Retromodo: The Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme Sounded A Lot Like The NBN



The National Broadband Network has been panned by mainstream media as too big, too expensive and too ambitious to ever be completed, while Senator Stephen Conroy has constantly come under fire from his opposite, Malcolm Turnbull MP, for pushing the fibre barrow on the country. Strangely enough, the whole thing sounds a lot like the Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric Scheme did back in the day.

This newspaper clipping from the Sydney Morning Herald published on 16 November, 1953, tells the story of how minister for national development, Senator W.A Spooner, was slammed for the cost of the Snowy Scheme, which at the time had been estimated at a cost of £442 million.

The news article reports that the scheme was being panned as irrelevant because, in time, the hydroelectric scheme would be replaced by atomic power. Sounds a lot like the fibre versus wireless device, doesn’t it? [Trove via Warwick and Mark Pesce]