an asset. Only a seriously confused regulator would allow it happen.

NBN Co has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to let it pay Optus a reported $800 million to shut the network down. The only precedent for the destruction of infrastructure on such a massive scale is the $4 billion NBN Co is to pay Telstra to rip out its copper network, transfer its customers to the national broadband network and remove the internet from the cables it uses to deliver FoxTel.

In no other industry would the ACCC approve such an agreement not to compete. In no other industry would it countenance a bribe to decommission working infrastructure.

Mid last year it approved the Telstra deal. This week it published a draft decision approving the Optus deal.

In terms of national assets the Optus decision is arguably worse than the Telstra decision...
Telstra will decommission its copper phone lines street by street as the NBN cables are switched on. While there will be a loss of competition, copper probably isn’t able to compete with fibre over the long-term. By contrast the Telstra and Optus coaxial cables are as good as new. They were strung up in the last half of the 1990s. They are already fast and capable of being made faster. They cost almost nothing to maintain. They are something that should not be destroyed wantonly.

The Telstra coaxial cables won’t be. It has only agreed to disconnect the internet from them. It could put it back as soon as changed legal or political circumstances allow. The Optus coaxial cables are scheduled for destruction. The ACCC’s decision will have physical consequences. It should not be taken lightly.

And yet the ACCC gives every indication that its decision could have gone either way. It was “finely balanced”, according to chairman Rod Sims in Monday’s statement.

Its decision to approve the agreement was based on weighing carefully “clear public benefits” against “a potentially large but less clear detriment”.

The main “clear benefit” is odd. The Commission says the agreement will “avoid the cost of operating the Optus network to provide a service the NBN is also able to provide”. Would we apply it elsewhere? Should Virgin shut down its airline network to avoid the cost of operating a service Qantas is also able to provide? Should Woolworths shut down its network to avoid the cost of operating a service Woolworths is also able to provide? Of course they shouldn’t. We normally value competition.

Some will argue that wiring up houses is different. Frontier Economics, the consultant used by Optus in its submission to the ACCC says fixed broadband services are a natural monopoly - they shouldn’t be provided twice. But Optus cable network is already in place. It costs next to nothing to keep it in place. It is NBN Co which is planning to duplicate it. Given its plans and the rate at which it is duplicating infrastructure right now, its complaint against “inefficient infrastructure duplication” is simply strange.

In truth is competition that worries NBN Co, not inefficiency. It is paying $800 million to remove a competitor, not out of a public concern about inefficiency.

With its last big fixed line competitor out of the way the only market restraint on its prices and quality of service will be wireless internet, and it’s on to that as well.

The Optus agreement given a preliminary tick by the ACCC prevents Optus from advertising wireless data services within the area served by its existing cables in a way which is “expressly critical of or makes any express adverse statement about the performance or functionality of the NBN where such a statement is misleading or deceptive or involves the making of a false or misleading representation in contravention of the Australian consumer law”.

The ACCC waived it through because it essentially meaningless, requiring Optus to do no more than obey the law. But it indicates how deeply concerned NBN Co is at the prospect of competition, or as it puts it “cherry picking”. Competition would force it to provide value, and its national pricing structure would force it to provide it to all Australians. Its $36 billion cost base won’t allow it. That’s why it needs to destroy perfectly good working infrastructure. It’s why I think the ACCC needs to think again.

In today's Sydney Morning Herald and Age



DEPRESSING UPDATE:

ACCC Authorises NBN CO Optus HFC Subscriber Agreement


STEPHEN KING'S WELL-JUDGED ASSESSMENT:

"Optus is being paid $800m to shut down a tax-avoidance scheme"

The ACCC has authorised the NBN-Optus deal. So where do the public benefits come from? As background, remember that the ACCC can only authorise an otherwise anticompetitive agreement if the public benefits outweigh the public detriments. I have previously expressed my skepticism about this.

So where are the benefits? The Box 1 on page 27 of the decision has the answer. And it illustrates the problem of the hidden cross subsidies built into the NBN.

Suppose that the cost of providing broadband services to Optus’ broadband customers is lower on the NBN (formally, incremental costs are lower) but for some reason the NBN charges Optus (and other broadband retailers) a wholesale price that exceeds Optus’ own incremental cost. Then, in the retail marketplace, Optus will undercut the NBN and keep its customers despite it being cheaper to service them on the NBN. Hence, the customers must be forced to the NBN to achieve the incremental cost savings (albeit at the cost of creating an allocative loss as the end users face higher prices).

So the question is – why is the NBN charging a wholesale price that is so high that it can be undercut by an inefficient competitor? The ACCC give two reasons. First, that the NBN must recover its fixed costs (which presumably Optus have written off). Unfortunately, if this argument is correct it undermines the benefit test. If, taking new investment into account, it is less costly to continue using the Optus network then the best outcome would be to not role out the NBN in areas covered by the Optus network. Of course, this is what the NBN is threatening, so taking the NBN at their word, if the fixed costs of the NBN rollout eliminates any incremental cost advantage, then the agreement should not be authorised and Optus can service that part of Australia. Of course the ACCC may not believe the NBNCo …

The second argument is more convincing. Excessive pricing by the NBN. It is cheaper to provide services to the Optus customers using the NBN but the wholesale prices that the NBN will charge are so over inflated that this cost gain will be more than eaten up by the NBN monopoly pricing in the Optus service regions. In this case, the Optus customers must be forced onto the NBN to save the relevant costs, albeit to then be exploited by the NBN monopoly pricing.

