Government as good guy: lessons for broadband investment

The overall brief for this conference paper was to identify a substantial problem in contemporary Australian public policy and search through history to find insights and lessons that might constructively be applied to policy today. The policy area chosen here is Australian telecommunications; the contemporary focus within that major field is broadband policy; and the current critical problem identified is the paucity of action in relation to the proposed major investments for the introduction of much needed national high speed broadband infrastructure. The hypothesis here is that, looking back, the creation of, and capitalisation for the initial construction of the major new communications platforms throughout the past one hundred and fifty years, emerged from the unheralded long term value provided within the public sector and its associated remarkable individuals.