The Prospect of Tony Abbot As Prime Minister

[tcpip]

Recent opinion polls show Tony Abbot has a better-than-even chance of becoming Prime Minister. This possible requires some serious thought. If you are gay, you can absolutely forget about same-sex marriage rights. At least with Labor, all that's required is to get the matter tabled at cabinet and the vote will be won. His absolutely archiac and offensive attitudes towards women, climate change and indigenous people is infuriating.

He carries a dangerous attitude towards to industrial relations and his deep indifference and ignorance of economic matters. Abbot loved 'Workchoices', and will bring it back; especially targetting unfair dismissal laws, pay and conditions, and penalty rates. Opposing the economic stimulus package, which is considered among the best designed in the world, with excellent results, Abbott not only expressed opposition to it, but slept through the vote after a night on the sauce.

Absolutely reckless cuts are planned against nation-building IT and environmental infrastructure, in favour of handing back $10.5 billion of resource rents from our commonwealth, to mining companies; because Tony understands that billionaires are having tough times. Abbott's accounting has been slippery or stupid. [T]he Coalition asked the department the cost of giving the Productivity Commission an extra $4 million a year. Yesterday the department replied poker-faced that it would cost $4 million a year.. One can only echo the words of Craig Emerson; Australia has never had in the post-war era a more economically incompetent candidate for the prime ministership than Tony Abbott.

Update: Former Reserve Bank chief, Bernie Fraser, (hardly a radical) blasts the Coalition over their economic policies.

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I would've preferred an article in place of the thirty-second Youtube ad, to be frank. I think it short-changes the post.

[loic.livejournal.com]

Anecdotally ADSL2+ is almost completely unavailable in the US. At least in the SF Bay Area. There's one or two small providers starting to roll it out. I just got cable broadband and that's getting me close to 20mbits though.

[loic.livejournal.com]

Australia's housing bubble hasn't burst yet. When it does Australians will know how it felt.

[aquaplanage.livejournal.com]

And it will burst.

The question is, are the underlying demographics sufficient for a fairly soft landing (10-20%) or a Florida/Michigan/... hard landing.

My bet's on the former, not the latter due to the fairly weird urbanisation situation in Australia. However hearing "this time it's different" actually increases the chances of a painful pop ...

[(Anonymous)]

The US is positively third world in much of their infrastructure. And using that phrase in connection with the US is beginning to be an affront to rapidly industrialising countries everywhere (see the I-35W bridge collapse as just one example, versus a visit to Shanghai or 30-40 other major Chinese cities).

Australia *is* extremely densely populated compared with many countries, if you look at overall population ratio for urban areas: the rate of urbanisation is extremely high, with concommittant lower costs for deployments there than in places like France, the USA or Brazil. Most of the NBN costs are being sunk in urban areas because of a terrific failure of the major access incumbent to modernise or do anything more than sweat the copper infrastructure as a semi-monopolist.

Urban Australia is pretty shocking for broadband compared with urban Sweden - costs are very high, bandwidth limited, diversity of access technologies, number of providers etc. Even France has significantly better price/performance (although that's just because of Iliad/Free, who've managed a remarkably effective disruption to the former-state provider oligopoly there).

My neighbourhood cableco here in NL offered 100Mbps more than 2 years ago. Gigabit fibre is available as a matter of course in new neighbourhoods and office parks. Much of rich Europe, Brazil, China and even India are starting getting similar deals.

Lead times for this kind of stuff is 10+ years - the technologies aren't really well developed when the rollout planning, and that's mainly financial engineering.

Australia == market failure in telecomms.

Either fix the mess that is Telstra (like the UK just did with BT, a functional breakup with the network operator spun out of the rest of the business) or do an NBN. The status quo isn't going to cut it in 15 years: Australians aren't quite so good at pulling a solution out of their arses when needed as the Americans are, so waiting for the cavalry is no option.

The NBN is fairly cheap compared to the costs of doing nothing: "fairly adequate" today just won't cut it later. Of course, a better original privatisation of Telstra (functional separation or competing infra providers/maintainers) or more aggressive regulation of it would have been even cheaper, and led to a more entrepreneurial culture in this market segment which is probably its own reward.

