Whether Australia is a cork on the water, floating around dependent on economic tides and political wave action is the single most important question facing the nation today.
Our two-speed economy is not working.
We must find alternatives to manufacturing cars that motorists do not want, ships that never get off the drawing board, making appliances and gizmos that are made better and cheaper in low-cost labour economies… and the “Fly-In/Fly-Out” mentality that tells us digging up dirt is the only way to national prosperity.
One thing that cannot be brokered, dismantled or diluted is our ability to think: our native “smarts”.
We have very good educational standards, high literacy skills and a skilled, adaptable workforce. Yet our main economic preoccupation is digging holes in the ground and flogging off the dirt to nations willing to add value to it, where we are not. Mining has caused our economy to become “two-speed” – one part of it is booming and the other is declining.
We seem to have applied little thought to the following question: “What do we do to bring our economy fully up to speed?”
Mining sucks skills and resources from other segments of our industry. It forces our dollar higher and makes exporting manufactured goods un-competitive with the rest of the world.
We need to find a way of reconciling the undoubted good fortune that we have stumbled upon by being located above some of the world’s greatest mineral riches, and the desperate plight of our old standby industries struggling to make a quid where our goods and services are simply too expensive for other nations to purchase.
We need to find a future, not just settle for a fate based on doing what we have always done, even after it becomes unrewarding and un-competitive.
With these thoughts in mind I turned to the ABC web site to read an article by Kevin Morgan, on the NBN v. the Coalition’s #Fraudband copper rehash.
Morgan, who styles himself as a “commentator” on telecommunications policy and regulation, disappointed me. Greatly.
As I read through the column my eyes opened wider with shock that someone so supposedly well-informed could come up with the relentlessly negative commentary that he had presented.
It almost sounded as if he was personally offended by the NBN.
For example, what a stupid thing to write:
It’s now demonstrable that the Government’s all-fibre NBN, with its nominal price tag of $37.4 billion, cannot be built within either its promised budget or timeframe. In the first 10 weeks of this year, NBN Co, the company charged with the fibre rollout, passed only an additional 28 households a day. At that rate it would take 1,200 years to build the NBN.
And from a supposed “expert” too. A slow start is extrapolated out to the run of the project and becomes “1,200 years”. Does Morgan sincerely believe the NBN will take 1,200 years to build? I doubt it. It’s such an idiotic, misguided thing to write that it leads his readers to question his sincerity and his motives for writing it. And this too:
Indeed, it seems the only issue in play is the differing speeds promised by the Labor Government’s fibre to every home policy (FTTH) and those offered under the Coalition’s fibre to the node (FTTN) proposal…
What rock do they drag these people from under? And why is the ABC publishing such arrant nonsense?
OF COURSE, when it comes to the internet and telecommunications in general, speed is everything, absolutely everything.
Speed is fundamental to the very nature of any telecommunications system. Speed defines telecommunications.
It’s not 100mbps v. 25mbps we need to consider. It’s the almost limitless potential speed of FTTP (Fibre To the Premises) v. the Brick Wall that FTTN (Fibre To The Node) is going to run into in a few short years.
You don’t have to rebuild the NBN to get the mega and giga speeds our country is going to need in the very near future. There’s no need to roll out new cable or dig new ditches nationwide to upgrade the NBN.
You simply upgrade the switching equipment at the exchange, as better and faster technology becomes available. That way great leaps in technology can be applied efficiently to data distribution centres, and rolled out through existing infrastructure painlessly, without having to literally start again from the ground up.
After the upgrade, the new speeds and data flows roll out through the already built and commissioned pipeline, built at 2013 prices, not the inflated prices of some future decade.
The pipeline stays in the ground ready for gigabits per second any time the switch gear catches up.
To upgrade FTTN you have to pull out all the old, power-hungry cabinets – 60,000 of them – and build what Labor is building now anyway, with all the added up front extra costs to FTTN that building it right first via the NBN time avoids. By the time he’s half-way through his article, Morgan has characterized the NBN as a…
… train wreck that the Coalition has been obliged to frame their policy {around}. …
… thats right, a “train wreck”. Total destruction, complete disarray, mass deaths and suffering. A train wreck. What a spirit of adventure Kevin Morgan has! He can only see the past:
The reality is FTTN is by far and away the most commonly used technology to take fibre close to the consumer.
So if it was alright yesterday… then it must be alright for tomorrow.
Australia is a country that relies for its economic success on digging holes in the ground.
