In 1948 Ho Chi Minh wrote to the US wanting help from them so that he did not have to give in to either China or Russia.

For an insight into the whole mess of Viet Nam read the Pentagon Papers: https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers

What is amazing is the war and peace cycle. Countries we fought in the 20th century are nations we are assembled with in the cold war against China. It seems a little odd watching documentaries of WWII and the wars that followed and then watching the Royal Australian Navy sail alongside the Japanese Self Defence Force and even the Vietnamese Navy.

Notice in my letterbox today from NBN telling me to connect to NBN or be cut off. Good to see that the left and knows what the right hand doing within the NBN. Imagine the alternative.

On a very rare visit to The Sydney Morning Herald this morning I found this article which states that NBNCo will commit to upgrading certain areas to fibre.

Does anyone think that NBNCo could spend some money on their style manual so they can get to the stage where the word curb is spelt correctly - K - E - R - B.

Curb means stop or prevent.
Kerb is a raised bunding to stop stormwater flooding a footpath.

Grammar & such has gone out the window. Prime example: ABC was recently telling us more than once; that Victoria had a Mental Health Minister.

Really! Is he alone? Is that why we have a problem?

Just saw a news item saying funds are being made available to NBN Co to upgrade FTC and FTN to fibre to the house.
It baffles me that it wasn't fibre to the house from the beginning.
It would have been far cheaper to do this from the start.
When I saw the contractors pulling fibre cable down the street a few years ago I quizzed him about what NBN service we would get.
He told me FTC.
I responded with "so we'll see you in a few years running fibre to the house"
He laughed and said that would be most likely as the copper part of the NBN will not be maintained and will fail pretty soon.

One should read section 11 minimum, of the final report into the Boing Max which actually revealed not only serious issues in Boeing since a Bod ex McDonald-Douglas changed to a business model & it went downhill from their.

Like our corporate regulators the FAA was also found wanting in a big way. I do have a copy.

NBN was done on the cheap it was a business model when it should have been an engineering one. Long term doing it properly would have been cheaper.

"...I found this article..."

Interesting that the newspaper article talks about "fibre-to-the-home". They gave it to me after I requested cancellation of (ADSL) 'landline' phone and they counter-offered (as a 'loss-leader'?) "How would you like '1-Gig fibre' + phone for a lower fee?" (fearful of a competitor's recent promotions?) Accepting, I then encouraged the installer to run it directly to next to computers where a baseboard active terminal unit converts it to short multi-pair cable with red modular plugs to a large modem made by the (former) commies in Vietnam. Running a speed check, it doesn't do a Gig, more like ~1/3 Gig - faster up than down 315/340. It does make Samsung Smart-TV's free streaming channels switch more like tuning OTA channels though!

Hard to know what the truth is when it comes to NBN financing. One day we read it's a cot case missing revenue targets and a burden on government and next we see the government finding $3.5 billion for a upgrade.

Actually, at least according to the SMH article, the $3.5B will be funded via the private debt markets not the government.

These days the government is borrowing heavily from any source. Thing is, these loans need to be repaid with interest -- so someone thinks the revenue stream is safe.

It's not technically government debt as NBNCo is a corporation rather than a commission. Short term debt even raised by government departments doesn't count toward "nett debt" either, which means it doesn't show up on the budget bottom line. It is a bit unusual for a coalition government to go down this road but I think the pundits believe that the end result will be low unemployment and thus the tax system will end up funding the repayments over the next 20-30 years. I guess it is a matter of hoping that not only they are right but we don't get another coronavirus circulating in the meantime.

"nbn is wholly owned by the Commonwealth of Australia as a Government Business Enterprise (GBE), incorporated under the Corporations Act 2001 and operated in accordance with the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act)."

NBNCo was financed initially by ~$30 billion loan from the Australian Government.

I know that but it still doesn't appear as part of the budget. That said, debt is still debt and I do worry about the amount of debt accumulated since the Howard Government was voted out. At that time we had a $23bn surplus and $62bn in sovereign wealth. That seems like peanuts these days but it was a lot of cash back then.

It as mentioned the other day that the so-called GFC only led to a contraction of the world economy of 0.01%. This pretty much means that during the big spending years between 2007 and 2013 should pretty much never have happened, and it would most likely have meant that the myriad of building companies soaking up government money to build the education revolution that never was wouldn't have gone broke either.

With our looney Senate obstructing attempts to correct the debt surge, things have just got worse. If Australia's Commonwealth debt tips the $1tr mark, we'll have roughly the same debt per capita ratio as the US and this doesn't include debt owed by state governments.

QUOTE: Interest costs on loans it takes out come on the budget, but the overall project cost does not.

. . .

Back in March, the Parliamentary Budget Office valued the NBN at just $8.7 billion. Given the Commonwealth has an equity stake of $30 billion in the venture, that would mean the budget deficit would blow out by a further $21.3 billion if was to take the full write-down hit.