[discordia13.livejournal.com]

I have the same feeling about this election that I did when Keating was ousted. Despite what people may think about the ALP's most recent cock ups I think they need at least another 3 years in power before we could say they have been a bad thing.

People also conveniently forget that everything the ALP have tried to do for the last year was blocked on principle because that's what the opposition seemed to think their job was. Oppose regardless of merit instead of offer an alternative.

I don't want to see any party in power that makes stuff up as it goes along and DENY is their default policy on things they haven't thought about.

[loic.livejournal.com]

My money's on a soft-ish landing. They have room to move with interest rates and cash to subsidize housing purchases. Also there's that whole resources sector which can really help keep the country in the black.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

You've outlined one of the worst aspects of it: Astronomical cost to cover the few percent of people who choose to live a long way from major cities.

One of the advantages to paying 5 times as much to live in an urban area than in the country is that services are much cheaper to provide. I've even thought about that choice myself. I could live in the country, where housing is (roughly) 1/5 the cost, and everything else (e.g. broadband) would be far more expensive. That's a choice people make.

Rolling out extremely expensive broadband to users in very low-density areas is, I believe, totally unjustified. If people want that lifestyle, it's up to them to pay for the costs, not to be subsidised by the rest of us.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

One idiot's ill-informed op-ed in Punch isn't worth citing.

In the US, the usual situation is that there is DSL provided by one's local phone company plus internet provided by one's cable TV company. The latter is often cheaper, but often forces users to have cable TV, even if they don't want it. The fibre options, such as Verizon's FIOS, are only available if you happen to live in an area serviced by their phone lines. There is, to my knowledge, no provision for other telcos to get access to one's local exchange. It's like Australia was pre-DSL2+, when Telstra controlled the exchanges and all DSL was just resold from Telstra.

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

Quite a static and shortsighted view,IMHO.
The societal and business trends I've seen are going to drive Internet usage sharply over the next few years. Not just in terms of data size, but in terms of throughput. Action now will allow Australia to ride that wave rather than languish in steadily increasing irrelevance.

I think the NBN shows forethought and planning for future infrastructure. Something I think is the governments primary responsibility and one that the previous government neglected willfully.

I for one an more than happy to pay to see Australia moving forward. If it means we outstrip the rest of the world, good for us!

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

Thts election is like life-saving surgery without anesthetic.
I want the pain to stop, but there's too much riding on it to just ignore:(

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

OK, I didn't know that about the U.S. In a sense it doesn't surprise me, given the political disdain for public expenditure (except for war, of course). This is certainly not an situation to aspire to and your comments on Sweden are illustrative.

Of course, a better original privatisation of Telstra (functional separation or competing infra providers/maintainers)

True fact that! I put that in my submission to the Australian government in 1998 when I was contracting for Telstra when they moved to privitisation (which was called, the 'public ownership' bill because 'the public' could buy shares!).

Despite the seriousness of this change there was only 27 submissions, mainly by peak telecommunication organisations...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

As an anonymous poster points out (below) that even the relative availability of xDSL2+ compared to the United States is not something to aspire to. The fact that we lag behind most of the developed world in terms of ICT infrastructure is an argument for the NBN, not against it.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The question shouldn't be just be made on the sheer quantity of people but rather on the economic benefits that are brought by the network.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have circulated the Kavanagh-Putland index in the past a few times which warns of the seriousness of 'rent-seeking' that dominates real-estate investment; we are fortunate enough to be heavily protected by the resources sector, which was part of the reason why the mining resources tax was sought in the first place, to reclaim those economic benefits.

[discordia13.livejournal.com]

I'de just like to be able to get guaranteed ADSL of ANY type here in Perth.
The average (maximum) speed for suburbs around Hazelmere and South Guildford is 1Mb up 100k down. Most of South Guildford can get above that but is not on an ADSL2 enabled exchange.

90% of the phone lines in these areas are still on RIM technology with Telstra planning to upgrade their infrastructure *real soon*. It's been like this for 5 years.

