From the SMH:
The board of NBN Co has offered to resign en masse, falling on their sword amid suggestions they do not have the confidence of the incoming government.
The chairwoman Siobhan McKenna submitted her resignation to the Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, along with the rest of the board. Former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski is waiting in the wings to be appointed executive chairman.
Kerry Schott is expected to be one of the only directors invited to stay on by Mr Turnbull, who has been highly critical of the board and the way the company has been run under the Labor government.
The resignations have not yet been accepted by Mr Turnbull. A decision is to be made at a cabinet meeting early next month. Mr Turnbull has blamed the board and executive team for the massive cost blowouts, timetable delays and for contractors losing money.
Contractors losing money is surely a sign that the board was doing well. Although rigorous scrutiny of the project is always welcome, losing the entire head of the animal mid race is hardly efficient. Then again, perhaps it’s an indication of some very nasty skeletons in the closet…
Not according to Alan Kohler, who sees the board fleeing policy on the run:
It is because there is a large problem at the heart of the Coalition’s NBN policy. The key difference to the project that has come with the change of shareholder is not that two-thirds of the connections will be copper instead of fibre, which will make it cheaper and a bit slower. It is that competition will be allowed.
The NBN will not be a monopoly, and to bring that point home, David Teoh’s TPG Telecom last week announced that it will connect fibre to capital city apartment buildings. The company already has 3,800 kilometres of fibre connecting businesses to the internet; now it’s planning to move into high-density residential, which is the most profitable.
…If David Teoh is allowed to have the apartment buildings in the cities, then the Malcolm Turnbull/Ziggy Switkowski NBN will simply be an unprofitable competitor on price in the cities and an unprofitable, supplier of fibre to the node services to rural Australia.
It will, in short, be a donkey, a money sinkhole…