Now normally the ACCC would roll around the floor laughing if someone put this sort of argument to them. However, in the case of the NBN, monopoly pricing in city areas is necessary to create a uniform national price. The city will subsidise the bush. So the monopoly pricing is really just a hidden tax and, of course, the customers must be forced to pay this tax.

So in brief the ACCC has authorised the NBN-Optus deal because (a) it believes that the cost of servicing the Optus customers is cheaper on the NBN and (b) it can’t be left to the market to sort this out because the NBN prices are so inflated by a hidden tax that the Optus customers would probably stay with Optus.

Hmmm. So Optus is being paid $800m to shut down a tax-avoidance scheme?

Well, that is what happens when you get bad policy. I have no trouble with a uniform national broadband price. But have the NBN set prices to reflect cost. And then provide a transparent subsidy to those consumers who the government believes should receive a lower price. Don’t hide the tax – it just leads to problems like that faced by the ACCC.


RELATED READING: Why the ACCC should NOT authorise the NBN-Optus arrangement
Former ACCC Commissioner Stephen King



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Announce it, hope for the best. The NBN-style weakness at the heart of Labor decision making

It might be popular now, but Labor’s $36 billion National Broadband Network is shaping up to be a financial disaster that will set back Labor’s image decades rebranding it the party of waste and extravagance.

That’s the view of Percy Allan, president of the Australian Institute of Public Administration and a former head of the NSW Treasury under premiers Wran, Greiner and Fahey.

Releasing a report card on “Public Policy Drift” he told the Herald that while Kevin Rudd came to office in 2007 promising “evidence-based” decision-making, he never spelled out what the term meant.

“True evidence-based decision making requires consultation. Kevin’s style was to lock himself in a cave and put in all the evidence and then emerge as Moses from the mountain with the tablets to tell the people what they would get.”

The NBN is a case in point.

“It would have been quite possible to say ahead of the election ‘we are going to ensure everybody can have an opportunity to be hooked up to the internet at good speeds, and when we get into power we are going to put out a green paper on the options for doing that and we are going to get feedback and make a choice.”

“That choice might be to spend $36 billion ripping out copper wire and disconnection Foxtel cables and starting afresh, which is the proposition we are facing... But had they examined the need, examined options and consulted they might have discovered cheaper ways to fill the need.”

“If a lower than expected proportion of people end up subscribing to it because they don’t want to pay Rolls Royce prices for a Rolls Royce service this thing is going to be a financial disaster - watch public opinion then.”

From opposition Labor would be tarred as a party of waste.

“It already has an image problem from the Whitlam years. If this thing goes under, the Liberal National party will be able to say here’s just another example of waste and extravagance by Labor, the Labor brand.”

“It may not take that long to backfire. When ten per cent of it is rolled out we will have a good idea of the take-up rate.”

The Institute asked management consultants Howard Partners to examine 18 high-profile Commonwealth projects for the quality of decision making making that brought them about. If finds 10 deficient - the alcopops tax, Building the Education Revolution, the NBN, the Darwin to Alice Springs railway, FuelWatch, the green car innovation fund, the green loans program, the home insulation scheme, Grocery Watch and the set top boxes for pensioners program.

Passing the test were the national disability insurance scheme, the minerals resource rent tax, and the emissions trading scheme.

The Institute wants all projects worth more than $100 million be subject to a ten-step process for establishing a business case.

Instead Mr Allan says politicians like to “decide things things in secrecy, call a dramatic press conference, get the front page splash and have people say - boy they’re smart, they got that right.”

“We find out later they haven’t got it right,” he adds.

In today's Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald and Age


Ten Criteria for a Public Policy Business Case

1. Establish Need: Identify a demonstrable need for the policy, based on hard
evidence and consultation with all the stakeholders involved, particularly
interest groups who will be affected. (‘Hard evidence’ in this context means
both quantifying tangible and intangible knowledge, for instance the actual
condition of a road as well as people’s view of that condition so as to identify
any perception gaps).

2. Set Objectives: Outline the public interest parameters of the proposed policy
and clearly establish its objectives. For example interpreting public interest as
‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ or ‘helping those who can’t help
themselves’.

3. Identify Options: Identify alternative approaches to the design of the policy,
preferably with international comparisons where feasible. Engage in realistic
costings of key alternative approaches.

4. Consider Mechanisms: Consider implementation choices along a full spectrum
from incentives to coercion.

5. Brainstorm Alternatives: Consider the pros and cons of each option and
mechanism. Subject all key alternatives to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. For
major policy initiatives (over $100 million), require a Productivity Commission
analysis.

6. Design Pathway: Develop a complete policy design framework including
principles, goals, delivery mechanisms, program or project management
structure, the implementation process and phases, performance measures,
ongoing evaluation mechanisms and reporting requirements, oversight and
audit arrangements, and a review process ideally with a sunset clause.

7. Consult Further: Undertake further consultation with key affected stakeholders
of the policy initiative.

8. Publish Proposals: Produce a Green and then a White paper for public
feedback and final consultation purposes and to explain complex issues and
processes.

9. Introduce Legislation: Develop legislation and allow for comprehensive
parliamentary debate especially in committee, and also intergovernmental
discussion where necessary.

