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 
Aguirre, I saw a bit of what’s under the surface the other day in our local area.
It was a gathering of the neighbourhood for Friday drinks. I’ve never been before – in 11 years – not my types.
The bitter, nasty, sexist talk among the men, once politics came up was atrocious.
These were not Westies, or tradies, but “fine, upstanding” bizoid types with nice cars, nice houses, respectable management jobs.
The filth and viciousness coming out of their mouths was shocking.
markjs
Puffy posted some of PVO tweets when most of us were in the land of nod
BB
How did you keep your cool?
Or, more precisely, DID you keep your cool?
Good Morning Dawn Observers! 🙂
I don’t feel any joy this morning in the knowledge that my predictions about Abbott’s Geelong ‘People’s Forum’ (sounds so egalitarian and Kumbaya, doesn’t it?), have been proven to have been on the money. That is, that the media today would find an angle out of it for general consumption which gave it greater gravitas than it deserved.
Thus far the angles I have heard from the media are:
1. The poll angle.
Reporting of the poll taken by Sky of the Undecided Voters showing that 50 of them were convinced to vote for Abbott in the upcoming election, based upon what they heard from him tonight. 40 who were still undecided, and 17 who decided that they could not vote for him based upon tonight’s performance.
Now, analysis of those numbers, for mine, means that there are undecided voters out there who just want to make sure that Abbott looks the goods, doesn’t scare the horses and is essentially coherent before they will give him their vote. I’d say these are people who are pee’d off with the government and want to vote against them, rather than for him.
The other 67 are sensible. 😉
Actually, I’d say that the 17 who decided not to vote for him is about the number I would have expected to have been really thinking about it deeply and took the task at hand super seriously.
The 40 that are still sitting on the fence is a fair enough number too, as there will be sensible people among that number who want to wait and see what the election itself throws up before they decide either way. Plus there would be a subset of the 40 who always wait to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”, before they cast their vote. Which is also their right.
Of course, it’s the other 50 that worry me because they appear to be really easy to win over, based upon last night’s performance from Abbott, which was in no way stellar, if your reports were correct and essentially unbiased. 🙂
Anyway, the other reporting angles I have heard taken out of last night’s brainfart session, and being reported in all seriousness(which is the most worrying aspect, for mine, from the media), are:
2. The Export-led Recovery in the Manufacturing Sector angle.
Magically, overnight, the media have swallowed Abbot’s line, and then regurgitated it this morning as gospel, that he has the answers to our slumping Manufacturing Industry sector, and that answer is, in a folksy nutshell, ‘Build it attractively, and they will come from overseas and buy it’.
Good luck with that fanciful notion, Tone, with the $Aus being at the levels it is. Unless he has another cunning plan to cause a collapse in the value of the $Aussie. Although I am expecting it to happen organically, if, heaven forbid, he and Hockey get the keys to the Candy Shop.
Finally,
3. The perennial ‘Carbon Tax’ angle.
All that is reported these days is ‘Carbon Tax, Ya! Boo! Sucks! and our saviour, Tony Abbott, riding in on his White Charger, with his whiter than white shirt, confidently predicts that he will have gotten rid of the ‘Carbon Tax’ by mid-2014′.
That’s it. No analysis of any of the multitudinous ramifications for the Budget or the move to tackle Greenhouse Gas emissions in order to attempt to do our bit to tackle the catastrophic effects of Global Warming and Climate Change, just this simplistic, pants-wetting, fanboi and girl reportage.
And this was the ABC, supposedly the swats in the class. Lord knows what the Cheerleaders on the commercial channels will be saying about the forum today. I shudder to think.
BB
If Julia was Julian, the party would have more support. Nothing will convince me otherwise. Abbott is so atrocious, and yet he is ahead of PMJG in all the metrics. I have no clue what it is going to take to change things.
victoria
I know all that, but to get around the Abbott plot the government will have to do more than just allow a conscience vote.
