Research Primary School (Vic) was given a new building in the Rudd education scheme. It has recently been finished but the school is unable to use the building because a fire hose was not included, as required by regulations. It’s going to take months and a lot of money to get the problem fixed so that the classroom is even usable.

If you Google ‘Malcolm Turnbull’ his official site is the first result. But its description in Google reads “Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. Profile, news, videos, speeches, blogs and contact details.” Tony Abbott might want to try and get that changed…

Living in the bush I was pleased to take advantage of the National Broadband Guarantee to get a satellite internet service at my home office when I moved here in 2006. In the first few months I was unable to download any file bigger than 5mb, and the service was unutterably slow. The ISP finally admitted they did not know why I could not download large files, and canceled the contract at my request. Cost to the taxpayer: $3750 (which is the subsidy I believe the ISP’s get for each installation).

Because I had a company registered at this same address, I was able to get another service installed under the broadband guarantee scheme — cost to the taxpayer: $3750. I was happy with it until my modem failed in December. Despite the fact the ISP insisted they owned the equipment they wanted to change me $802 for a new modem. During the three months that followed I had no service at all as the current ISP failed to take any action to restore my service, and refused to issue the necessary documents to allow another ISP to provide a service to me using the existing dish and LNB. In extreme frustration during this time I rang the National Broadband Guarantee hotline eight times without ever getting to talk to a human.

I believe that if you were to ask about the cost of the existing National Broadband Guarantee scheme you would find another home insulation-type monumental waste. I suspect there would be many tens of thousands of unhappy and frustrated users such as myself — and tens of thousands of installations that are not being used at all due to poor or non-existent service by the ISPs that installed them at enormous cost to the taxpayer. I have seen entire satellite systems for sale for $10 as they are basically worthless.