Why Quigley pulled his own plug

From today’s edition of The Australian, with the necessary corrections in bold:

MIKE Quigley has quit as head of the $37.4 billion National Broadband Network, having realised that the entire thing was an albatross and that his life wasn’t going to be worth living if he stayed any longer and the truth came out.

Mr Quigley said he would continue to serve as chief executive until the board of NBN Co appoints a brainless hack with more ambition than sense.

“My job was to spend a load of cash on an uncosted and unrealistic project planned on a beer coaster in an airport lounge by people who have never heard the words ‘Wi-Fi’, and then grabbed by a desperate first-term Labor government, led by a megalomaniac, but already in trouble with the polls, to buy some quick votes, and put through a tendering process that was patently dodgy from the get-go. That job is largely complete,” Mr Quigley said in a statement.

“NBN Co is now a vast money pit into which the megalomaniac’s corrupt successor threw even more money, while her cheer-squad Minister simply repeated the usual mantras with his underpants on his head, with a whole lot of asbestos going where it shouldn’t, a slow-as-a-wet-week rollout that’s gone way over budget, supplying an already outdated technology to people who didn’t want it or need it or ask for it, but boy, it really helped buy off the independents Labor needed to form a government .”

Mr Quigley’s planned departure after four years in the job comes after the federal Coalition put him on notice he may not continue in the job under an Abbott government.

Philippa Martyr blogs at Transverse City. This rant originally appeared on catallaxyfiles.com