Vikki Campion: Albanese government in costly cold war with Musk over internet coverage
While Elon Musk fights taxpayer waste in the US, our government will waste taxpayers’ money fighting Musk, writes Vikki Campion.
Opinion
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While Elon Musk wages a war on US financial waste, on our side of the Pacific the Albanese government is engaged in a costly and bizarre cold war with the billionaire over internet coverage.
If Musk had built a highway along Australia’s east coast, the Albanese ministry would have reviewed it, called it a risk to sovereignty and then thrown billions of dollars into building its own alongside it – complete with unsealed roads and missing bridges.
Former Labor minister Alannah MacTiernan, who recently chaired a regional telecommunications review, deemed Musk a risk to our national sovereignty. That’s because people are so fed up with the government’s National Broadband Network that they have been turning to Musk’s Starlink.
Our own government’s foray into satellite broadband was such garbage that it was practically advertising for Musk, with people on waiting lists for Starlink, which is now oversubscribed in northern NSW and southeast Queensland.
The current campaign against Musk came into focus this week with the Senate inquiry examining the botched 3G shutdown, which exposed a ministry more interested in ideological battles than in providing Australians with a reliable telecommunications network.
You would think it was the Chinese Communist Party that was offering a solution to our home-baked NBN flop. Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are shutting down 3G, freeing up radio spectrum for their lucrative 5G expansions in the density of the cities, and the government can now sell the retired spectrum for possibly billions of dollars. While big telcos cash in and the government counts its windfall, bumpkins in the bush are left with a hammer signal on the top of the phone warning us we can’t make a call.
The 3G imbroglio could soon be over as Musk rolls out the alternative of direct-to-phone low-Earth orbit (LEO) technology, which could give Australians the lifeline they need without begging Telstra or the government for scraps.
But rather than let the private sector go for gold, Labor is instead running its own fixed-voice service LEO trials at a cost of $6m, which Musk already has. His satellites are up there now. Like the NBN, we are going to build the obsolete, own it, subsidise it, and pour taxpayers’ money into it, while private enterprise does it better and cheaper and does it so it actually works.
Suppose you had to take tech advice for Australia. Would you listen to the self-made businessman who, through cutting-edge innovation in technology, rather than inheritance, made himself the richest person in the world, or ex-political staffers, consultants and bureaucrats whose view of the economic landscape was one of manicured lawns via a double-glazed office window in the most exclusive suburb in Australia?
Under Albanese, taxpayers fund the latter. This government doesn’t want solutions from the “wrong” kind of billionaire.
Labor has all but declared war on Musk because he believes in free speech and isn’t afraid to stop $50m of his nation’s taxes being spent on condoms in Mozambique.
When the wrong kind of billionaire comes with a viable solution, they’d rather call him a risk to the nation than admit they were incompetent.
Instead of using a Musk type to investigate our own expenditure wonders in Canberra, Labor is copying his private sector work with $6m from taxpayers, on top of its $3.8bn internet plan to build more fibre connections, only 311,000 of which will be in regional areas.
As Senator Matt Canavan pointed out on X, it would be $1bn cheaper to buy every Aussie household a Starlink at $299 each.
All the while, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland insists that only “Starlink has in the vicinity of around 200,000 (connections), and we know that between fibre and satellite technology there is no comparison”.
And no signal.
The Albanese government is no different to the Tesla owners who have plastered their cars with “I bought this before I realised he was crazy” stickers, as the PM dubs him an “arrogant billionaire” and threatens him with foreign interference laws if he strays into the upcoming Australian election.
But while Musk fights taxpayer waste, we will waste taxpayers’ money to fight Musk.
WILL WELCOME TO COUNTRIES BE NEW NORM ON GOVERNMENT AIRLINE?
We either have an aviation market that allows competition or a protection racket for a monster, where the Albanese government would prefer to buy Rex Airlines than fix the beast cannibalising anything smaller than itself.
Bonza, Tiger, Rex and the bones of a long list of airlines before them weren’t gobbled up because their planes were empty, they were crushed because the government gave all the treats – the good slots, the airport space and regulation favours – to the hungry Qantas-Virgin duopoly.
Labor bows to Qantas because it plays the political game better than anyone, painting Voice logos on its plane, spending millions backing the Yes campaign and making sure every flight ends with a welcome to country, while departure boards confuse passengers who can’t remember ever booking a ticket to Naarm or Warrane from Gurambilbarra.
This is how you buy influence from the Albanese government.
Rex was once the great airline of reality, where regional passengers could fly without suffering a lecture.
But now Albanese will need a board to run Rex, where the Transport Workers Union will expect reward appointments for advising the government while meeting the Department of Infrastructure’s six senior executive “Diversity Champions and staff-led networks”.
Regional Australia deserves real competition, guaranteeing cheaper flights like regional America enjoys.
Instead, we will have a publicly-run regional airline. And what government enterprise runs more cheaply than the private sector?
Eminent competition expert Allan Fels called it out.
Senate inquiries and the Federal Court raised alarm bells, yet nothing has changed to allow a free market to prosper.
Feed the beast another little airline, no matter what the cost.
LIFTER
Senators Gerard Rennick, Matt Canavan and Glenn Sterle for their action on the bank closures in regional Australia inquiry, which resulted in a recommendation to force banks to pay a levy to force investment into a regional community banking footprint, adopted as Labor policy, with a moratorium on regional branch closures until mid-2027.
LEANER
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who ignored the Illawarra, south of Sydney, for two years on offshore wind, and seemed surprised when heckled by locals on the hustings yesterday morning.
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