But it cannot rely forever on selling dirt to other, more enterprising economies, nor should it.
Morgan’s thesis (if you can call it that) is effectively that we should just continue doing what we have always done, that we should, by implication, continue to rely on mining, and when that peters out, we’ll have to find something else to do.
Gee what would that be?
This whole attitude that we must always accept second-best, that we don’t “do” high tech, that we should never set ourselves up for anything in the future, that we should only go by what other countries are doing (and do no more) is a death knell for Australia’s competitiveness in the not so distant future.
We are already running a “two-speed” economy. Exporters and manufacturers can’t compete with the dollar being so high. We will continue to run two-speed if we don’t get off our political arses and stop justifying outdated junk copper technology, worth not much more than its scrap value, by labelling ourselves as not good enough for the best.
This is when even this “best” is almost not enough to surmount the hurdles our economy needs to become competitive in the world, in more ways than just digging holes in the ground.
We need to become a one-speed, NOT two-speed economy.
The NBN will do that, or at least will help, but the cultural and technological cringers in the Coalition and in their fans like Henry Morgan will doom us to always being one step behind, while the rest of the world gets on with coping with the 21st century.
The question we must all ask ourselves is do we want a fate, or do we want a future?
To deliberately pick a second best option in telecommunications, like #Fraudband, when the best is underway and being built as the NBN, is vandalism of the highest order against the Australian people and the economy.
As Nick Ross of the ABC put it so tellingly, it’s like evaluating the viability of Sydney Harbour Bridge simply in terms of how much profit collecting tolls will generate.
It’s not about tolls, contracts, internet plans, a few dollars here and there spent laying cable (I know its billions, but judged against potential returns – real returns – it’s peanuts), or whether we could better spend the money paying for subsidized nannies, funding well-off retirees who use superannuation as a tax dodge or propping up expensive, exclusive private schools that sustain networks not of intelligence or enterprise, but of mates who throw easy business opportunities to each other.
It’s about looking forward to a way where we can bust the future of Australia right open and become not only a lucky country, but a leading nation in this competitive world, relying on intelligence and not the dumb luck that’s got us by so far.
We’re going to lose our car industry soon, with all the economic death and destruction for the manufacturing sector that loss will entail. What fools we will look like if, faced with having to re-skill our country, we need to rely on the technology of the early 1900s, as Morgan advocates, not just to talk to each other, but to talk to and participate in the future world.
THE PUB 
Confessions…good pic of those two people watching Thatcher’s funeral….I notice that neither (and the elderly man on the left had a walking stick) had put their briefcases down…so I guess they weren’t intending to stay till the end!
I pointed out that we have the same policy as the Coalition except for turn the boats back, which can’t be done, and the Temp Visas.
Also that flyer i received only had the cost and the numbers. Nothing on how they will stop the Boats.
It seems that as we got tougher the more boats arrived.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/kill-poor-to-fix-budget-writes-lobbyist-with-liberal-links-20130416-2hygv.html
this link and others this morning
I am amazed to see in the media
the legal one is all over face book
having first been in the media link s above
well I go back to my knitting now and to the womanly thing
of being
stupid
denese
I cannot knit. So I must be even more stupid. 🙂
Jaycee:
I’m assuming the third man in the white shirt is a waiter at that cafe, so he won’t be watching either.
last night on the page before this one I posted
what bowen said on 7.30
the text
was such a lovley little conversation with ulman
read it,,,,, the comment about wtte labor
the man one and man 2
now where they just walking along the street ?
and as ulman is based in Canberra who ask who to go on the walk through
western Sydney
my wish is that we of course retain, gov, but bowen and husiz lose their seats
“till then and also the woman junos too iam talking proably about
both sides of the coin
but remember this in 1900 there was not to many female
junos , read the story ,”
I read the story and appeared to me the issue was male journos, rather than the product of an arrogant, entitled class system with gender a very secondary and coincidental issue if that. There are plenty of female journos whose sheer nastiness is every bit as bad as men’s, but that is not a gender issue and it shouldn’t be portrayed as such.
The ‘patriarchal’ society that existed in the early 1900s was very much a continuation of the aptly named Victorian era which was being torn down and rightly so, but the great majority of the rubbish and injustice that took place was based on class far moreso than gender.
Which was the point I was trying to make.
Janelle did point out that recently the largest arrivals have been from Sri Lanka and that there is a big scam promising them that they are going for a job in Australia and are not Asylum Seekers.
