Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is a $36 billion National Broadband Network

All Labor has to do is believe in the NBN and hey presto, there'll be political magic

All Labor has to do is believe in the NBN and hey presto, there'll be political magic

Peter Lewis, Essential Media Communications, on ABC online's The Drum Unleashed on November 30:

THIS week's Essential Report shows strong and increasing support for the network. [35 per cent say it is very important, 34 per cent say it is quite important, 14 per cent say it is not so important, 11 per cent say it not important at all and 6 per cent don't know.] For Labor the NBN allows it to enter the festive season with the promise of better days ahead. Nothing too concrete, just a big nation-building project that the public overwhelmingly supports and that invites them to imagine a better future. Of course there will be scrutiny -- The Australian has already established an NBN watch campaign in the spirit of its attack on the BER -- but what the critics won't be able to do is stifle the ideas and developments that enabling technology of this sort will inevitably generate. And that's the key. Like Santa, if Labor can maintain belief in the NBN over the next 12 months it has the potential to deliver some much-needed political magic.

Scrutiny. Dennis Shanahan in The Australian on November 23:

ACCORDING to the [Newspoll] survey, only 23 per cent of voters think the NBN should proceed without a cost-benefit analysis. Even Labor supporters are evenly split over the Coalition's demands for an analysis, with 40 per cent in favour of the NBN going ahead without the cost-benefit analysis and 38 per cent opposed.

Jonathan Holmes on ABC online's The Drum last Friday:

CHRIS Mitchell claims that "for several years (The Australian) has accepted man-made climate change. It has supported market mechanisms to reduce carbon output for the best part of a decade. "What people do not like is that I publish people such as Bjorn Lomborg." No Chris. What many serious climate change scientists object to is that while your editorials give mealy-mouthed and qualified support to climate change science and a carbon price, your opinion pages give far more space to sceptics like Lomborg and Plimer than they do to well-qualified supporters of "conventional" climate change science.

Juliette Jowitt in The Guardian August 30:

ALTHOUGH [the head of the IPCC, Rajendra] Pachauri once compared [Bjorn] Lomborg to Hitler, he has now [endorsed Lomborg's] new book, Smart Solutions to Climate Change. Pachauri said: "This book provides not only a reservoir of information on the reality of human-induced climate change, but raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done." Lomborg denies he has performed a volte face, pointing out that even in his first book he accepted the existence of man-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world," he told The Guardian. "This is not about 'we have all got to live with less, wear hair-shirts and cut our carbon emissions'. It's about technologies, about realising there's a vast array of solutions."

Adele Horin in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday:

WHAT has happened in the name of expanding individual choice is that the government and employers have shifted a load of financial risk from their shoulders to ours in recent decades. And some of us ageing flower children are wilting under the strain. A splendid report by the Australia Institute reveals that only a minority of Australians are alert to the best deals in electricity, gas, water, and phone plans..

Wendy Harmer in The Sunday Telegraph:

I AM utterly hopeless with my money. Many Australians are. In fact, a new study by the Australia Institute has found that 41 per cent of us are paying too much for our mortgages, phone plans and bank fees. This, apparently, is a bad thing. However, here's the difference between me and almost everyone else. I know there's a better deal out there . . . I just don't care. We spend too much time obsessing about what we are missing out on and not enough being grateful for what we have.

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