Phrase of the Week

 

digital euthanasia: the use of a block button to terminate the presence of a troll in your social media timeline. [Simon Homes à Court, 2023]

 

Internet scammers are as active as ever and currently targeting government benefit/allowance/pension recipients in Australia

Services Australia, 9 January 2023:

More and more scammers are creating social media profiles impersonating us and other government agencies.

Scammers will set up accounts to look like Services Australia, myGov, Medicare, Centrelink or even our employees. These accounts will look convincing, but will have little differences in the name or the spelling of the username.

These accounts will often message you saying they can help you, but they’re really trying to steal your information.

How to tell if it’s a scam

We will never ask you to engage via direct message or private chat on social media. These aren’t secure ways to share information.

We won’t ask you to share personal information like your customer reference number (CRN), address, phone number or email address via social media.

We have a list of our verified social media accounts on our website. If the account isn’t on that list, then it isn’t us.

A query on Twitter......

Clarence Valley Independent, 18 January 2023:

A dangerous new scam circulating through emails offering recipients ‘outstanding refunds’ has prompted a warning from the Australian government and Scamwatch.

Email security software company MailGuard issued the alert after intercepting emails posing as official emails from government agency myGov.

With an enticing subject line reading ‘You have an outstanding refund from myGov’ the emails encourage recipients to read further.

Despite being sent from what appears to be myGov, with an Australian Government logo, the website address refund@my.gov.au is the first sign this is a scam, as it is clearly different to the official site https://my.gov.au/ .

The body of the email is impersonalised, addressed to Dear Customer, informing them they have a refund of $640.98 available from myGov.

A link to accept the payment online then takes the user to a fake login page, featuring Australian Government branding to seem authentic, where they are prompted to enter their username and password.

There the user is asked to provide their full name, address, phone number, credit card information and CVV number.

MailGuard said the details would likely be used by cybercriminals.

“These details will again be stolen by the criminal and will likely be used for their personal financial gain or sold on the dark web,” MailGuard said in a statement.

“Refund scams are a cruel type of attack that target vulnerable individuals who could use the money promised.

“Instead, they risk financial and identity fraud.”….

Anyone who receives the suspicious email should delete it immediately without opening any suspicious links.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 7 November 2022:

Between January and September this year, Australians lost $424.8 million to scammers (that's more than $47 million a month).

It signifies a 90 per cent increase in losses compared to the same period last year.

But those figures are likely only the tip of the iceberg, with just 13 per cent of victims reporting crimes to Scamwatch.

Australian Federal Election 2022: after eight and a half years the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government has still not delivered a reliable NBN high speed broadband network

(Cartoon by Mark David / @MDavidCartoons)
INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIA, 16 February 2022

It’s been eight and a half years since the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government came to power and took a wrecking ball to key policy initiatives of the Rudd & Gillard Governments – solely on the basis that these were programs initiated by the Labor Party.

Even in Opposition, one of the Coalition's targets had been the National Broadband Network (NBN).

However, unlike the price on carbon, it could not erase the NBN but was forced to tolerate its existence.

By 23 September 2020 the Morrison Government and NBN Co had declared the initial rollout of a national high speed broadband network complete and fully operational. Apparently the only thing remaining was to plan for future increases in demand.

NBN Co then closed the door and, to all intents and purposes, walked away from most of the issues both it and the Coalition Government had created by using a patchwork of different connection types to supposedly meet the needs of over 25 million people in homes and businesses scattered across est. 7.692 million square kilometres of widely varying terrain.

In 2021 in response to Internet connection problems in his own electorate a member of the Morrison Government, 

Liberal MP for Berowra Julian Leeser, tabled a private members bill - supported by seventeen MPs and senators - which attempted to make NBN Co more accountable, build better infrastructure and improve customer service.

Julian Leeser, Telecommunications, retrieved 9 May 2022:

In response to the Bill, Choice’s Alan Kirkland said: ‘It’s unacceptable for people who live in a major city like Sydney not to have mobile coverage in their home, and even worse in a bushfire-prone area. We find it puzzling that the telco industry, particularly Telstra, has been able to get away with substandard service for so long.’

Professor Alan Fels, former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, agreed that more needs to be done. He said: ‘For many years the telco industry has failed to make access to mobile phone services universally available, even in a number of suburbs. Yet such access is an essential service and vital in emergencies. After waiting for so long, it is clear that the only solution is legislation, backed by sanctions compelling it.’