10. Communicate Decision: Design and implement a clear, simple, and
inexpensive communication strategy


Fail

• Building the Education Revolution
• NBN - National Broadband Network
• Darwin to Alice Springs Railway
• FuelWatch
• Green Car Innovation Fund
• Green Loans Program
• Home Insulation
• Grocery Watch
• Set Top Boxes for pensioners

Pass

• Higher Education – Transforming Australia’s Higher Education System
• Innovation – Powering Ideas: An Innovation Agenda for the 21st Century
• Environment – Caring for our Country
• Taxation – The Resources Super Profits Tax
• Water – The Murray Darling Basin Plan
• Energy – Emissions Trading and Carbon Tax
• Disability – National Disability Strategy 2010-2020
• Regional Development – Regional Development Australia



IPAA Policy Paper - Public Policy



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Read this. The wireless paper that changes everything.

Just occasionally something comes along that makes the previously "impossible" suddenly possible.

Noise-cancelling headphones are one example.

"Distributed-Input-Distributed-Output (DIDO) wireless technology is a breakthrough approach that allows each wireless user to use the full data rate of shared spectrum simultaneously with all other users, by eliminating interference between users sharing the same spectrum...

The potential of DIDO is to have unlimited number of simultaneous users, all streaming high-definition video, utilizing the same spectrum that a single user would use with conventional wireless technology, with no degradation in performance, no dead zones, no interference between users, and no reduction in data rate as more users are added...

The latency would be so low and the wireless reliability so high, it would be creating a ubiquitous entertainment and computing resource that is available wirelessly everywhere to any device. User devices would not even require local computing resources because they’d always be connected everywhere (even in rural areas or on airplanes)..."


The NBN would be a waste of space, but so would so much more...

Distributed Input Distributed Output Wireless Technology



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Extraordinary. We now have more active mobile phone connections than people

Paul Budde:

Australia’s $17bn mobile industry hits 125% penetration

There are around six million more mobile subscribers than people in Australia. As smartphone uptake increases growth is likely to continue in the foreseeable future, even though subscriber penetration rates are about 125% of the population.

Growth is being driven by population increases and a rise in the number of people using two mobile subscriptions – one for personal use and one for business use. Australian operators are likely to have more than 28 million mobile subscribers by late 2011 as more and more users migrate to a mobile-only environment. Telstra is still the market leader, with more than eleven million subscribers; Optus has around nine million subscribers; and VHA still has roughly seven million subscribers.

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NBNCo. Don't say you weren't warned.

Wednesday column

You know a business case is hopeless when the company that’s drawn it up has to bribe its competitors not to compete against it.

The NBNCo business case has a tenuous relationship with reality.

The publicly-released corporate plan detailing how the company will spend $27 billion of public money and hit its targets reads like a cry for help, and also an exercise in laying down a paper-trail so its executives can say “we told you so” when their targets are nowhere near met.

Optus cable passes 1.4 million homes in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Fast already, it is capable of being upgraded to a top speed of 240 megabits per second, far faster than anyone needs for conceivable uses; way faster than NBNCo’s entry level speed of 12 Mbps and on the way to the maximum NBNCo speed of 1000 Mbps.

Optus was in the process of upgrading its cable from 30 to 80 Mbps. Instead it will now “decommission” it in return for payments from NBNCo worth $800 million.

Telstra is already offering 100 Mbps on its Foxtel cables in Melbourne. As a condition of taking $9 billion from NBNCo over time it will “disconnect” its broadband customers from the cable although in its case it will continue to use it to deliver pay TV.

These ‘Do Not Compete’ agreements are not mere icing on the cake, enhancing a business model that already makes sense - they are necessary for the business model to make sense. NBNCo will never make a return on the cost of its capital or meet its customer targets if it faces competition. Its corporate plan says so, at point 1: “The plan assumes effective regulatory protection to prevent opportunistic cherry picking... the viability of the project is dependent upon this protection.”

Cherry picking means competing for good customers on price.

And cherry picking is impossible to prevent...

One of the reasons we don’t have a very fast train between Sydney and Melbourne is because as soon as the money was spent the airlines would discount the flights that competed with it to cream off its valuable customers.

In the case of the National Broadband Network as soon as it is built someone will come along and offer something cheaper to its most valuable city customers. The corporate plan tries to ensure against this, noting wistfully that “the government will consider the introduction of a levy, if necessary to prevent opportunistic cherry picking”.

The deal with Telstra requires Australia’s biggest supplier of wireless broadband to “not promote wireless services as a substitute for fibre based services for 20 years.”

Even if Telstra complied, and it has already indicated it won’t let the clause prevent it promoting wireless broadband, there’s nothing to stop a firm which hasn’t signed an agreement with NBNCo aggressively promoting a cheaper and more convenient product.

In the OECD fixed broadband connections are growing at 6 per cent per year; wireless connections are growing at 10 per cent per six months. South Korea, said to show the way for Australia because of its lightening-fast fibre to the home connections, has just 34 fibre or cable connections per 100 residents. It has 90 such wireless connections.

To some extent the new Korean figures are good for NBNCo - they show people buy wireless connections in addition to fixed lines. To a larger extent they are bad news. They suggest that even with fast fixed broadband on offer an awful lot of households forsake it for a still-fast, cheaper and more convenient alternative.

Research reported in NBNCo’s corporate plan finds that in Australia around 1 in 3 wireless broadband users have no fixed lines.

Acknowledging there is no real need for the very fast speeds it will be offering the plan says “the main limiting factor in the early years of the NBN will be the availability of applications that require high bandwidth”.

Further down the track it is expecting applications such as remote hosting and 3D imaging to become mainstream, pushing bandwidth demand towards 100 Mbps - which Telstra cable already provides. In the long-term it says ultra high definition video will require speeds of more than 250 Mbps - which would be encouraging had not Australian viewers already voted with their remotes and as good as closed down Australian HD TV broadcasts, preferring instead reruns of sixties and seventies sitcoms on low-definition channels such as GEM and 7Mate.