Mr and Ms Average Voter are none too bright. They tend to have attention spans that make boxer puppies look like Einstein. Most won’t even remember that Labor has already allowed a conscience vote and the last attempt at getting legislation up failed because Abbott was so hard-line. If a Tory-friendly media tell them that Abott’s generous change of heart has allowed same sex marriage legislation pass then that’s what they will believe. He claims all the credit, the ‘bad government’ gets beaten about the head.
I think we should all chip-in to create a sort of “sheltered workshop” for the rehabilitation of those LNP. ministers eg; Hunt, Turnbull….who are obliged to make utter, utter fools of themselves to the point of imbecility, in defending their leader’s policies…so they can slowly, sensitively regain a sense of self-worth in the community.
I nominate Sophie Mirabella to work on them!
leonetwo
Today PMJG will be focussed on getting the States on board with the Gonski reforms. Thereafter the govt had better start on the politics. So far they seem to be behaving in a fatalistic way.
C@tmomma,
I am hoping that little ‘bomb’ you told us about arrives soon!
Honestly, I’m not surprised that a Senior Abbott Staffer said those things and behaved in that way. How do you think a person gets to be in a Senior position in the federal Liberal Party? By being a nice guy? You just have to look at Abbott himself for the answer to that question.
c@tmomma
I am curious as to who the eminent Australian that was threatened by this staffer. Will PVO reveal all?
How did I react to a conversation whose jist was that Julia is a lesbian and Tim is a homosexual?
As it was my first (and probably last) neighbourhood soiree, I turned to the women and chatted with them.
Later on, one of the blokes broke away from the group and was talking to my wife. I smarmed myself into that conversation and eventually, when HI went home early, got right into it. He felt the same as I did about what the ring-leader of the boofheads whad been saying, but didn’t want to upset the applecart by diverting the “Get Julia” agenda.
Not a bad chap, actually, once you got him on his own. And a useful contact too!
He’s one of Sydney’s top orthodontists.
It wasn’t long until I flashed the pearlies at him and asked him “Whaddaya think of my chances with this?”, indicating a particularly ugly tooth up the back of my mouth.
He didn’t think much of it at all.
About that peoples forum last night. I have to ask – what was going on with Tony’s hair? Was it a very small and bouffant toupee? Did he use too much volumising product? Was Tony finding living in a …er….’caravan’ diffucult when it came to hair care? Who knows. It just looked weird.
I’m going with Option (1) – a toupee. Perhaps the introductory stage of a hair make-over. Tony’s Toupees will get bigger as we get closer to the election and by September Tones will have a full head of hair. We, of course, are supposedly so stupid that we won’t notice a thing. The OM will co-operate by carefully doctoring all old images showing a rapidly balding Tony.
SK Sorry to hear your news I’m thinking of you.
Was Reachtel (automated) polled last night and well I just lied to the computer – why give them the benefit of my intentions.
Re Geelong and Corio, it’s still a big country town and like me the voters might just lie about their voting intentions because who they vote for on the day is their business.
Yesterday I heard an upright former member of the judiciary admonish little old ladies who who rusted on Liberal supporters that young women shouldn’t vote for Tony Abbott reminding the room of Abbott’s history with RU486. Went down a treat with the protestants in the room.
spacekidette,
It’s not something that the party knows about, so I don’t know if it ever will.
I know about it. The person who told me knows about it. Probably a few other people. That’s it. Omerta at the pain of death, sadly. 😦
Anyway, it would probably be denied. It’s been well covered up for a very long time now.
I doubt it. Someone will have a chat to him.
They usually do, and he usually backs off.
Unfortunately I doubt PvO will say anything else on the matter, since his boss is Rupert Murdoch after all. And he doesn’t want his precious Tony’s electoral prospects damaged.
victoria,
It’s probably just someone, eminent as he is and respected as he should be, like Dr Tim Flannery. I’d say PvO is probably more outraged at the attitude and the language used than who the target is.
Tony Abbott = Protected Species = Front Man for a Bunch of Sick Individuals and Ruthless Bastards. That is all.
This on twitter
[Tony Abbott LNP senior staffer threatening to cut Flannery’s throat in front of PVO is good politics #youknowitmakessense #auspol]
You remember how Bananaby said he would not take his Senate seat back if he didn’t win New England? Well, the positioning and pushing to make sure he can do exactly that has begun.