That particular private member’s bill appears to have withered on the vine.

Also in 2021 a five-member panel conducted a review of regional telecommunications in Australia. One could be forgiven for wondering about the independence of this panel given a former Nationals MP for Cowper and, a business person who worked on the 2013 Nationals election campaign and previously derived consultancy work from a WA Liberal Government are among its members.

It came as no surprise that there were 16 key findings contained in the December 2021 review report, along with twelve recommendations. Although Finding 10 (highlighted below) raised an eyebrow.

Key Findings

1. Increased coordination and investment between the Australian, state and territory governments is needed to address a ‘patchwork quilt’ approach to connectivity in the regions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2

2. Local councils and other regional stakeholders are increasingly expected to facilitate telecommunications service delivery, but are not appropriately resourced to identify connectivity need and support the deployment of suitable solutions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5

3. Supply side issues, including backbone fibre and spectrum access, are barriers to competition and innovation in regional telecommunications markets.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2

4. There is an urgent need to consider the future of the Universal Service Obligation in order to provide reliable voice services to rural and remote consumers.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8

5. There are significant issues with the maintenance and repair of telecommunications networks, particularly copper landlines, in regional, rural and remote areas.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8

6. In instances of natural disasters and emergencies, connectivity is significantly impacted by power and network outages. This reduces access to recovery and support.

Relates to Recommendations: 3

7. Mobile coverage continues to improve, but expanding reliable coverage to priority areas is becoming more difficult.

Relates to Recommendations: 9, 10

8. Increased ongoing demand for data on regional, rural and remote mobile and fixed wireless networks is not always being met, causing network congestion issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6, 9

9. Although Sky Muster Plus has improved access to data, Sky Muster users are frustrated by insufficient data allowances, high latency and reliability issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6

10. Current minimum broadband speeds are mostly adequate, but will need to increase over time.

Relates to Recommendations: 8

There is a certain irony in Finding 10 given that less than one month before the report was delivered to the Minister, review panel member Prof. Hugh Bradlow was tweeting the NBN on 1 November 2021 with this complaint: "Hello @NBN_Australia my Internet at Sandy Point, Vic has been out for 3 full days. Instead of all the excuses on your website (and don't blame the power - it is working just fine) can you actually give a committed time to get it fixed?

11. There are emerging technology options to meet the demand for data but their service performance has not yet been validated.

Relates to Recommendations: 4

12. Regional consumers, businesses and local governments experience difficulty in resolving telecommunications issues and providers are not adequately addressing the complex needs of regional users.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 7

13. Regional consumers, businesses and local government need access to independent advice and improved connectivity literacy to support them in making informed connectivity choices.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5

14. Predictive coverage maps and other public information do not accurately reflect on-the-ground telecommunications experience. There is significant misinformation about the availability of 

telecommunications services.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 9

15. The cost of telecommunications services remains high for vulnerable groups in remote Australia. This is impacting on their access to essential services.

Relates to Recommendations: 11, 12

16. Continued engagement with Indigenous Australians in regional, rural and remote communities is needed to address ongoing issues of access, affordability and digital ability.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 11, 12

Over a year after the Morrison Government declared the high broadband network a success it was very evident that it was far from having that status.

Indeed, in some quarters opinion had been scathing.

InnovationAus.com: Public Policy and Business Innovation, 4 November 2021:

This week, Telstra claimed its 5G home broadband service will offer average speeds of 378 megabits per second to homes and businesses. In contrast, the average maximum speed on Fibre to the Node is 67 megabits per second, and up to 200,000 premises on the copper NBN can’t even get 25 megabits.

Imagine spending $50 billion on a copper dominated network, that’s not delivering minimum speeds required under law, and already losing its competitiveness.

That is the anti-genius of Liberal-National Party. Deceive. Implement bad technology policy at higher cost. Then spend more money to correct their mistakes. They led us down this path on broadband, and now want to do it with energy.

In 2013 the Liberals produced “modelling” known as the NBN strategic review. This elaborate sham had a sole purpose: provide political cover for abandoning fibre.

This document was then used to claim a multi-technology mix of second-rate technologies was going to be $30 billion cheaper than a full-fibre NBN.

This untruth, repeated at nauseum, relied on two tricks.

