Chimbu mentioned
The $900 checks mailed out to most people was grotesque waste. Same with the pink batts/schools and, if it actually goes ahead, so will the internet broadband plan.
I think Chimbu's phrase "if it actually goes ahead" will apply to quite a few of the Rudd Government's plans, (and in particular, some of their rather fanciful, huge money plans in the Defence sector in their recent White Paper).
Re the broadband scheme: an acquaintance who is pretty senior with the #2 telcom in Oz tells me that the money Kev is committing to high speed fibre optic cables would be far better spent on putting in another undersea cable connecting Australia with the WWW.
His reasoning? Much if not the vast majority of Australian internet users are for much of their time online attempting to gain information from sources outside Australia, so the bottleneck will be in gaining access to the rest of the world. Even if the average user has the (very expensive
) fastest fibre optic connection to his home or office from his ISP, he's going to be limited in his download speed by the cable linking him to the world unless he only requires information from within Australia.