The Federal Opposition has vowed to make the national broadband network a "battlefield", but don't tell that to the troops who are already down in the trenches working on the first roll-out.A crew from the Australian Broadband Company which is installing the infrastructure came through our street last month, laying the conduit pipes for the fibre that will take (in our case) Kiama Downs and, eventually, the whole of Australia into the 21st century world of high-speed internet.Nice people they were, too. Very considerate of the residents - and most apologetic when their "ditch witch" boring machine hit hard rock outside our house, which meant it spent a week on the nature strip drilling away.But we are the lucky ones. Kiama Downs/Minnamurra is the test site for the NBN rollout for the Australian mainland, while Tasmania will be the first state to be connected.At least we know we're going to be connected.When Opposition Leader Tony Abbott named his shadow cabinet after the election, he appointed his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull as the "shock trooper" whose job it would be to "demolish" the Government's national broadband plans.We haven't heard too much on the subject from Mr Turnbull yet - which, hopefully, is a good sign.Mr Turnbull undoubtedly is highly intelligent and not necessarily swayed by the games most politicians play (as evidenced by his support for the Rudd government's carbon tax plans). Perhaps he doesn't have the stomach for arguing a case that is clearly against Australia's long-term interest.In less than two decades, the internet literally has taken over the world. Now, it is part of every industry and critical to many services, and we simply can't afford to handicap our nation's development by wrecking the chance to build a broadband network that will substantially lift our internet speeds.Australia lags well behind most of the developed world - and quite a few of the so-called developing countries - for average internet download speed. The internet information site netindex puts Australia 41st in the latest rankings, based on tests on millions of consumer downloads around the globe.We're sandwiched between Luxembourg in 40th and Kazakhstan in 42nd place. Our average download speed is a snail-like 7.95Mbps, compared to the leading nation South Korea with 34.24Mbps.Instead of keeping up with the rest of the world on the information super-highway, we are beetling along in the slow lane in a clapped-out 1995 Commodore - being blown into the weeds by Romania, Bulgaria, Andorra et al.Which brings me to the cost of building the NBN, estimated at around $43 billion over five years.The Opposition would have you believe that is $43 billion being poured down the drain, but having had the infrastructure contractors in our neighbourhood these past few weeks, I can tell you that is anything but the case.These people work hard and have made a major contribution to our local economy - from renting houses, to patronising the shops and employing local contractors for traffic control and other services. Our neighbourhood bakery and takeaway shop have never had it so good.That's not money down the drain. That's money into local pockets.But it is what we get at the end that really counts.