The first was pretending the copper dominated network being rolled out costs $41 billion. False. It is costing $57 billion.

The second was to claim the original plan to deploy a fibre network to 93 per cent of Australia would cost $72 billion, rather than the near $50 billion forecast under Labor.

The latter claim, which the Liberals clung to desperately, was decimated in a front-page report in the Sydney Morning Herald in February 2021.

It revealed that in late 2013 the Liberals were explicitly told deploying Fibre to the Premises was dramatically cheaper than what they claimed in public.

That advice was redacted and kept secret for seven years, and it is clear why.

If the redacted costs for fibre, along with real-world interest rates, were fed back into the strategic review “modelling”, the original fibre rollout would have cost around $53 billion.

Notably, Minister Fletcher stopped repeating his $30 billion claim since the unredacted extracts appeared in print, because he always knew it to be false.

The NBN copper rollout has now become a business case liability and looks increasingly uncompetitive against 5G.

The NBN HFC network, which relies on Foxtel Pay TV infrastructure, is arguably the most expensive and unreliable deployment of its sort in the world.

Tens of thousands of Fibre to the Curb modems across the country are also frying during storms because lightning is being conducted over the copper that leads into the home.

The government is now saying Fibre to the Curb technology will not deliver gigabit speeds, despite promising it would only a year ago.

Every fixed-line technology deployed by the Coalition is beset by technical or business case problems, except for Fibre to the Premises – Labor’s original technology of choice.

As the 2022 federal election date drew nearer the Morrison Government on 23 March bestirred itself enough to announce that:

The Morrison Government has welcomed NBN Co’s announcement that 50,000 homes and businesses will be able to order an upgrade to their NBN connection, delivering ultra-fast speeds at no upfront cost.

These are the initial customers to have access to upgrades that will allow 8 million homes, or 75 per cent of premises in the NBN fixed line footprint, to access to ultra-fast speeds by 2023.

Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher, said the on-demand upgrades will give more Australians access to the fastest broadband speeds available on the NBN.

There is no mention of ongoing costs and pricing which remain an issue.

I am honestly not sure that this is anything more than a typical election year 'announceable' which will sink down into the pile of past unmet expectations raised concerning NBN high speed broadband.

Regardless of whatever media releases the Morrison Government is sending out, the dissatisfaction with the NBN high speed broadband network remains 12 days out from election day…..

The Guardian, 8 May 2022:

The NBN rollout may have been completed, but Richard Proudfoot is still using an old ADSL internet connection, and he has to juggle his Zoom meetings around his partner’s work.

He runs a small IT business from his home in Maleny, on the Sunshine Coast, about 100km north of Brisbane, while his partner is a part-time university lecturer.

Due to their property’s terrain, NBN Co has told him he is not able to connect to fixed wireless or fixed line. While he has the option of satellite, many users have reported poor speeds and reliability. He has stuck with ADSL for the time being because he believes the tree cover and weather would adversely effect his service.

“We are very, very dependent on a reliable internet ADSL connection. To make it work for us given the limitations, we schedule internet use based on need ... we cannot do concurrent Zoom meetings so we rearrange diaries in order to cope.”

The Coalition and NBN Co declared the rollout of the then $51bn network complete in 2020. There are now 12.1m homes able to connect, and 8.5m homes on the NBN.

The high-speed network was meant to resolve the digital divide in Australia, but two years on from its completion there remains a stark difference between the haves and have-nots; those who have a decent internet service and those still waiting or suffering from poor speeds and reliability on their NBN service.

The Liberal MP Julian Leeser wrote a scathing review of the NBN in a submission to the federal government’s regional telecommunications review last year, describing it as “too slow with countless delays”.

Leeser’s northern Sydney electorate, Berowra, is a mix of suburban and semi-regional locations, meaning his constituents are living with the spectrum of NBN technologies, from fixed to wireless and satellite.

“There is too much variability in the quality of coverage across the various NBN technologies,” he said.

The pandemic forced many people to work from home and rely on their home internet more than ever before.

Leeser said that teachers had been forced to work out of McDonald’s car parks to leech the wifi for online classes, people were unable to work from home or undertake telehealth appointments, and some had even been forced to move out of the area due to their poor NBN connection…...

Many Guardian Australia readers raised problems with the project when asked what their major concerns were ahead of this month’s federal election.

