Our Parliament's capacity to furiously prevent progress has been nothing short of elegant, but no vital piece of infrastructure has been more of a completely avoidable dog's breakfast than the wildly over budget, horribly overdue and still woefully substandard National Broadband Network.

When the Labor government of Kevin Rudd (part 1) first presented this major piece of infrastructure everyone concurred that the nation's ageing telecommunications network was in desperate need of a spruce up, and everyone also understood the economic benefits of broadband whose speeds ranged from "lousy" to "stationary" depending on whether the user was in a large city or most of the rest of the country.

"Australians deserve sweet bonuses for sick headshots in online multiplayer." Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The difference of opinion was on whether Australia deserved a very expensive new system that worked really well or a slightly less expensive new system that didn't work particularly well, and that's pretty much where things stayed for the next seven years.

That disagreement puts us in the current shemozzle we inhabit, in which the government has quietly abandoned plans to use the money-saving Optus network despite having foolishly paid $800 million for it because it turns out that it's largely held together by sheer force of will and bits of string.