By Alex Schlotzer

There’s a reason Tony Abbott didn’t show up to the announcement of the Coaliton’s national broadband policy.  Lets face it, commentators and pundits have been too polite to describe it for what it is — a sh!t policy.

Presented hesitatingly at a fumbling press conference this week, the policy launch which went much longer than Coalition spokespeople have been used to so far in the campaign.  Bumbling through the announcement were Liberals’ digital economy spokesperson, Tony Smith and finance spokesperson, Andrew Robb. The policy fundamentally misses the point of the infrastructure requirement to ensure that Australia is able to keep up with the rest of the world.

This isn’t just about making YouTube downloads of lolcats or kittehs faster.

This is about a fundamental infrastructure development that needs to deliver jobs throughout the roll out and ongoing employment associated with the maintenance and expansion of the infrastructure.  It’s also about ensuring we can compete with information transfer, making video-conferencing much more reliable and effective and enabling greater global collaboration.

Many other commentators and pundits, much wiser than I on the technical details, have already noted the failure of the numbers; and the reliance on an incentive-driven market approach.  It has also been pointed out that Labor’s NBN will need to ensure it can be up-graded to keep pace with ever increasing speeds.

Unfortunately the Liberal-led Coalition just does not seem to understand what’s required to compete in the digital economy.

However, it’s symptomatic of the Coalitions lack of details in their policies; relying on a 50′s election jingle and some vague ‘pledges’.

At the end of the day, Abbot showed, and continues to show, his ignorance about the importance of a national broadband policy.  The policy is a dud, no matter how much they try to spin it.

Alex Schlotzer is a straight talker when it comes to politics and loves to vent his spleen. Actively involved in Australian and international politics with a keen understanding of the dynamics of the political machine, Alex has a prolific online presence and has been a cyber activist for over 15 years. Regional editor of theangle.org, he can also be found at his blog and his exciting online project Australian Politics TV.

Tags: abbott broadband, coalition broadband, election broadband, telecommunicationst broadband