One reader, Cate, who lives in Killarney Heights in the Sydney electorate of Warringah, missed out on full fibre or cable that some nearby suburbs have access to.

She says she was originally connected via the Optus internet cable but was moved over to fibre-to-the-node (FttN) on the NBN.

“Using Optus cable we rarely had dropouts. I could count on one hand the number of times over five years that we lost internet for any noticeable length of time,” she says.

Now she says they experience daily interruptions.

“Our modem takes five to 10 minutes to reconnect so this can often mean at least 25 to 50 minutes a day of disruption to our service and this is still considered acceptable by NBN and they will do nothing to fix it.”

She says she is rarely able to get the top speeds promised. In speed test results Cate provided to Guardian Australia taken between 2pm and 3pm on a weekday, the results ranged from 1.3Mbps to 40Mbps, compared to 100Mbps on her previous Optus cable…..

Around 119,000 premises that are connected to the NBN via FttN still can’t get the minimum 25Mbps download and 5Mbps upload speeds. Due to the ageing copper and environmental conditions, FttN connections will continue to get worse over time.

In February, the NBN CEO, Stephen Rue, admitted the bit rate – the number of bits that can be transferred across the network per second – would degrade between 2% and 4% every year on average across the 4m FttN connections.

The other looming factor is people switching the NBN off. Customers frustrated with the NBN might look to 5G or another service like Elon Musk’s Starlink, and threaten the ability of the network to make a return on the taxpayer investment.…...

Something to think about standing in line at the polling booths on Saturday 21 May 2022.

Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook, Scott Morrison, goes into battle against the "Evil One" just in time for the forthcoming federal election campaign

Scott John Morrison has a Facebook account Scott Morrison (ScoMo), two Twitter accounts, @ScottMorrisonMP (created on 22 April 2009 when he was an Opposition backbencher, blue ticked, 606.9k followers) and The PMO (created March 2017 in anticipation perhaps, blue ticked, 20.5k followers) and an Instagram account, scottmorrisonmp (285k followers).

The first social media account is not accessible to me because I am not a Facebook member, the second is not accessible to me because years prior to becoming Australian prime minister Scott Morrison chose to block any access by me to his personal Twitter account (an act I still find baffling), the third has not been actively tweeting since 2019 and the fourth is not fully accessible to be because I am not an Instagram member. 

Like the vast majority of social media accounts held by the Australian population, Morrison's own Twitter accounts are classified as engaging in ordinary tweet activity by Bot Sentinel. Just like GetUp! and @GreenpeaceAP.

Scott Morrison uses all four social media accounts as vehicles for his constant self-promotion and relentless electioneering.

However, he is apparently dissatisfied with social media. He believes it is being used by "the Evil One".

This is Prime Minster Morrison during an ACC (Pentecostal) Convention on the Gold Coast, Queensland in April 2021:

At 14:10mins he begins to 'preach' against social media and suggests it is being "used by the Evil One" as a weapon.

I'm not sure exactly what he was referring to at that point. However, I note that at last count Scott Morrison has 215 nicknames and descriptive political terms applied to him by the general public on Twitter and I seem to recall at least one account parodying him.

Seven months later on Monday 28 November 2021 this was Scott Morrison in in a joint media release with Attorney-General Michaelia Cash:

Combatting online trolls and strengthening defamation laws

In a world-leading move, the Morrison Government will introduce new court powers to force global social media giants to unmask anonymous online trolls and better protect Australians online.

The reforms will be some of the strongest powers in the world when it comes to tackling damaging comments from anonymous online trolls and holding global social media giants to account.

The reforms will ensure social media companies are considered publishers and can be held liable for defamatory comments posted on their platforms. They can avoid this liability if they provide information that ensures a victim can identify and commence defamation proceedings against the troll.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the rules that exist in the real world should exist online too.

“Social media can too often be a cowards’ palace, where the anonymous can bully, harass and ruin lives without consequence,” the Prime Minister said.

“We would not accept these faceless attacks in a school, at home, in the office, or on the street. And we must not stand for it online, on our devices and in our homes.

“We cannot allow social media platforms to provide a shield for anonymous trolls to destroy reputations and lives. We cannot allow social media platforms to take no responsibility for the content on their platforms. They cannot enable it, disseminate it, and wash their hands of it. This has to stop.

