KEY POINTS:
There was a sudden outbreak of common sense in Parliament this week when United Leader Peter Dunne emerged as an almost lone voice of sanity in the debate about how to turn the country's two-stroke powered broadband system into a V8.
Dunne hollered forlornly for the parties to stop bickering and concentrate on the issue.
Earlier in the week, John Key had announced probably the biggest policy vision the country has heard in decades.
A proposed $1.5 billion cash injection into a public-private partnership that, over the first six years of a National government, would see the nationwide rollout of a more than $4 billion fibre-cable system delivering homes and businesses broadband speeds perhaps 100 times faster than we have now.
That is a fairly impressive promise that any geek will tell you is a hell of a lot better than Labour's current broadband strategy which ties us to antiquated copper telephone wires for the foreseeable future.
One computer expert did wonder if speed was everything and maybe the money would be better spent laying another international fibre cable to supplement New Zealand's sole pipe to the rest of the world. That was the only intelligent critique of National's proposal.
Communications Minister David Cunliffe had an instant knee-jerk lame response to Key, claiming the plan lacked detail and credibility and "smacks of opportunism". As most politicians are opportunists (and Cunliffe is certainly no exception) his cries that the scheme would reinforce Telecom's monopoly position lacked credibility.
Quite how he arrived at the conclusion Telecom would be the big beneficiary of the plan is beyond me as Key had said in the speech that one of the principles guiding his government's investment would be that there would be open access to the fibre network and none of the current players would be able to line their pockets at the public's expense.
New Zealand First blindly followed the anti-Telecom line and Act retreated into some doctrinal babble about how governments should not spend money.
Peter Dunne justifiably spat the dummy at the critics' "Think Small" approach, saying "Surely the point is that widespread, superfast broadband is a good thing for the New Zealand economy and the only question is how do we get there?"
He went on to wish, without much hope: "It'd be excellent if politicians spent more time working out the answer to that question and not simply whacking each other over the head and feeling they've accomplished something". Fat chance.
It is election year. One party could announce it had found a cure for cancer and the rest of the parties would argue against it.
I'm sure in the 19th century politicians warned of the folly of building the main trunk railway
line, and in the early-20th century some party must have decried the wasteful spending in building State Highway 1.
In a moment of staggering hypocrisy, Cunliffe described Key's proposal as an "extravagant subsidy", neatly ignoring the fact that this Labour Government has proved the Mother of All Subsidisers.
It may be that all National's $1.5 billion plan does is deliver Bebo faster to teenage girls and let dweebs download the latest update to Grand Theft Auto in record time. It could be that Key is wrong in saying the investment will pay for itself in a matter of years with increased productivity and export earnings and we end up with the digital equivalent of the Think Big projects of the 1970s.
Maybe the computer nerd was right and instead of faster internet speeds we should be worried about the fact we only have one tenuous fibre link to the rest of the planet.
As Dunne so rightly fears, none of those questions is likely to be debated because of the tribal nature of New Zealand politics.
Anything an opponent proposes is automatically wrong and must be stopped.
If the parties only paused in their squabbling for a moment and looked across the Tasman they would find Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was already implementing a similar $5.5 billion scheme to wire the whole country with faster broadband.
Has Labour, New Zealand First or Act considered the competitive edge this would give Australia over New Zealand if we continue to sit on our hands? The answer is no.
John Key's plan may have its fish-hooks but the concept is right. In a sane world, Cunliffe would have slapped his thigh, said "Damn good idea", and taken up the idea to see how it might work.
No chance of that in the petty political universe we are cursed with.
But congratulations, anyway, to Peter Dunne for trying to inject a brief moment of sanity into Parliament.
