Raid on " the Futures fund " !

Federal Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has announced a plan he intends to implement should he win the election due later this year. He will spend $ 4.7 billion dollars to extend high speed broadband to 98% of the Australian public.
The sticking point is the source of money to finance this plan. Labor has long opposed the sale of Telstra but there now seems to be a change of heart. Prime Minister John Howard parked a huge block of Telstra shares in " the Futures fund " - a " money bank " intended to fund public service superannuation liabilities and make them fully funded by 2020. Kevin Rudd plans to raid that fund to finance his broadband scheme.
John Howard opposes using public money to extend broadband. Admittedly our present broadband is slow compared to world standards and the proposed service would be forty times faster, but would take five years to implement. Howard claims that private enterprise will do this job anyway, given that there is demand and the government has no place in such a field. Robbing the Futures fund would only lead to further Labor raids on " the honey pot " and this could have disastrous results for public service superannuation in years to come " when the chickens come home to roost "!
Kevin Rudd counters this by claiming that Labor will only use money from this fund that is capable of turning a profit - and therefore replenishing the fund.
That signals danger to anyone who understands the communication industry. No doubt private enterprise will bring high speed broadband to the public - but that market will be big cities and large country towns. To bring it to 98% of Australians would probably be uneconomical to a profit oriented company, and if the government did so it would mean high charges for bulk market users to cover this shortfall - and make the service uneconomic in world terms.
The private sector is usually able to bring major projects to fruition for less money than where a government is involved - and is also much better at evaluating risks. Anything to do with communications is risky. What seems to be " bread and butter " today can be totally obsolete tomorrow because of technology break throughs. Consider the present Telstra problem. Trillions of miles of decaying copper cable underground in a world that is embracing wireless mobile phones and rebelling at huge line rental charges.
Australia needs to look long and hard at this broadband proposal. Make or break may be only inches apart - and that is a decision that should not be left to politicians to make !