“These will be some of the strongest powers to tackle online trolls in the world.

“Anonymous trolls are on notice, you will be named and held to account for what you say. Big tech companies are on notice, remove the shield of anonymity or be held to account for what you publish.

“In a free society with free speech, you can't be a coward and attack people and expect not to be held accountable for it.”

The reforms will give victims of defamatory online comments two ways to unmask trolls and resolve disputes.

First, global social media platforms will be required to establish a quick, simple and standardised complaints system that ensures defamatory remarks can be removed and trolls identified with their consent. This recognises that Australians often just want harmful comments removed.

Second, a new Federal Court order will be established that requires social media giants to disclose identifying details of trolls to victims, without consent, which will then enable a defamation case to be lodged.

Importantly, the reforms will also ensure everyday Australians and Australian organisations with a social media page are not legally considered publishers and cannot be held liable for any defamatory comments posted on their page, providing them with certainty.

Attorney-General Michaelia Cash said this was in response to the Voller High Court case, which made clear that Australians who maintain social media pages can be ‘publishers’ of defamatory comments made by others on social media—even if the page owner does not know about the comments.

“Since the High Court’s decision in the Voller case, it is clear that ordinary Australians are at risk of being held legally responsible for defamatory material posted by anonymous online trolls,” the Attorney-General said.

“This is not fair and it is not right. Australians expect to be held accountable for their own actions, but shouldn’t be made to pay for the actions of others that they cannot control.

“The reforms will make clear that, in defamation law, Australians who operate or maintain a social media page are not ‘publishers’ of comments made by others.”

The Attorney General said the package of reforms would complement the defamation reforms currently being progressed in partnership with states and territories, and sit alongside the Government’s commitment to improving online safety.

“Social media providers should bear their fair share of responsibility for defamatory material published on their platforms,” the Attorney-General said. ‘This reflects the current law.’

“However, if defamatory comments are made in Australia, and social media providers help victims contact the individuals responsible, it is appropriate they have access to a defence.”

These new powers build on the Morrison Government’s other world-leading reforms, from establishing the eSafety Commissioner, to legislating the new Online Safety Act, to drafting new online privacy laws and securing support for global action to be discussed at the G20 in Indonesia in 2022.

An exposure draft of the legislation will be released in the coming week. This will provide all Australians, the industry, states, territories and stakeholders to have their say on these important new laws.

[Ends]

On Wednesday 1 December 2021 - the second to last sitting day of the parliamentary year - Morrison released the exposure draft of "Social Media (Anti Trolling) Bill 2021" which can be found here.

Having decided to release this draft the Morrison Government needed to collect its political guns and ammunition to be used in defence of the over reach contained within the bill's 28 pages.

So it was serendipitous to say the least that at 9:42 am on the same day the Government announced in the House of Representatives its intention to establish a Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety to inquire into the range of online harms that may be faced by Australians on social media and other online platforms, including harmful content or harmful conduct. This inquiry to be held during the parliamentary recess and its report due at the start of the 2022 parliamentary year. 

A year during which the Australian Parliament will sit for only 10 days until August 2022 when a full calendar is expected to recommence.

One might almost believe that Australian Prime Minister Morrison is casting about for ways to drive his persistent critics from social media

 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and those of his ilk are toying with the idea of creating a law which bans all anonymity on social media.

One which will force women who have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other sites to publicly disclose their legal names when creating such accounts and not use a pseudonym when posting or tweeting.

Under scenarios being considered by the Liberal-Nationals Government, all Australians may have to submit 100 points of identification - such as a driver’s licence or passport - before creating a social media account.

Additionally, social media users would be liable for defamation or even subject to criminal prosecution for their activity online.

For some reason he and others in his government are professing to believe this will make the Internet safe for women and girls.

Create a hugh Australian database spread across multiple sites which contains the verifiable ID of tens of thousands of Australian females – including home and/or work addresses. What could possibly go wrong?

Another giant pot for gold every vengeful, misogynistic male who decides he wants to abuse, threaten and stalk in real life not just in cyberspace. 

At least one social media giant clearly demonstrates by way of repeated privacy breaches, just how easy it is to open databases.

This is the latest.......

The Guardian, 5 April 2021:

Australians are being urged to secure their social media accounts after the details of more than 500 million global Facebook users were found online in a massive data breach.

The details published freely online included names, phone numbers, email addresses, account IDs and bios.