“THE LNP has been warned to delay choosing Barnaby Joyce’s Senate replacement until after the federal election.”
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/tony-abbotts-team-tells-lnp-to-delay-choosing-barnaby-joyces-senate-replacement-until-after-september/story-e6freoof-1226623835471
The excuse for delaying until they are sure of Bananaby’s fate is that a pre-selection might distract the Queensland LNP from its focus on the election. Any old excuse will do….the private party polling must have shown Bananaby has a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning New England.
victoria – I think that tweeter is foolish to speculate at this stage
LL
Agreed.
The Twitterverse has decided it’s Flannery and as usual with Twitter gossip there is no evidence to back it up. PvO has still not said who it was.
In my experience the Aussie Twittersphere “gossip” is correct more often than not …
There seems to be a bit of National Party mumbling/waking up going on. First Tony Windsor says Nats high-ups in New England don’t want Barnaby and are looking to him to help them out by winning. Then yesterday there was a story about Nats in Cowper sayng they will vote against Luke Hartsuyker (aka Pruneface) because he’s useless. Hartsuyker almost lost his once safe National seat in 2007, he could easily lose this time. Losing Cowper would be a huge blow to the Nats.
leonetwo
It would be absolutely delicious
billie,
Thank you xx
Elections are funny things. Some seats that a party thinks they have a lock on can end up going in ‘interesting’ directions due to local undercurrents. 🙂
Check this guy out! He’s one of us! What did I tell you about the enthusiastic, committed and smart young people coming up through the party? We ain’t dead yet!
https://twitter.com/intent/follow?ea_u=88543209&ea_e=1367504996&screen_name=Cal_Viney&ea_s=80e108461591ff3cce86493e2b685b2e6368f1ea
C@t @ 8.54
I’m intrigued. Could it be the same one I’ve heard about a prominent LNP figure taking some “time off” after the 2007 election?
What a dog. As per usual, he is hedging his bets
“@Simon_Cullen: Abbott on gay marriage: “I’m not trying to say that the party is committed for ever and a day to the current position.” (1/2)”
“@Simon_Cullen: Abbott on gay marriage: “I’m saying that this will be a matter for the post-election party room.” (2/2)”
It’s funny how the same poll can be reported in very different ways.
Last week Farifax Regional ran another of their political polls across all their regional websites. I voted in it – about 20 times, I think. The total response was 2776 votes. Obviously Menzies House had their people onto it. As well as the usual ‘Who would you vote for’ stuff there were questions in the NBN, whose plan do you prefer, what you would be prepared to pay for high-speed internet access.
The Border Mail wrote up the results in a very positive way –
http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/1438714/regional-australians-dive-into-the-nbn-fast-lane/?cs=2452
My local paper did not. They focussed on Barnaby Joyce, voted best to represent regional Australia (some voters must have been having a lend of the pollsters) and on voters thinking the performance of the independents had been poor, and on other negatives. Not a word about the NBN.
http://www.portnews.com.au/story/1438616/is-this-man-the-voice-of-regional-australia/?cs=2452
it’s pretty easy to see the bias of each paper’s editior in these stories.
PMJG said yesterday that another conscience vote should go before parliament. She ought to announce that another vote should take place in the parliament during the next sitting of Parliament. Then see what the mad monk does
“@Simon_Cullen: WA Premier Colin Barnett says gay marriage legislation should be decided by a conscience vote.”
Van Onselen, who witnessed the threat, told news.com.au a male, “very senior member of Abbott’s staff” told the prominent Australian, who works in the not-for-profit sector, he would “cut his throat” when “we” are in Government.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/tony-abbott-staffer-well-cut-your-throat/story-fncynjr2-1226624063491#ixzz2QrZGc3D6
http://www.news.com.au/national-news/tony-abbott-staffer-well-cut-your-throat/story-fncynjr2-1226624063491
Tony Abbott staffer told eminent Australian: ‘We’ll cut your throat’
Candace Sutton
news.com.au
April 19, 2013 9:04AM
A SENIOR Tony Abbott staffer threatened to “cut the throat” of an eminent Australian last night at the gala Qantas party, political commentator Peter Van Onselen has said.