BB
At what point of this political cycle is it going to be said out loud? ie that the NBN is a serious threat to Murdoch, and the coalition are doing his bidding
muskiemp
And most of these Sri Lankans have been returned to their country. Last figure I heard was 1000 so far
This is absolutely lovely – the gallery in the NZ parliament bursting into song when the vote on same sex marriage is announced.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/10001204/New-Zealand-parliament-breaks-out-in-song-after-gay-marriage-vote.html
Confessions…For this one time I am in agreement with the scriptures…: “Let the dead bury the dead.”
leonetwo
Heartwarming. Unlike our gallery of recent times. 😦
True BB. but the journalist suckers…and suckers are the same the world over..who sacrifice their integrity to do the dirty-work must really believe they will get some reward of position in the wreck of Australia’s “New Media”…They will be given the reward ALL UNTRUSTWORTHY TURNCOATS are given…History from Judas down have demonstrated there is scant or cruel payment for those who do the filthy bidding of a callous master……..for everybody despises to the core ; the traitor.
What happened to the cunning inventor of the “Bronze Bull” torture device?….HE was it’s first victim by order of the amused tyrant!
Murdoch’s minions will be like rewarded…..He won’t want them around to remind him of his deviousness.
A few Abbott things from his Pollie Pedal presser yesterday that seem to have been missed here –
Coffee splurting moment #1 – Abbott on the origins of his stunt –
‘…. I thought that one thing we could do to try to raise the reputation of politicians was something that was a little bit selfless, something that was a little bit humble and out of the ordinary, and hence the idea of a long distance charity bike ride staying in caravan parks and visiting parts of Australia that most politicians didn’t see was born.’
Caravan parks? Really? Since when have caravan parks charged $345 a night Tony?
Coffee splurting moment #2
Tones was asked if he’d be appearing in court when the Ettridge thing starts. He had this to say –
‘I think it’s fair to say that this is going to be just a bit of a sideshow and I try not to be involved in sideshows if I can avoid it.’
The Stuntman himself doesn’t want to be in a sideshow? What else could you call his performance over the last two and a half years? Stunt after stunt, mostly in Village People costumes, his family dragged quite literally by the hand, look at the photos, into camera range at every possible opportunity, the aggression in the hose, the grand-standing demands for Messrs Slipper and Thomson to resign, on and on and on, the whole thing has been nothing but one long sideshow.
http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/News/tabid/94/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/9151/Joint-Doorstop-Interview-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx
Hat tip to shellbell
Court today:
Justice Jessup Court No. 1, Level 21
10:15 AM Interlocutory Hearing
1 by Videoconference
(P)VID798/2012 GENERAL MANAGER OF FAIR WORK AUSTRALIA v CRAIG THOMSON
To decide whether the FWA proceedings are stopped pending the resolution of the criminal proceedings.
Leonetwo
Not to mention the part when asked if as PM would he continue to ride. His hubris is going to be his undoing (hopefully at some stage).
Considering the attachment that some, even on this board and other lefty blogs have to Foxtel, mostly for the sports coverage (and also a little for Sky News), Murdoch’s pay TV network has a lot of fans, to whom twenty-odd people running around a football pitch, or vying with each other to find the filthiest epithet they can throw at the Labor government, is more important than what the malignant old bastard is doing to our nation.
If Murdoch is prepared to pay up big to take the BBC off our national free-to-air broadcasting spectrum, then he is in for the long haul.
Abbott will never allow the NBN to go ahead in its current form until Murdoch lets him know that he is good and ready with an angle to commercially exploit it.
Likewise, gay marriage is off the agenda.
Pell will never allow Abbott to legislate for it. It’s a basic, foundation belief for Pell that can’t be breached or chipped away, no matter what the public wants or what is right.
Abbott has a duty borne of faith to follow his Cardinal’s instructions on matters like this. Ditto for the rest of the Catholic school boys on his team, especially the Jesuit-educated ones.
There are some things that just cannot be countenanced, no matter what the logic or common sense of the opposing arguments entail.
BB
The voters ought to be made aware of the choices NBN will give them as a service provider, which will include sports at some time in the future
There will be a brief statement released by the FBI at 10 am re Boston bombing
Re Thatcher’s funeral. I didn’t watch it because, well, I don’t care. But I have been fascinated at the way commercial stations have been attempting to portray her death. I’ve seen a couple of examples, both from those one-minute newsbreaks (I’d never go as far as to actually watch a commercial news program). One on Channel 7 described ‘those who hated her’ as ‘dancing in the streets’. I have no idea who they were referring to as I’ve seen none of that. It sounded not only a defensive and editorial statement (especially for a newsbreak) but it seemed to me they were attempting to evoke images of Middle Eastern countries, as that is the only footage they ever show of anyone dancing in the streets over politics.
