COMMENT: Tony Windsor is an opportunist politician, who has suddenly stuck his hand up to announce that he wants his old seat of New England back from Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, a man he openly endorsed when he retired.
In an audacious press conference back in his old Canberra stamping ground last week, Winsor who appears to have become bored with retirement, and not being in the media limelight every day, has singled out the NBN as a key motivation for wanting to get back into politics.
During his years in the Federal parliament, Tony Windsor was the pork barrelling king, who had former Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, bowing to his demand for the simple reason that he and his fellow dancing partner independent Rob Oakeshott held the balance of power in the House Of Representatives.
One of the key demands made by Windsor was that his electorate be one of the first to get the National Broadband Network (NBN) rolled out in his electorate.
This happened, now he claims that the Federal Coalition Government should spend billions of tax payer’s money rolling out fibre to the premises in places like Tamworth the largest City in his electorate.
“[The NBN is] a national issue of very high importance within the country areas, absolutely critical,” he said. “Go to Armidale and see what they’ve done there and what they are planning to do, and you will see that it is actually a cost benefit to be in the country rather than in the centralised feedlots of the cities.”
“It has to be fibre to the home, and I will fight to see that restored as well.”
Really Mr Windsor.
I suspect, you are an opportunist politician whose wife has got bore shitless listening to you rabbit on day after day as to what politicians should be doing in Canberra.
Remember you are the guy that 18 months was endorsing Barnaby Joyce now you want to take his legs out with cheap publicity stunts, the only reason that you are trying to take him out is the hope that your past glory days will return.
The chance of your past glory days returning are ZIP.
You will be independent with no clout.
No Coalition Government is going to give you the time of day let alone any pork barrelling requests for your electorate.
Your electorate has a better chance of getting a slice of Government funding with Joyce than what can deliver.
You are all hot air and wild swings.
Let’s take on board what you said last week.
In the New England electorate, Windsor said it was easy to assign blame for a shift from fibre to the premise (FttP) to fibre to the node (FttN) especially in the large rural City of Tamworth.
“A change of government occurred … Tamworth is not in the rollout, nothing has happened. Armidale, fully rolled out, fully engaged,” he said.
“All of the technology that will be required this century is happening in Armidale.”
Really !
NBN usage figures for your City of Armadale reveal that 80% of people are buying the cheapest and slowest of NBN packages available in your electorate.
And despite this they can still watch a 4K movie streamed from Netflix, they can still do business every day without the fear of not being able to open an email or send a letter or read or send a spreadsheet.
They can even run security systems on their properties with images streamed live to a mobile device.
They can even play the odd game when they have time or stream music to their wireless audio devices.
People in your electorate including Tamworth can also get access to a Fixed Wireless capable of deliver 50mps which is ample for most users.
What I would like you to do is tell me what the bulk of your electorate cannot do with the NBN service they are already getting ahead of suburbs in Sydney that don’t have the NBN yet.
These are suburbs where millions of people live and big business operates.
I work in Sydney and if I can run a business that makes video’s and delivers 100 page digital magazines with built in video viewers and I don’t have the NBN one has to question the legitimacy of your claims.
I am confident that that most people in New England with an NBN service can do the same as I do in the City.
You seem to have forgotten Mr Windsor, but then again you are a pork barrelling former politician, who has spent years living off the public purse, that Australia is an extremely small Country of only 25 million people.
Infrastructure wise we are the same size as Countries that have over 200million people to help fund the public purse.
In 2010, Windsor famously said “Do it once, do it right, do it with fibre” after he and fellow independent Rob Oakeshott backed the minority Labor Government.
Tony Abbott at the time refused to cut deals on climate change and the NBN so labor got the deal.
Now Tony Windsor is back peddling the NBN and climate change, and he is going out of his way to saddle both his electorate and the people of Australia with debt and bucket loads of it.
He does not care that his grand children may one day have to pay for that debt with increased taxes.
Mr Windsor claims that he has long seen the NBN as essential nation-building infrastructure.
With Windsor it’s a bit like saying “I want all Australians to drive a BMW so bugger the cost”.
What people are getting today with the NBN is like giving everyone a brand new Commodore and the option to upgrade at their expense to the BMW something that Mr Windsor does not want to communicate to his electrate.
A user pay model where the really high speed capability of the NBN cost is funded by businesses that need the fast speed and gamers who want to sit with their dual curved screens shooting up each other across the Internet.
Mr Windsor, there are people in big Cities like Melbourne and Sydney who are taking hours to get to work or home because of lack of infrastructure, there are people sitting in hospital waiting rooms because of a lack funding.
This is what Government money be spent on, not super high speed fibre broadband for people in New England who want the cheapest of cheap when it comes to broadband connectivity.
But then again most people know that politicians lie through their back teeth, move heaven and earth to preserve their free ride on the public purse and then when they step away from the gravy train suddenly realise that that the free travel, perks and all that time back in their electorate was not a bad deal after all.and suddenly they want to jump back on the train waving placards, “The End of the World Is Nigh” in the hope that people take notice of them.
