Our choice: Fate or Future

bushfirebill Uncategorized

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.

Electric Broadband Postcard New stamp

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.

Abbott & Costello (Turnbull)

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.

Abbott And Turnbull Space Guns

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.

fRAUDBAND tRUCK

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.

Point Piper Fraudband Node 2

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.

2,081 thoughts on “Our choice: Fate or Future”

  4. Oh for frack’s sake, can Fraudband get any sillier?

    sortius ‏@sortius 22m
    .@TurnbullMalcolm confirms that they will be replacing the copper (with copper) in areas with bad copper #fail #NBN

  6. Victoria
    No, Abbott’s office says the investigation is not closed. Abbott says the matter is ended. Great communication they have there.

  7. leonetwo

    Thanks for clarification. That is why I was confused. Abbott said at his presser that matter was closed.

  10. C@tmomma – He’s such a twit. Everyone knows that you do the shock-horror “we had no idea things were so bad!” schtick after the election! Now we’ve got to live with the twisted logic of “We will handle things so much better than the present Government, as long as the present Government do all the work for us…”

    If they have to rely on the ALP delivering a surplus before the Coalition can deliver a surplus, why don’t we just cut out the middle man and vote the ALP back in?

  24. I should have mentioned this, but I forgot –
    Davis Speers, intorducing the PvO thing, said the presumption that Tony Abbott will win the election was ‘bad enough’, making the cut-throat comment within earshot of a journalist made it even worse. He said it was ‘the last thing Tony Abbott needs’.

    Let’s hope Tony gets a lot more stuff he doesn’t need. It might finish him off for good.

  26. Tlbd – It’s a bit of a drive but it’s very scenic and the ferns and the train track add something to the walk.

    I didn’t see a single person out there this morning – that’s a bonus too.

  27. Nine News Australia Nine News Australia ‏@9NewsAUS now

    UK newspaper #TheSun has reported entertainer Rolf Harris has been arrested in the UK on suspicion of sex offences. Coverage 3pm @Channel9.

  28. On twitter

    When Dr Mark Roberts gestured with a slit of throat to Penfold he ostensibly cut throat of whole Indigenous community. Penfold represents.

  29. Can’t verify this so far but:

    911 Operator ‏@911BUFF 3m

    BOSTON: BREAKING NEWS – ‘MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS, GRENADES AND SHOTS FIRED’ REPORTED ON POLICE SCANNER! MULTIPLE OFFICERS DOWN! #911BUFF

  30. SK

    Rolf Harris has been estranged from his own family for years. Might explain why

  31. A tweet reminded me about this –
    “The Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has signalled he’ll make major changes to Indigenous policies, should the Coalition win office later this year.

    As prime minister, Mr Abbott says he would assume direct responsibility for improving the lives of Aboriginal Australians, a move which would sideline the Indigenous Affairs Minister.

    But Mr Abbott was less forthcoming on the precise nature of the reforms he intends to introduce.”
    http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3717026.htm

    Now, thanks to a drunken staffer, we have a clearer idea of just what those ‘reforms’ will be.

  32. The Tech ‏@thetech 46s

    Police feed reports hand grenades and automatic gunfire. PD just ordered to retreat due to explosives. #mitshooting #CambMA

  36. SK

    Not sure if these are these suspects are involved in Both MIT and bombing, or one or the other

  37. TLBD and Ctar1

    my younger and fitter nieces and nephews tell me that the Red Rocks Gorge in Tuggeranong is a great walk – its somewhere between Pine Island and Kambah pool. I think nearest accessible place to park is just off Athlon dr just past Vikings club or just as you go up Learmonth dr there is a place to park near the start of a track that leads up Urambi hills – from there you can walk back towards Vikings to find track along the creek. Not sure which side of the creek is the best to walk along…

  38. SK

    The 911 twitter handle is reporting this now

    BOSTON UNDER ATTACK! BOTH SUSPECTS ARE IN CUSTODY AND BEING QUESTIONED BY THE FBI. #911BUFF

  39. SK

    It would be ironic if these suspects were students at MIT university. My daughter who recently travelled to US and to Boston, made the observations when the bombing took place, that it could be students from MIT

  40. angrybee

    Ta

    [ just past Vikings club ]

    So you can grab a schooner before heading home!

  42. Another tweet by the 911 mob. Seems to be ahead of the news reports

    BOSTON UNDER ATTACK! SECOND SUSPECT JUST PUT INTO A POLICE CAR AND STRIPPED NAKED. POLICE CONCERNED OF POSSIBLE OUTSTANDING SUSPECT!

  45. Way ahead of ABC24!

    They’re probably waiting for the PM’s post-COAG press conference to interrupt it with “breaking” news…

  49. I no no no why the LNP states didn’t back Gonski, but why didn’t Labor states sign up?

  50. Laura Tingle ‏@latingle 12m

    Abbott staffer demoted following throat cutting incident – Abbott statement

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