This is quite interesting. I bet all the free-market zealots will have clicked away after reading about one-and-a-half paragraph, so let me quote this bit from somewhat further down in the article:

The obvious downside of this approach is that no other wireline competitors will likely emerge to challenge the government-controlled fiber network. On the other hand, there’s not that much competition right now; only 20 percent of Australian homes can get cable service, and most others are left with lines from Telstra (which does resell to numerous ISPs, but it retains control of the access network).

I guess it’s not quite as bad on our end of the world, where there’s usually a choice of at least two wireline networks, but that still isn’t any real competition. A public, open-access (open to any service-provider, that is) network doesn’t seem such a bad idea at all!