> loan made on cost grounds, not due to concerns about the business model
Colour me shocked. How convenient. The question isn't about whether someone somewhere would lend them the money at 15%pa or whatever. The question is why the market would put a large premium on those loans. Hint: the project has suffered from the Not Invented Here syndrome with stupid meddling just so there was a way to throw a waste and mismanagement angle at the political foes. Whilst the original plan was hardly perfect, it at least would have left us with a cheap to maintain cheap to upgrade natural monopoly that unlike the mistakes made when privatising Telstra did not result in a vertically integrated entity with a self interest in making their competitors' network access difficult. When something is perceived to have higher risk, the interest rate must be higher to attract capital. It's the same reason that payday loans have ridiculous interest rates and government bonds have low interest rates.