It’s a shaky foundation on which to build a business case.

Just as it will remain legal for anyone to offer a cheaper and lower-bandwith product competing with NBNCo, despite the NBNCo’s wishes, it will also be remain legal for large CBD-based organisations to take their high-bandwidth traffic “off-grid”. Why pay NBNCo a large sum to communicate internally when you can do it yourself for a fraction of the cost?

As the customers NBNCo is counting on are leached away it will have to continue to service what will eventually be $50 billion of capital and debt.

Its corporate plan says it won’t be to stay ahead servicing the debt. Its cost of capital will be 10 per cent, its internal rate of return will be 7.04 per cent.

And that’s assuming no corporate customers leach away to wireless, assuming the bleed to wireless-only households stops at 16.4 per cent, assuming no non-wireless competition, assuming Australians take up ultra high definition television in a way they have shown no inclination to, assuming it isn’t required by the government to deploy the superior single rather than split fibre technology the government will force it to test... in short, assuming every one of its judgement calls turns out right.

Including population growth. The NBNCo plan assumes housing growth of 177,000 premises per year to 2025. Downwardly-revised ABS projections released last week have just 151,000 households per year added over the coming two decades.

Maybe this will come right too. More likely, NBNCo will look sick. Those of us who have flicked through its corporate plan can’t say we weren’t warned.

Published in today's SMH and Age


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Once we knew maths. A trainer's lament.

New apprentices are struggling to pass tests they would have breezed through a decade ago, with skills in maths and physics so poor as to endanger plans for the National Broadband Network according to an industry skills council.

The Electro-Communications and Energy Utilities Industry Skills Council has been testing new apprentices on their starting skills for ten years.

Chief executive Bob Taylor said in the early tests they were not allowed to use a calculator and got an average score of 70 per cent. These says, with calculators permitted after pressure from schools, the average result if 58 per cent.

“These are the sort of things they should know after Year 10, but proper maths is no longer compulsory up to Year 10,” Mr Taylor said.

The questions deal with long division, algebra, trigonometry and units of electrical measurement.

“I have spoken to principals across Australia. Their general response is that it is our problem - we have to lower our expectations... They say they are providing a well-rounded curriculum. But we are being presented with Year 12 graduates unable to complete apprenticeships.”

“In other industries apprentices might get away with having studied vegiemaths as they call it in school, but vegiemaths doesn’t cut the mustard with us.”

Apprenticeships, unlike university courses are open to anyone sponsored by an employer.

“If for example I am an electrician and my next door neighbour’s son wants an apprenticeship, I can offer him a job and the vocational training authority is obliged to take him on, it has no choice.”

“When people drop out of apprenticehips because they can’t do the physics and maths, our system gets blamed, but it is the school system that is no longer doing what it did”

In order to meet the explosion of demand expected from the NBN the council has begun intensive remedial maths and physics courses lasting 8 to 12 months to bring would-be apprentices up to entry level.

“The cost will be paid by the contractor and ultimately passed on to NBNCo,” Mr Taylor said.

NBNCo wrote to 14 contracting firms last week them telling them that after five months and four rounds of tenders the process had been "suspended" indefinitely because all were overpriced.

Communications Minister Steven Conroy said yesterday although he hadn’t been briefed on the decision it was important the NBN get “value for money”

Mr Taylor said it was most unlikely the construction process would achieve the government’s stated aim of employing locals in the regions the NBN went through.

“You can’t pull somebody out of a pub and get them to build the NBN. They won’t know enough to begin. You are dealing with electricity, you need to understand it.”

Mr Taylor was speaking at the launch of a report prepared by eleven skills organisations No More Excuses, which contends seven million Australians have poor reading skills and eight million poor maths skills.

His remarks echo those of former Treasury secretary Ken Henry who lamented that schools had turned away from maths and physics, believing they “afford the luxury of the soft option”.

“Like the study of maths, physics and economics, policy discipline is hard,” he told teachers and students from his old high school. “But it is not too hard. Like those subjects, it is precisely as hard as it needs to be.”

Are standards slipping? Questions apprentices find hard

1. If F=(N x P)/120, what does N equal?
2. An electrician receives a discount of 6 per cent on an account for $1626. How much will the electrician pay?
3. A circular table top has a diameter of 10 metres. What is its circumference?
4. The units of heat and temperature are the same. True or false?
5. A capacitor stores energy in the form of a magnetic field. True or false?

ANSWERS: 1. N=(F x 120)/P 2. $1528.44 3. 31.42 metres 4. False 5. False
SOURCE: ELECTRO INDUSTRY SKILLS COUNCIL PRE APPRENTICESHIP TEST

Published in today's SMH and Age


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Want to fund flood reconstruction? Raid the NBN

The government should raid the pool of funds set aside for the National Broadband Network to fund flood reconstruction and abandon plans for a levy according to the Business Council in a pre-budget submission released this morning.

The Council says low value programs and infrastructure projects that have escaped cost-benefit analysis should be raided before considering an extra tax and singles out the NBN as the biggest example of a project "not demonstrated to provide a net benefit to the Australian economy".

With funds and labour tight as a result of the mining boom and stretched tighter by the floods and cyclone the Council says there is no longer any need to spend on infrastructure merely to stimulate the economy.

It wants Infrastructure Australia to run the ruler over all projects including the NBN to determine whether they are value for money...

The Council's submission echoes a report from the UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit that last week found Australia's proposed NBN to be the world's most expensive, offering relatively poor value for taxpayers' funds.

