I think it is kinda true :)
From what I have read on the Tasmanian trial roll out, they are providing an ADSL service for those that don't want full speed. The advantage is that they can continue to use their existing ADSL modem/router.
Saying that only new houses would be able to get the Ethernet service is wrong, however. Cable TV is available to older houses that don't have a cable outlet or a satellite dish; When you sign-up they come and install it for you. Installing an Ethernet socket in an existing house is no more difficult than a cable TV point - a couple of hundred dollars, or maybe nothing if you sign a minimum term contract.

You have to remember that the NBN isn't just about home users; it will be available to the vast majority of business premises as well. Our company already uses 1GB network connections between our offices and our data centre. We are located in state capitals so we can get that bandwidth at reasonable prices, but if we had an office in a smaller town we would be out of luck. Having 1GB/s available means that smaller businesses will have access to lots of new services; hosted/cloud servers, off-site backup, HD video conferencing...
As other posters have said, most home users don't even need 100 Mb/s but there may be some who do and there will certainly be some businesses that do. The major cost component of the NBN is physically installing the fibre. Installing copper would cost about the same. Arguing against the cost of the NBN based on the speeds it supports being unnecessary is like arguing against the cost of building a suburban street because someone says it can support a 65 ton tank at its maximum design capacity. Although the maximum capacity will never be needed, a lower capacity road would cost the same.
While I am not convinced that a government can manage a project of this size without cost blow outs, at least the Labour government has a vision to provide a universal level of infrastructure. The Liberal plan will leave us with the same patchy mix of over-serviced cities and under-serviced rural areas.
As for why focusing on wireless is a bad idea, refer to the very informative posts in this thread on the relationship between speed and the spectrum required. If we can't deliver better than 20Mb/s over a few kilometres using copper. how can we expect wireless to do better when it is a much more restricted medium.

The exact method will vary depending on the OS and platform, but generally the first thing authorities will do is use a disk cloner to create an image for forensic purposes. Once they have the cloned image they can use a variety of techniques without modifying the original. This ensures that the original system can be re-cloned if the copy gets damaged. It also ensures that an original unaltered image is available to both sides in the event of a court case.

I think that what they were worried about is that it encourages people to record their station with a PVR and then skip the advertising.

TIVO in Australia has ad skipping disabled. To carry the new "Freeview" logo and gain access to the enhanced Freeview EPG (when it becomes available!) an STB cannot permit ad skipping.

A non-freeview box with IceTV gives both ad skipping and a good EPG

From my reading of the decision, it looks like this would apply to the train timetable (but IANAL).

What the court has said is that although collections of facts can be copyrighted, the question is to the degree of originality in the expression of those facts.

In the case of the TV guide, the alleged infringement consisted of two pieces of information; the program title and the time of transmission. The title is supplied by the program's creator; not Channel 9 and the time can only be expressed in a standard way (Channel 9 could hardly claim copyright of "7:30 pm"); Channel 9 has therefore not exercised creativity or originality.

The train timetable is much the same. There are two pieces of information; a station name (which is much like the program name) and a departure time. Cityrail has not exercised any creativity or originality in the expression of this information.

It is the lack of originality of expression that results in the information not being copyright; it is not a fair use claim, so the amount of information copied does not matter.