Is the NBN saving the economy?

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From The Australian:

The company building the government’s $41 billion National Broadband Network is about to embark on a massive hiring spree, increasing its headcount by more than a third over the next 18 months as it ramps up the rollout of the nation’s largest ever infrastructure project.

>The push to hire more staff comes at a cultural turning point for the NBN, which has revealed that its staff are actually starting to enjoy work at the company for the first time in a long time.

Emboldened by the improving morale of its employees and facing the mammoth task to connect 8 million homes and businesses to a new nationwide broadband network, the NBN is now readying itself to dramatically increase the number of its internal staff from about 3400 today to more than 4500 over the next 18 months.

“We are growing really fast and we are going to hire more than a 1000 in a very short period of time, in the next 18 months,” NBN boss Bill Morrow told The Australian.

I won’t go into the why’s and how’s of whether the NBN is a good investment. I’ve always thought so given it is in theory very solid productivity-boosting infrastructure. The Productivity Commission largely agreed. However, having watched its incredibly slow and painful roll out in my street I’ve had a few doubts!

I’ll simply make the point that without it, the national infrastructure cupboard would be incredibly bare and that ‘Abbott the infrastructure Prime Minister’ would be a laughing stock:

Major_Projects_Chart

The NBN is not saving the economy, no, but given the capital drought that is looming it’s doing its bit.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.