The submission calls for a permanent Natural Disaster Fund costing around $1 billion per year instead of the $80 million per year presently set aside for disasters.

It says the budget has become hostage to commodity prices and notes that if they slide 17 per cent from their present record highs government revenue will be hit $35 billion.

It submission calls on the government to set up a permanent Independent Commission of Budget Integrity to second-guess the work of Treasury, and offers up $10 million of business tax concessions per year to fund it.

The idea builds on the NSW Parliamentary Budget Office being set up to cost state election promises and the scheme costing proposed in Canberra by rural independents.

Releasing a study prepared for the Business Council by former senior Finance Department official Steven Bartos, BCA President Graham Bradley said external scrutiny would place greater pressure on Treasury and the government to get "value for money" and ensure programs were "sustainable over the long term".

The Independent Commission would take over the Intergenerational Report from Treasury and examine spending and benefits at present "off limits" such as those applying to owner occupied housing and private health insurance.

Published in today's SMH

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The Economist broadband survey is a disgrace

On a few grounds. The graph below understates the present target speed by a factor of 10 and is presented as if the size of public expenditure on the project meant something.

In terms of value for money it needn't matter whether the company that is building the thing is publicly or privately owned. What matters is that the project is not a dog.

We need a proper study.

The Productivity Commission should do it.


The Economist responds


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Let's celebrate. Telstra will be split!

Okay, so we apparently had to get an enormously expensive NBN to do it, but it is long overdue!


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Overselling fibre. Ouch.

The dishonesty has been breathtaking

The Australian government has been accused of misusing research to build the case for the National Broadband Network in an international study that finds the claimed benefits "grossly overstated".

Released in London ahead of today's Australian parliamentary vote on legislation to support the NBN the study finds evidence to support the claims made for fibre-to-the-home "surprising weak" and cites Australia as a key example.

"All else equal, faster is better," says the study, prepared by British telecommunications consultant Robert Kenny with Charles Kenny from the US Centre for Global Development. "But faster technologies don’t always triumph; think of passenger hovercraft, maglev trains, and suspersonic airliners. Concorde (if it hadn’t retired) would still be the fastest passenger aircraft today, having first flown in 1969. It turned out that the incremental benefits of speed to most customers were not worth the extra cost."

Korea, cited as the world leader in providing fibre to homes, enjoyed productivity growth of 7.6 per cent per capita per year in the decade before it began the program and 3.8 per cent in the decade since.

"Many factors played into the growth slowdown," the study says. "But maybe the massive increase in online gaming, facilitated by the broadband revolution, played a role – the South Korean government estimates that as many as two million of its citizens are addicted to online gaming"...

Worldwide, the authors find a weak negative relationship between fixed broadband rollout and economic growth.

In launching Australia's national broadband network in 2009 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said 78 per cent of the productivity gains in service businesses and 85 per cent in manufacturing flowed from information and communications technology.

The study traced this claim back to two papers from Australia's Communications Department referring to gains of 59-78 and 65-85 per cent.

"What was an upper bound in the research has become a mid-point in Rudd's speech," it says.

"But more importantly the research was looking at all technological factors. Thus the figures cited include the benefits of everything from biotechnology to the rise of containerized transport." Also the research cited by Mr Rudd covered the periods 1985-2001 and 1984-2002, "when the internet was in its infancy and broadband was pre-natal".

The paper says claims about the benefits of e-health, smart-grids and online education bear little relationship to fibre-to-the-home.

Italy, the world leader in smart electricity grids and uses copper wire and the mobile phone network to provide the minimal bandwidth needed. A key US study on potential of e-health was conducted using small cameras and dialup. The YouTube education library enables 300 universities to provide 65,000 videos in seven languages across 10 countries using existing technology.

Other claimed benefits such as a shift to home working or remote medical care would themselves entail big costs in addition to the broadband netword. Business and government applications such as remote medical imaging require connections only to major buildings rather than every home.

"Julia Gillard will now have to include the authors of this study along with Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens in her growing list of wreckers, Luddites and enemies of human progress," said Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. "Their paper underlines the need for a thorough cost benefit analysis of the NBN adventure."

A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the NBN would be fully scrutinised through regular Senate Estimates sessions and a Joint Parliamentary Committee which would report every six months.

Published in today's SMH and Age

Overselling Fibre

Executive Summary

overnments around the world are investing multiple billions to support the roll-out of fiber to enable high speed broadband. These subsidies are based on the premise that fiber to the home (FTTH) brings substantial externalities. It is argued that FTTH will support economic growth and is key to national competitiveness; that it will benefit education, healthcare, transportation and the electricity industry; and that it will be the TV platform of the future.

In this paper we argue that the evidence to support these views is surprisingly weak, and that there are several errors that are made repeatedly when making the case for FTTH. In particular:

- The evidence that basic broadband contributed to economic growth is decidedly mixed, and some of the studies reporting greater benefits have significant flaws

- Time and again, data that basic broadband brings certain benefits is used to justify investment in fiber – but the investment in fiber must be based on the incremental benefits of higher speed, since (in the developed world) there is already near universal basic broadband

- This error is compounded since other high speed broadband infrastructures (such as cable, and in time wireless) are often simply ignored when making the case for fiber

- Fibre is credited with bringing benefits that would in fact require major systems and social change in other parts of the economy, such as a widespread shift to home working, or remote medical care. In practice, these changes may never happen, and even if they do they will have significant additional cost beyond simply rolling out fibre

- Frequently business or government applications, such as remote medical imaging, are used to make the case for FTTH. But these applications require fiber to certain major buildings, not to entire residential neighborhoods (and these buildings often have high speed connections already)

We do not argue that there is no commercial case for rolling out fiber, nor do we argue that fiber brings no societal benefits. But we do believe that those benefits have been grossly overstated, and that therefore, particularly in a time of tight budgets, governments should think very hard indeed before spending billions to support fiber roll-out. A decade ago telcos wasted billions of shareholders’ money on telecoms infrastructure that was well ahead of its time – governments are now in danger of doing the same with taxpayers’ money.