Channel 9 said in reference to her funeral something like ‘many will mourn her passing, while her detractors will be rejoicing’. It sounded very much like a ‘whose side are you on?’ challenge, with the implication that anyone who didn’t like her was being distasteful.
Look, the fact of the matter is that nobody cares. She’s had no influence over anything for at least a generation. She’s a relic.She’s left no legacy, nothing people can feel proud of. If you were asked to complete the sentence, “Margaret Thatcher makes me feel proud because…” even an admirer might be a bit stumped. The only possible answers are ‘she was a successful woman’ and ‘Falklands’. But there are far better female role models in politics, and the Falklands War was, how shall I put it – a bit unnecessary. And we’re all a bit over the imperialist mentality. Far from ‘rejoicing’ I’d think people would rather not be forced to think of her at all.
The worst reaction I heard from people was, “Oh, she died. Good.” Mostly it was, “Did she? Oh well.”
ALICE HENRY (1857-1943)
Alice was almost certainly the first woman journalist in Australia to be taken on to a newspaper staff and trained on the job when she joined the Australasian in the 1880s. She became one of Australia’s most prominent feminists and social reformers. Her journalism championed the causes of juvenile courts, women’s hospitals, proportional representation, epileptic colonies, care for the handicapped and labor reform. In 1905, she went to the United States for 30 years, achieving prominence as secretary of the Chicago branch of the National Women’s Trade Union league and editor of the League’s journal Life and Labor
story-e6frf7kx-1226532825912
now why did she feel the need to go to the usa
wish we could ask her.
this is my point.
Libs – keeping it classy since … never.
Tweet and sour: MP in spat with Aboriginal woman on colonialism
Aguirre
MT didn’t die last week – the death event happened when she got chucked out of No. 10.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Argus_(Australia).
look at the history of the argus
and the owner ship
…………………………………………………………………………………..
so have generations of journalists had
good teachers/ role models
what do you think I have no idea?
PM Abbott 2016: how much can a koala bear?
Jaeger
I am actually quite surprised by Austen’s piece in the Age. Quite good
Aguirre,
I’m one of those who couldn’t care less about the demise of Thatcher. It has pissed me off no end though, that Australia has been force fed endless diatribes about the so-called legacy of the Thatcher years and the admiration held for the woman by the likes of Howard and his ilk.
When our media can cut short their live broadcast of OUR PM’s Community Cabinet to cover the bloody funeral of Britain’s ex PM tells us how much interest Murdoch’s media have in this country in the run-up to the most important election we’ve faced in a generation. It just shows that Australian voters are being purposely kept from getting first-hand information about what our LABOR government is doing.
It is a matter of “we will tell you what you are intyerested in and what you want to know”.
Jaeger
[In the end, I was badly beaten. I also lost the election.]
😆
Excellent.
A very dignified affair:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/in-pictures-guests-arrive-at-margaret-thatchers-funeral-8576045.html?action=gallery&ino=1
Jennifer @conceravota 9m
And IPA wants same here. RT @SpaceKidette: Wake up America. Lobby groups have hi-jacked your Legislature. #guncontrol
Expand
Space Kidette Space Kidette @SpaceKidette 7m
@conceravota Yep. We are in serious danger of heading down the same ridiculous path.
Mark Butler MP @Mark_Butler_MP 3m
I’m announcing a substantial financial incentive for the development of affordable rental homes at 11:30 in #Adelaide #affordablehousing
SK
Sounds interesting
The FBI has now cancelled their presser
I’m getting very sick and tired of being bullied beacuse I have an ‘attachmnent’ to Foxtel. What I choose to do with my spare time and my money is my business, shove your opinions up your arse.
Not everyone has Foxtel for sport or Sky News, altough Sky and APAC have their advantages, especially when, for example, Their ABC decides to cut short a presser or run some pommy woman’s funeral instead of the PM’s community cabinet. I signed up years ago when it was Austar because I could not bear the thought of another summer with nothing on TV but tennis, cricket, more cricket, tennis, more tennis and then for a change, some more cricket. I haven’t regretted it. I had the sports channels removed from my package years ago, when Austar yielded to demand and made that removal possible.
