Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, along with a few key lieutenants such as NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley, have staunchly sat like the Spartans at Thermopylae, and defended their ground with the NBN every step of the way, refusing to yield before the massive tide of incredible lies, half-truths, slander and base accusations which have been flung their way. You all know what I’m talking about here. You’ve read daily about this stuff in the pages of Delimiter for the past three years now. The amount of mud which has been flung at the NBN has been incredible. And yet, Conroy has not yielded. In fact, he has stood his ground so well that, like Apple legend Jobs, Conroy has succeeded in bending reality around himself through sheer bloody mindedness and guts, to the extent that the Opposition now largely accepts the superstructure of the NBN project and is vowing to “complete” the project faster than Labor could, a statement unthinkable only a few years ago. I do not exaggerate when I say that, even discounting all of his other important portfolio responsibilities in areas such as media reform, digital television switchover and Australia Post (you know, the reforms he slipped in along the way while he was reforming Australia’s entire telecommunications sector), Conroy has had one of the most difficult, intellectually demanding and controversial portfolios in the Federal Government over the past half-decade, and, unlike almost all of his Cabinet colleagues, the Senator is still standing, having survived both the Rudd and Gillard administrations.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 04:21:10 +0000
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