Conclusion

Supporters of fiber subsidies note that the market is not rushing to install ubiquitous fiber networks – that telecoms companies are waiting until they better understand the business model and the extent of regulatory technical and operational risks. Governments should be wary of stepping where telcos fear to tread. These are, after all, firms that have happily rolled out access in war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq. Risk is hardly an alien concept to them. Perhaps their caution is well-founded.

If governments subsidise rollout enough, surely at some point the fibers rolled out will fill with data traffic. If consumers don’t have to pay more to get it, they’ll sign up to superfast, and companies will provide enough bandwidth-hogging applications to light the fibers. The question is, will the subsidies have been worthwhile? Will the applications be valuable enough to justify such a large investment? Given what we know to date, the answer appears to be no.

The argument for government subsidy at this point looks particularly threadbare because it is unclear the compelling market failure that the subsidy would overcome. Multiple streaming TV on demand is not a technology that creates ‘network externalities’ like a telephone or email account. I benefit from my ability to email or call you. I don’t benefit from your (little-exercised) ability to watch the Olympics in high-def while the kids are streaming Toy Story III in the basement.

Fiber advocates have claimed externalities such as improved healthcare or reduced electricity consumption. As we have seen, these benefits are speculative at best, and are frequently based on crediting fiber with benefits that in fact stem from basic broadband (or even dial-up).
When there is no apparent need to rush into investments in an unproven technology, the answer – especially in the midst of a global downturn – is to wait. Spend today’s stimulus dollars on something with a guaranteed social return (better public transport and pothole filling, as it might be).

If money must be spent on connectivity, spend on widening access to basic broadband; or coax those not yet online to take the broadband services already available to them; or invest in freeing up spectrum to meet the burgeoning demand for mobile data services (no agonising about what might be the killer-app there), or improve the capacity of the middle mile.

At the turn of the last decade, telecommunications companies threw away billions of dollars of private investment by spending on long-haul fiber networks that turned out to be far beyond what was needed for many years thereafter. At the turn of this decade, governments risk doing the same thing with tax-payer dollars by overinvesting in fiber in the access network. Hi-def TV on demand is no way to guarantee short term economic recovery or long term prosperity.

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Reserve to earth - First a cost-benefit analysis, then an NBN

Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens has risked the wrath of the government by calling for a "proper cost-benefit analysis" of the case for the national broadband network.

His intervention came as the Senate passed laws separating Telstra's retail and wholesale arms, allowing it to enter into a commercial agreement with NBN Co to take part in the multi billion dollar project.

While acknowledging the NBN was outside his "core area of expertise," Governor Stevens told a parliamentary hearing that "as a general proposition" there were some projects the private sector would not fund that still ought to be done.

"Whether this is one of them would be another question," he said. "But there ought to be, of course, a proper cost-benefit analysis of that case in those instances"...

Coalition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull seized on the statement saying the Governor would have to "brace himself for a verbal tirade from Julia Gillard."

"No doubt the Prime Minister will accuse the distinguished central banker of being a wrecker, a Luddite and determined to hold back the march of history, technology and human progress," he said.

"Not for the first time the Governor has cut through the political rhetoric and put his finger right on the core economic issue. Nobody disputes the merits of universal affordable broadband. The big question, the $50 billion question, is how you do it – or in Stevens’ words, how much you pay to do it and how efficiently it’s done."

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said he wasn't in dispute with the Governor.

"We agree with him that there should be scrutiny," he said.

The government had already undertaken a number of comprehensive analyses of the project and would release the NBN business plan next month.

Published in today's Age


Highlights from Chris Joye:

RBA LISTS SUPPLY-SIDE INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT PRIORTITIES—NO NBN

Ms O’DWYER—The RBA has repeatedly communicated its concern that the Australian economy is operating near full capacity, and given expected above-trend growth over the next one to two years faces the spectre of inflation pressures. In March of this year Assistant Governor Dr Philip Lowe gave a speech in which he argued that, for Australia, the main task is to expand the supply side of the economy so that demand can grow solidly without causing inflation to rise. Can you shed some light on the key supply side deficiencies that the RBA has identified and is concerned about?

Ms O’DWYER—If the private sector is not willing to fund some projects that would be related to this and 100 per cent of the equity risk is to be borne by the Australian taxpayer, can you explain what economists mean when they talk about the opportunity cost of capital?

Mr Stevens—The opportunity cost of capital would be, ‘I use it in area A; I can’t use it in area B,’ assuming that the quantity of capital available is finite. You have to be a little careful there, because there is a global supply of capital that is very big and the real question is how well we use it. This is really making very general points, but we are probably going to need more investment in electricity, are we not, over the years ahead, and water? Some of that is being done. There is a fair bit of urban infrastructure that would be desirable, as anybody who lives in any of our major east coast cities—or west coast, for that matter—would think. All of that has to be done, but we have to try to do that at the same time as we build more houses and build more mines. So it is going to be a tall order, I think, to fit all this in without overheating things, if you think about it that way. That is part of the reason that I suspect a little more caution on consumption—which I think we do see amongst households, anyway, at the moment—is probably no bad thing if we are going to fit all these other things in as well.