You know, I don’t care if Murdoch makes money from my lousy contribution each month. What do you contribute to his wealth? Ever thought about that while you are busy concocting yet another ‘why are you suckers paying Rupert for Foxtel’ post? Here’s the extent of the Evil Empire. It makes interesting reading. Just scroll down, you’ll find the very long list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation#Magazines
Do you refuse to pay to see any movie from 20th Century Fox or Blue Sky Studios? Do you boycott Murdoch magazines like Gardening Australia or Delicious? Do you refuse to give links to Murdoch newspapers? The answers to those questions would be no, no and no, I would think. So why should I cancel my Foxtel just because you say I must?
FBI warns media to check facts before announcing Boston updates
Arrest announced in ricin letters case; I doubt they’re a “left-wing radical student”.
Obama ‘ricin’ letter suspect arrested
Janice – I’m not so fussed about the eulogies and the ‘legacy of Thatcher’ stuff. I don’t imagine anyone could possibly be swayed in their opinion of her by now, so it’s just going to annoy people. The Community Cabinets are most effective for those who attend them – most people watching on TV are going to be heavily ALP-leaning anyway.
The strength of the CCs are probably also their weakness as far as being newsworthy. They’re information-loaded, and are primarily about community access and fleshing out the message. News carriers thrive on conflict or, failing that, schmaltz. They’re never going to find an ‘angle’ on an adult discussion of policies that directly affect the Australian people. They’re far happier carrying messages such as “We’re being overrun by Asylum Seekers!” or “Oh My God We’re In Debt We’re Going To Go Broke!” or “The Mining Industry Can’t Pay Its Taxes What Are We Going To Do!” or “It’s A Tax!! She Said It’s A Tax!! Run For The Hills!!!!!” Or, you know, what Margie’s curtains look like or the startling fact that Abbott seems to like his family and there are women in it. So take that Gillard you witch. That sort of thing.
Pretending that Thatcher is akin to royalty is just a way for hard-line capitalists to vicariously stomp on the working class. It’s a bit of theatre for rich people.
Aguirre.
Oh, no – are you saying the media indulge in “class warfare”? I thought that was reserved for Laborites !
You’re right of course, that tales of gloom and doom and Margie’s taste in curtains make for better media talk than anything serious such as real policies.
Abbott in campaign mode – getting ready for his grand entrance to The Lodge. Today it is the cost of living – families are struggling and need the helping hand of the would’ve been pope. Lying mongrel.
Now for Abbott it is the ‘Forgotten Families’ and the Government is ‘spending like a drunken Sailor’.
Tones is going all ‘orange’ – too much golf with John Boehner?
Has Abbott announced any policies?
Abbott still wants to pay the rich $75,000 for having a baby. He says it is not a welfare issue but a workplace issue. Then why do I have to pay for someone $75,000 to have a baby. Why not the Workplace?
Thanks for that pic, CTar1. Is Fergy drooling over Big Bill Clinton? It may become more famous than Berlusconi perving on our PM’s bum.
Janice:
That would be our old friend Projection again. Class warfare is necessary for the ‘ruling classes’ because it helps to define them and entrench their advantages. So they perpetrate it. But it’s unpleasant for them to have to admit that, so they blame it on the Workers. Most of whom would not like to be the Workers – they’re striving for equality in all things. So it’s pretty easy to see where the Class Warfare idea is coming from.
It’s a bit messy in this day and age, when everyone is encouraged to become ‘aspirational’. The idea that classes even exist is anathema to the modern politician. But you see, what is desired is that there still be the fabulously rich and powerful, while everyone else is encouraged in the idea that they could join the ranks as well. Keeping the divisions, while putting out the idea that the divisions don’t actually exist, is an unsustainable balance. It takes the death of a rampant right-wing capitalist such as Thatcher to bring the tensions to the surface again.
Watching people on $50K and less fighting for the rights of mining barons to keep their obscene profits gives a fairly clear indication of the confusing state “class warfare” is in at the moment.
GD
There’s another ripper of her in the gallery set of her leaving.
Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, CH, PC also has a silly photo in there (he’s one of the biggest turkeys I’ve ever had to deal with).
Campbell Newman tells parliament embattled MP Scott Driscoll will “probably be expelled by LNP” #qldpol
Have you stopped watching free-to-air tv as well, BB, considering their anti-Labor bias? By watching it aren’t you supporting their business model as well?