It’s a bit like extracting teeth. Or to be more accurate, a protracted and painful labour. And it’s becoming a bit of a recurring theme. What is you ask? Getting the National Government to slowly and painfully acknowledge that their rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. Or putting it even more simply, reveal their broken promises. On rushing through their plans for an Auckland supercity, taking away the rights of Aucklanders to decide what sort of governance they should have; tax cuts that put extra dollars in the pockets of only those who don’t need them; saying they’ll cap the public service, when what they’re really doing is cutting real people’s jobs. And now claims that they will deliver broadband into people’s homes. Well oops, sorry, it won’t be into their homes, it’ll be to their streets leaving families with the bill to connect broadband actually into their homes at anywhere between hundreds and several thousand dollars, depending on how far the home is off the street and how difficult the access is.

Now I can can hear the howls of protest from the apologists for the government. But hang on a minute guys. Let’s be clear here. Did the National Party, or did it not, promise before (and after) the election to deliver ultrafast broadband fibre to 75% of New Zealanders where they live, work and study within 10 years? They promised to spend $1.5 billion and the expectation was that this would be matched on a dollar for dollar basis by private investment, making the overall investment $3 billion.  John Key used this promise as a central campaign pledge. Maurice Williamson trumpeted it from the rooftops. And New Zealanders rightly expected that this is what the newly-elected government would do.

Now my understanding is that after the election, the new Minister for Communications &IT Steven Joyce found he had inherited a pup. A promise that would be damn hard to deliver on. Costing at least $4 to $7 billion and possibly up to $10 billion to fully deliver. And he had to go back to the drawing board. Now I’m not criticising the proposal the government has come up with to date, not in this post. What I am pointing out is that the objective; ultrafast broadband to 75% of NZ homes, is undeliverable at that price. Either that, or the people will pay. Which wasn’t part of the deal. And don’t tell me it was!

Two weeks ago in Parliament, Steven Joyce didn’t want to admit that ordinary people would face a cost. However, last week  Steven Joyce was forced to admit it when he said (for the first time to my knowledge) “there will of course be an element of cost…” in the consumer contribution. Well Huh? No mention of that pre-election to my knowledge. And I’m not the only one to comment on this publicly. A report to Treasury has said as much. Though Steven Joyce has tried to undermine it. The Dom Post has been commenting on this issue as has Computer World. It’s no secret that the major telcos think the same way. And I understand that the group of electricity lines companies led by Vector who are vying for the Govt’s $1.5b are asking for expensive extras before they get involved. So, um, there’s a few issues there for the government. Not to mention the pesky question of how to deliver ultrafast broadband to the remaining 25% of New Zealanders. A quarter of our population, mostly in rural provincial New Zealand. Now there’s a challenge.