RBA SAYS WE NEED NBN COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Ms O’DWYER—This is my final question, because I realise I am running out of time. I noticed you did not actually mention $27 billion of taxpayer capital and another $10 billion of taxpayer debt issuance on the National Broadband Network. So I suppose my question is: is there a risk if the government ends up allocating vast amounts of taxpayer capital to projects that the private sector has rejected which do not work materially to improve the supply side of the Australian economy? What hurdles should these projects face to satisfy us that they warrant the commitment of taxpayer dollars?

Mr Stevens—I do not want to get into the NBN in any detail. It is an area that, to use Phil’s words, is outside our core area of expertise. As a general proposition, there probably are some projects that the private sector will not fund that still ought to be done. Whether this is one of them would be another question. But I think you can imagine some projects that the private sector just does not feel it can take the risk on but on which the public sector—which, after all, has a stronger balance sheet than anyone else—might on some occasions be able to accept that risk. But there ought to be, of course, a proper cost-benefit analysis of that case in those instances. It is not unreasonable to expect that more interconnectivity around the country can be a benefit to productivity—that is a reasonable claim, it seems to me—but, as I have said on one or two other occasions, much hinges on how much you pay to do it and how efficiently it is done. But that is not for me to adjudicate on in that particular case. Much as I am sure you would like me to, I don’t think I can.

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The NBN Business Case

It's out:

NBN Co Business Case Summary



Office of The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP

Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband

In her efforts to win over Senator Nick Xenophon, Julia Gillard has arranged for the NBN Co to release today a 36 page summary of its 400 page business plan – that’s the one she hasn’t had time to read.

It is a curiously inadequate document. It does not include any financial statements at all – no profit and loss statement, no cashflow statements, no balance sheets. There are a few numbers. We are told that as a result of paying $13.8 billion to Telstra in decommissioning and infrastructure payments (p.29), the estimated capex to build the NBN will be reduced from $37.4 billion to $35.7 billion (p.28)

And yet the Telstra deal is stated to be a real positive for the NBN – presumably it results in much lower net operating losses the savings of which justify the $13.8 billion spent. But how can we know without seeing the financial details?

The summary acknowledges (p.32) that the project is a very risky one now requiring a weighted average cost of capital of 25% until the concept is proved over the next three or four years reducing, if all goes according to plan, to an average of 10-11 percent over the 30 year period modelled.

While the plan asserts that the NBN will be able to carry debt, it is not clear when and how much debt can be raised, at what cost or whether it will require a Commonwealth guarantee – again a crucial issue unable to be assessed from this inadequate document.

The Implementation Study said that Internet access prices would increase each year in real terms. This document says that the NBN anticipates being able to reduce real prices for all products except the basic service offering of 12 mbps down and 1 mbps up. Since that is the product which experience suggests the majority of households will take up, it seems the NBN is not going to offer cheaper Internet at all and, at least on the basis of this document, has left itself room to increase the cost of the basic service.

However, beyond a few scraps of information and other warm words this is a thoroughly inadequate document. It is a sop thrown to the independent Senators in the hope that they will give the Government their vote. Real accountability, real transparency requires a thorough and complete business case, not 36 pages of reassurance devoid of financial detail.

There has never been a business plan which did not paint a rosy picture of the prospects of a new business venture and no doubt the NBN business plan, if we ever see it, will be no exception.

But the fundamental, threshold issue which the business plan does not and cannot address is whether the NBN is the most cost-effective means of realising the objective of universal and affordable broadband. That is why a Productivity Commission inquiry is so vital. Its main task would be to ask the question the Government has ignored: What is the most cost-effective means of achieving universal and affordable broadband? The NBN is, so it is claimed, one way of getting there. But there will be others and surely none could be more expensive than this plan.

Nobody has trumpeted the need for rigorous cost benefit analyses of major infrastructure projects more than the Rudd and Gillard Governments but on this, the biggest project in our history, they are determined to avoid any scrutiny for fear that the answer they will get will be that this is yet another ill considered, wasteful white elephant.

ENDS


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Four easy pieces. What the OECD actually said.

1. OECD on the NBN




2. OECD on Mining Tax



3. OECD on GST


4. OECD on NewStart


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Your mining tax is too low, your NBN is reckless - OECD tells it like it is

Australia's mining tax is too low, our Goods and Services Tax should be lifted and extended to food and our approach to building the National Broadband Network conflicts with "multiple" international studies.

While praising Australia's economic management during the crisis our latest report card from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is scathing about the Gillard government's pet programs and raises the prospect of it frittering away the proceeds of the mining boom.

The Paris-based organisation also warns against restricting immigration, says Australia's unemployment benefit is too low and warns we need to start an emissions trading scheme "sooner rather than later".

The views, in a 160-page report released Sunday will be widely assumed to be those of the Australian Treasury and mirror and extend those in its incoming government brief released under Freedom of Information laws. The Treasury has an officer permanently stationed with the OECD in France and and extensively briefed OECD officials when they visited Australia.

While completely supporting the idea of the minerals resource rent tax the report says the compromise announced by Prime Minister Gillard ahead of the election sets the bar so low... "taxation of profits of mining companies is likely to remain much lower than before the mining boom".

By limiting the new tax only to two commodities - coal and iron ore - the new regime will distort the incentives facing other resource projects regardless of their merits.

Particularly problematic is Australia's plan to spend all the expected revenues from the tax. Should resource prices fall faster than expected the Budget will be exposed. The OECD suggests creating a reserve fund along the lines of those in Chile and Norway to warehouse the mining tax windfall.

