Dave, what your country really needs (and mine maybe even more) are politicians that have more knowledge about technology and don't get fooled by lobbyists.
Here are just a few examples of government driven projects in Germany:
In the early 90s in the former GDR fibre was brought to almost every house but due to the lack of technology or its price, it could not be used. Later on they did not even get ISDN or DSL because the remaining copper lines still laying in the streets were too bad. What a fail...
Few years ago, I think it was 2008 the federal government promised to bring broad band internet (it was defined as 10MBit+ AFAIR) to every home (95%+). So they forced the big telcos by forbidding them to expand their broadband connections in the cities unless 95% were covered by 10MBit+. I was having 1Mbit in a small town and could be lucky because others had only 384Kbit and I thought "Yeah! I'm getting a faster connection." I don't know if our politicians were just too stupid - it definitely can't be because of a lack of lawyers in politics - but they did not include the word "flatrate" in their law. So in the end the "smart" telcos brought "broadband" by just upgrading their cell towers in smaller towns and countryside regions to LTE. So right now you can get LTE with up to 100Mbits in almost every village while you do not get it in bigger towns. Isn't that beautiful? No politician and certainly not the telcos mind that there is no flatrate and 30GB/month cost 80€ while 30GB is the most you can get.
Two years ago in my home town in the middle of nowhere in the west of Germany, the local government started a project with surrounding towns to bring broadband internet (25Mbit+) to every home. They did not define by what technology and just wanted to make a tender. Just a few weeks after they started the project the Deutsche Telekom, our ex state owned telco, announced that they had a new technology, called vectoring that would allow much higher bandwidth (100Mbit+) with the existing copper infrastructure and so the project was scrubbed.
Vectoring is a technology that lowers the cross talk by regarding the whole wiring harness. The only problem is that at least in bigger towns and cities this harness is not owned by one company alone because in addition to the Deutsche Telekom other companys have their distribution boards in those white boxes and the Telekom is forced to rent their infrastructure to their competitors. In smaller towns and villages that is usually not the case because the competitors are not interested in installing extra distribution hardware for so few customers. The problem is that the Deutsche Telekom says they would need to take back the control over the whole harness to implement vectoring while the competitors of course do not want that at all because they fear that the Deutsche Telekom becomes a monopolist again. So what happens? Nothing. Vectoring could be at least implemented in those small towns but it will not until they have found a compromise for the whole country. What a bummer...
Right now I really must not complain because I just moved to a bigger town and I've got 100Mbit via cable for 25€ and I could even get 150Mbit. But if I visit my parents at home there is no such thing like full-HD youtube videos unless I wait for hours and it makes me angry not to be able to watch even 480p without lagging. In the future I will definitely not move anywhere where I can not get a proper broadband connection (whatever it will be like then) and I think that owners who let their houses or appartments will think about it, when young people ask for the speed of the internet and then say:"I really love the appartment but 1Mbit is definitely too slow." In the future having a slow internet connection will be like having a non-paved road to your home nowadays. Not always impossible but never really comfortable.
In my opinion the problem with slow internet connections will go on in every country until the politicians have realiced that the internet is
the infrastructure of the 21st century like electricity had been in the late 19th and early 20th century. In Europe the baltic states show that there is a huge return on invest. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have the fastest average speed and the highest coverage of broadband connections in europe and so it's no wonder that for example Skype was founded by Estonians.
Although being interested in politics I have to admit I did not even know the name of one australian politician (I only knew who is the de facto head of state
) but I wish for your country to get smart politicians after the election who know what they're doing and doing it right.