You have missed the point
Australia ONLY has a telecommunications network at all today because the government funded the original one. Outside of the major metro areas there is very little offering except for Telstra, and that is because private enterprise sees no ROI out there.
The NBN is the next generation communication network for Australia, it is an asset for Australia, regardless of how ignorant Conroy is. I fully support the government putting in this next generation infrastructure, I just hope that it has the common sense to keep it in government ownership and ensure that contractors employed to deploy it are held to fixed-price contracts with penalties for failure to deliver.