I don't know why so many Australians are complaining about this network. I've seen many countries waste money in much worse ways. Just look at the USA spending hundreds of billions of dollars for things half the people don't agree with and not batting an eye (wars, military bases, foreign aid, social security). Just a few years ago with this bailout thing, whoops, a few trillion dollars spent in bailouts and QE. Take a look at Indonesia and the Philippines, just a random example, where tons of tax dollars just go to politicians pockets through corruption and ridiculous useless programs.
Adding a high speed network for your country sounds not so bad. Australia's networks suck as it is - expensive, slow and tiny bandwidth caps all over the place. Why not? Now you just need to attract companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Akamai to setup large installations in Australia to make good use of that network!