Van Onselen, who witnessed the threat, told news.com.au a male, “very senior member of Abbott’s staff” told the prominent Australian, who works in the not-for-profit sector, he would “cut his throat” when “we” are in Government.
Do you think that ‘Cut his throat’ when ‘we’ are in government story might make a few more journalists tell us what they really know?
On pain of losing their job, I don’t think so.
Narns,
I don’t think so. Though it’s good to know there’s more than one skeleton in the L/NP closets. 🙂
Problem is, they lock them up and throw away the key. Still, some people can peep through the keyholes. 🙂
This PvO thing will fizzle. They always do.
BB/c@tmomma
Goodness me it seems my negativity lately, as well and truly infected you guys!!
Just when I am feeling more positive!!
Curiosity led me to google maps and the town of West, the site of the tragic industrial accident. It is quite an interesting part of the world. Just to the north is Hillsboro, home of the mad anti gay baptists who protest at war funerals. Just to the south is Waco where there was a mini war with the mad Branch Davidian religious cult.
Victoria,
You were saying to Leone a while ago that the govt was bedding down the Gonski details.
Like you I get frustrated with the battle we are facing.
As has been mentioned many times it’s especially galling with the MSM hypocrisy who not so long ago bemoaned the 24 hour news cycle, spin and lack of policy substance now criticising the govt for doing exactly what they lamented before.
But given that background, I was thinking how I would spend the next 5 months if I were the Govt’s strategist.
I would know that we weren’t going to get a break from MSM.
So I would suggest to all Ministers,” OK, between now and the budget get your house in order. Tie up all loose ends get all policies in place that we are taking to the election. Don’t worry about any selling yet. Don’t get distracted. Just knuckle down and get our policies right.”
Maybe others can come up with other things I’ve missed, but I think the govt has only got Gonski, media reform and the budget to get in place. From there it’s 3 months of selling and playing the political game.
That’s how I would play it.
Whether the govt is doing this I don’t know or whether I’m clutching at straws only time will tell
The federal liberal “everything, absolutely everything’s terrible so you’ll have to vote us in & then we’ll decide who we’ll be nice to” strategy has filtered down to S.A. Opposition leader saying yesterday that they’ll have a bit of a think about things once they’re elected.
rmn1953
The education policy is important to PMJG. She wants the fib states to be on board. The govt cannot behave in an adverserial manner at present. They risk losing the fibs states co operation. If the policy is signed off, I believe the govt will then go hammer and tong. That is my feeling. I also have a few other thoughts as to what may happen after the budget as well, but dont want to express these thoughts out loud just yet.
As I said earlier, the govt does seem to be behaving in a very fatalistic manner at present. Some of it ties in with the internal ructions.
That settles it then. Grrrrr……
[Katharine Murphy @murpharoo 5m
Mr Abbott says one of his staff has apologised for an incident at a dinner last night and the “matter has now ended”.]
Off for a while. Talk later
I think BB is right. Abbott just said the matter had been investigated, the staffer had been counselled and had apologised. Abbott then said the matter had ended. Clear instructions to the press pack. In the ABC24 wrap-up, not a word of it was mentioned. The fix is in.
Hate to say I told youse so…
Said “eminent Australian” will keep his trap shut for fear of retribution.
No-one will investigate who it was or, if they do, will keep schtum about it.
What would be an utter scandal with Labor is a non-event with the Coalition.
A couple of good clips from Mad as Hell this week. They haven’t put up the broadband one yet.
Combet:
Trend:
Micallef and Thatcher:
And here’s the classic pamphlet one from a couple of weeks ago if you haven’t seen it yet:
I wonder if it was a typical tory “I’m sorry if he was offended” excuse of an apology.
We need media diversity in this country. Seriously, this is not healthy for democracy the way things are now.
Even though politics in the UK and the USA are pretty nasty, at least media publications keep both sides accountable in one way or another.