The OECD repeats many of criticisms of Australia's tax system made in the Henry Review, but says what the review could not because of its terms of reference - that Australia's rate of GST is "low by international standards" and that it could be extended by removing exemptions including childcare, health services and fresh food.

While supporting the planned National Broadband Network as having the "potential to significantly improve internet services within a
relatively short time frame" the report is damning of means by which it will be set up saying they are designed to "eliminate competition" with the existing Foxtel cables and Telstra wires.

"This implies a de facto restoration of a public monopoly over the supply of wholesale internet services," the report says. "Multiple empirical studies have stressed the value of competition between technological platforms for the dissemination of broadband services."

The OECD implores the government to take a "a prudent approach" rather than a "picking-the-winner strategy" which destroys competing platforms.

"To develop fibre optic networks more gradually than under the government program would also allow a better assessment of the new network’s costs and potential benefits and the potential positive externalities," the report says.

Coalition broadband spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said the report backed up the points he had been making including the need for a cost benefit study.

Minister Stephen Conroy said other networks would be shut down as part of a "commercial decision" made by Telstra as part of its agreement with NBN Co. It would be scrutinised by the Competition Commission.

The OECD also stressed the importance of maintaining "an open, demand-driven immigration policy" to help meet skill shortages, said Australia's unemployment benefit was at risk of becoming inadequate given "additional attention given to disadvantaged groups," and for a price on carbon "sooner rather than later" in order to kick-start stalled energy projects.

Published in today's SMH and Age


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High speed rail? Not quite a cost-benefit analysis.

That would be too embarrassing

Media Statement

HIGH SPEED RAIL STUDY: TERMS OF REFERENCE RELEASED

The Gillard Labor Government has commissioned an open, extensive feasibility study to determine the economic benefits and financial viability of a new multi-billion dollar high speed rail network connecting the cities along Australia’s east coast.

As a first step, I am today releasing the Term of Reference which will guide this $20 million feasibility study – see attachment.

In the coming weeks my Department will call for tenders to undertake specialist tasks such geotechnical investigations as well as financial and economic modelling.

The feasibility study will build on previous work by determining the optimum alignment of a high speed rail network after taking into account the needs of potential users as well as possible engineering, planning and environmental challenges.

As well as determining the route alignment, the feasibility study will provide information which will help guide future public and private investment decisions, including likely demand and an estimated construction cost.

Given the high level of interest in the study, my Department will also establish a formal reference group to make sure the views of organisations such as the Australasian Railways Association and the CRC for Rail Innovation as well as state and territory authorities are taken into account.

The Gillard Labor Government has put high speed rail back on the national agenda.

As well as helping to build a more productive, prosperous and sustainable Australia, high speed rail has the potential to significantly cut travel times for commuters travelling between our capital cities like Sydney and regional centres such as Newcastle and Gosford.

The study will conducted in two stages with the first to be completed by July 2011 and second by the middle of 2012.

As well as planning for the future, the Gillard Labor Government is investing in Australia’s existing rail infrastructure. Indeed we’ve already lifted spending on rail tenfold, made the first significant Federal investment in urban passenger rail and begun rebuilding more than a third of the interstate rail freight network.

The release of the Terms of Reference delivers on one of Labor’s key 2010 election commitments as well as an undertaking in the agreement with The Greens.

Sunday, 31 October 2010

Terms of reference

A strategic study will be undertaken on the implementation of a high speed rail network on the east coast of Australia.

The study will focus on identifying possible routes, corridor preservation and station options, including city-centre, city-periphery and airport stations. This will provide a basis for route development, indicative transit times and high-level construction costs.

As part of the core network element at the centre of the east coast corridor, the Newcastle–Sydney ‘spine’ will be a central aspect of this work. Options for links northwards to Brisbane and southwards to Canberra and Melbourne will also be considered.

Specifically the study will:

· Identify undeveloped land corridors and/or existing corridors that could be considered for a high speed railway, and preservation strategies;

· Identify the main design decisions and requirements to build and operate a viable high speed rail network on the east coast of Australia;

· Present route and station options, including indicative construction costs and interaction with other transport modes;

· Provide costs estimates of undertaking the next stages of work, such as detailed route alignment identification and corridor resumptions;

· Identify potential financing and business operating models for the construction and operation of a high speed railway;

· Provide advice and options on relevant construction, engineering, financial and environmental considerations.

The study will be managed by the Department of Infrastructure and Transport. It will draw on expertise from the public and private sectors, as well as international experience, growth forecasts and other contemporary data. Stakeholders will be consulted and contribute views through a formal reference group, which will include representatives from relevant Commonwealth, state and territory agencies and other key stakeholder groups.

The high speed rail implementation study will by July 2011:

· Identify the requirements for implementation of a viable HSR network on the east coast;
· Identify strategic route and station options, including high-level costing.

This initial phase will provide a basis for consultation and inform the specific direction of a second phase, including consideration of the specific corridors, routes and associated issues to be targeted for more detailed examination.

Further work from July 2011 will include:

· Detailed corridor alignment identification;

· Identification of preliminary geotechnical issues;

· Development of comprehensive robust cost estimates for preferred options;

· Further investigation of investment and (public and private) financing options;
· Detailed patronage and revenue forecasts;

· Consideration of preferred options in relation to other modes (for example, airport capacity implications resulting from diversion of air traffic to train).

This final work and report will take approximately 12 months to complete and inform the Australian Government and state and territory governments’ consideration of next steps for high speed rail in Australia.

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