In a statement, Facebook said the leaked information was old, and came from a problem it had resolved in 2019, but experts told Guardian Australia the data could still cause problems for users caught up in the breach.

So what might hackers do with your info? How can you check if your data was leaked? And what can you do to protect yourself?

How your information could be used

Dr Andrew Quodling, a researcher in governance of social media platforms at the Queensland University of Technology, said that the data could be used to gain access to people’s Facebook accounts but also emails and accounts with other social media sites.

Once a hacker has your email, they can try to login into your accounts by pairing your email with simple passwords.

“People will take a sort of an easy run at simple hacks – try the top 100 most common passwords, and try to get in with brute force,” he said. “So anyone using the password 123 on that list would be in trouble.”

How to find out if your data was leaked

The quickest and easiest way to find out if your data has been leaked as part of a wider breach is to check on websites run by security researchers.

One of the most popular and effective of these sites is HaveIBeenPwned.com, a database maintained by security analyst Troy Hunt.

It only needs your email, which it cross-references with more than 10bn accounts that have been breached in the past to find if your details were leaked online.

It also has an option, for users to check if their password has been compromised.

Unfortunately, it does not yet track phone numbers, which were the most common user field in the recent Facebook leak.

What to do if your data was breached

In any data breach, it’s important to ensure identity documents, such as driver’s licence and passport details, haven’t been compromised. If they have, replace them immediately.

If your email address was exposed, change your password for that account, and set up two-factor authentication where possible…...

And the Abbott-Turnbull- Morrison Government's NBN copper saga continues......

 

One of Telstra's old pits being used by the NBN
IMAGE: Coast Community News, March 2016

Now that so many old Telstra copper-laden access pits which connect households with NBN fibre-to-the-node broadband technology are currently under flood water up and down the coast of New South Wales, it might be time to consider how all this water is impacting the integrity of the copper components in these concrete pits and the effect that this might have on current and future access to the Internet and modem-connected landlines.

Because it seems copper is still king for NBN Chair Ziggy Switkowski and his seven fellow directors.

The New Daily, 21 March 2021:

The NBN Co’s decision to continue to purchase and roll out ‘obsolete’ copper cabling over ‘future proof’ fibre-optic cables is costing Australia, telco experts say.

New figures show NBN Co has purchased 55,911 kilometres worth of copper cabling for use in the national broadband network’s footprint – enough to wrap around Australia twice.

The government-owned business has replaced 6,300 degraded copper lead-ins on fibre-to-the-kerb (FTTC) with brand new copper, it was revealed this week.

RMIT associate professor of network engineering Mark Gregory slammed NBN Co’s continued use of copper as “wasteful”.

The admission by NBN Co that it had purchased 55,911 km to boost “obsolete” copper-based connections including fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and FTTC “is shocking and should be met with outrage by taxpayers who will have to pay again, in the form of higher broadband plan costs, to have the obsolete copper based technologies replaced over the next decade,” Dr Gregory said.

“The Coalition’s NBN plan has become a national disgrace. The NBN rollout, which in reality has yet to be completed, is beset by cost and technology problems and the list of the government’s failed promises growing by the month.”

The copper figures were revealed in the Senate in response to Questions on Notice, and were 57 days overdue.

The Morrison government and NBN Co have faced criticism for being slow to answer Questions on Notice.

Last month, overdue responses to QoNs revealed that NBN Co had paid out more than $77 million in bonuses during the midst of the pandemic – nearly twice as much as the previous year…….

The NBN rollout was officially completed last year, but the Morrison government has already conceded that the many of the network’s copper-based connections already need to be upgraded.

In September, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher promised to pour more than $3 billion into upgrading millions of copper-based connections to fibre-to-the-premises by 2023.

This is on top of the cost of the rollout, which is estimated to have exceeded $57 billion…..

Labor’s shadow minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, accused Liberals of deceiving the public over the cost of fibre.

“We now know the Liberals knew back in 2013 that deploying fibre was dramatically cheaper than what they claimed in public,” Ms Rowland said.

“Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Fletcher kept this a secret and spent eight years knowingly misleading Australians to justify their copper mess.

“With waste and dishonesty as far as the eye can see – is it any wonder the cost of their copper NBN has gone from $29 billion, to $41 billion, to $49 billion and now $57 billion?”…..