I was prime minister of Australia. Stop comparing my broadband policy to Jeremy Corbyn’s

John Doherty is wrong to compare Jeremy Corbyn’s communications policy to the Australian Labor Party’s National Broadband Network (NBN), given the radically different challenges and proposals involved.

Where Mr Corbyn is promising full-fibre broadband free of charge, the business model of my government’s NBN was to levy wholesale prices on retail internet service companies.

Where Mr Corbyn would partially renationalise BT, we rejected renationalisation as not offering value for money; the NBN’s legislation indicated explicitly that it would be privatised once it was established and generating enough revenue.

When we took office in 2007, about one-third of Australian households had no internet connection at all. Currently, 94 per cent of UK households can access speeds exceeding 30 megabits per second.

Mr Doherty is correct on one thing: the NBN’s costs have spun out of control after the totally botched “redesign” by the conservatives, at the behest of Rupert Murdoch, who perceived the NBN as a threat to his business. That’s when it changed to a fibre-optic-to-the-“node” network rather than fibre-optic-to-the-premises under our model.

It’s for British voters to weigh the parties’ policies. But any comparison to Australia’s experience is facile in the extreme.

Kevin Rudd
Former prime minister of Australia

Saving parents from financial disaster

As working mums, we are proud to do one of the most important jobs in the world. We pack lunch boxes, wipe noses and nurture the talent of this country’s future innovators, change-makers, teachers and politicians.

At the same time, we are making our own mark. We are executives, entrepreneurs, benefits advisors, nurses and administrators. Raising young children at the same time can be a struggle, but we want to work. We want to grow our skills and boost our incomes. Most importantly, we want to be role models and give our children the best possible start in life.

Like many single parents, we rely on childcare. It allows us to go to work. But it’s expensive: the cost of childcare is steep, and with monthly fees as high as £1,000, we’re struggling. To make matters worse, under universal credit we are forced us to pay these eye-watering childcare bills in advance, and wait up to a month to be reimbursed.

As a result, many of us have been forced into debt -- taking out high-interest loans, falling into rent arrears or selling our cars to pay nursery fees. We’ve had to resort to desperate measures – cutting back on essentials or relying on foodbanks, living off cereals or going without meals ourselves so that our children can eat. Some of us have even had to give up good jobs we love because we can’t afford childcare.

We’re not alone. Up and down the country, thousands of low-income parents like us have been left feeling that the system is stacked against us. We know this because our petition calling on the government to scrap upfront childcare costs has received more than 103,000 signatures.

Labour’s manifesto commitment to scrapping upfront costs is a clear sign that they want to do more to support families. We urge the leaders of the other main political parties to follow Labour’s lead and address the issue of expensive upfront childcare costs. That means giving us the money for childcare before we pay the fees. Not doing so is setting families up to struggle.

Whichever government is elected on 12 December will determine the future of families like ours. We call on you, as party leaders, to commit to addressing this problem as a top priority. Whoever is elected into Number 10 needs to act before the number of parents forced into debt and hardship spirals out of control.
Yours sincerely,

Mums on a Mission: Aneita Lewis, Tasha Jones, Joelle Mitchell, Emma Wise, Thuto Mali, Hannah Pickering, Gemma Widdowfield, Ayo Kila

Why trust Corbyn on Brexit?

I think you were rather unfair and dismissive of Jo Swinson in your editorial, and I was surprised to read that you think that Jeremy Corbyn’s “promise of a Final Say referendum [is] the very best offer she is going to get”.

Do you really think that Jeremy Corbyn would keep that “promise” if he achieves a working majority after the general election? He had plenty of opportunities to back a Final Say in the last parliament and he refused to do so. He was urged by senior members of his party to back a Final Say and he refused to do so.

Jeremy Corbyn’s plan is to negotiate a withdrawal from the EU; it is simply unbelievable that he would do so and then advise the country not to accept what he has negotiated.

I think Jo Swinson is right not to trust Jeremy Corbyn. I don’t trust Jeremy Corbyn. (I don’t trust Boris Johnson either, but that is a different letter.)

Helen Bore
Scarborough

Your article yesterday on Hartlepool was enlightening. The Leave vote there was driven, in large part it seems, by the desire to punish the Cameron-led Remainer Tories for years of austerity. But now the Tories are the party of hard Brexit. How ironic if they should be elected on the back of a referendum vote that was intended to teach them a lesson. Can leopards change their spots? Voters in Hartlepool and elsewhere might wish to bear this in mind before casting their vote in the forthcoming election.

Michael O’Hare
Northwood

Mano-a-mano

Apparently 189 individuals have officially complained to the BBC over the same-sex dance routine on Strictly Come Dancing the other evening. Apart from stating the obvious point that every fair-minded person did not bat an eyelid, I must also point out that Morris dancing has been around for hundreds of years and is still often – although not always – men only!

Robert Boston
Kingshill