It's taken my company - working together with AAPT, an average of 5-8 weeks to get new ADSL keyed lines installed in this area. Thats TWO MONTHS for a line that cannot do ADSL2 and can barely break the 1 meg barrier. And then AAPT charges $2000 a month for the managed VPN service on that 1M connection.

Where is Hazelmere you might ask? It's the suburb next to Perth Airport - barely 12km from the CBD in one of the fastest growing industrial estates in Western Australia.

Explain to me why the NBN is a bad thing for businesses and people again or how it's too expensive?

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I quite agree. Most of what people use the internet for (web browsing, email, etc) is hardly impacted by greater speeds. The benefit is close to zero. I'm still on 1.5Mb/s ADSL. I tried 8Mb/s for a while, but the effective difference, unless you are downloading huge files, is negligible.

Like all computing power, people find ways to waste any resource you give them. No doubt Aussies will saturate the NBN with higher and higher definition torrents of their favourite TV shows and movies, but I'd rather prefer those who really care about such to pay for it themselves.

[loic.livejournal.com]

No such thing as guaranteed ADSL.

I don't think that the NBN is a bad idea, I just don't think that Australia is as bad off for last-mile broadband as people can sometimes make out.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[arjen-lentz.livejournal.com]

Craig, the problem is closer then you think: your lifestyle choice for the city forces others to live out in the country. You want your fruit, veg and possibly meat. It has to be grown somewhere, and there's not enough space near where you live. So it's further away.

Now, you want to pay a reasonable price for things things, so these farmers need to work efficiently. For instance, need to upload a video of their cattle to sell it, rather than ship them all to a central location and then onward to the buyer (expensive in time, manpower and other resources, loss of cattle in-transit, etc)

Distributing people more allows food production to happen near or closer to population centres. That would need infrastructure too, broadband is a key aspect of it anyway, and I'll still contend with you that NBN is bloody cheap compared to pretty much any other capital infrastructure project.
Of course $40bln is a lot of money, but that really is not the point.

There's issues in rural Australia with health and education. Well, big growing cities have major problems with the same. Cities are not the solution, they are as much part of the same problem. We might as well build smart infrastructure so that location is no longer the problem. Then we have a more space to solve the real issues.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[arjen-lentz.livejournal.com]

I'm not opposed to having those who utilise/consume a resource paying for it. What you describe in terms of Internet use is mostly consumerism, a big down pipe shifting TV shows, movies and other crap into your house.
But the Internet is more than that, people are using it to interact (and this thread is a good example of that!) - while downstream capacity is relevant for some uses (useful ones rather than the ones you mentioned ;-) your upstream bandwidth is an important factor also.

Now, with regard to paying... having someone "out there" pay for their broadband ends up on your budget anyway, in the form of more expensive food since you just raised the cost of the producers. The end result is the same for you. The difference is that as a national infrastructure project, it becomes available to everybody.

Some things are considered so important that the government builds the infra: basic road access, sewerage and garbage collection/treatment/storage, drinkable water, education, healthcare, telephone network.
Some of those aspects are now in part or whole privatised, but would they have come about for the benefit of you and me now, if it had been left to those who needed it? I think not.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Yes, this thread is an example of interacting over the internet ... and could be done quite adequately over a modem connection.

Not only is $40B a great deal of money, I don't trust the NBN any more than Telstra. We consistently see better prices than Telstra and better customer service than Telstra from every other ISP. Do we expect the NBN setup to be cost-effective? Or a white elephant like internet over cable TV? If the prices to customers are as they appear so far, few who have access will buy it anyhow.

[zey.livejournal.com]

"[T]he Coalition asked the department the cost of giving the Productivity Commission an extra $4 million a year. Yesterday the department replied poker-faced that it would cost $4 million a year."

Ah, now that's not quite a fair thing to take the piss out of them for.

In most Coalition governments, it'd cost an extra $5M in consultant fees to buy the justifications for it.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

[enrobso.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful statement of conservative ideals.

I'm sure there were people just like you 200 years ago saying 'Why should we fund this Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson expedition when the space we have at present is quite adequate for most purposes?'

[enrobso.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the ALP have not exactly offered much more than a watered down version of Abbott's approach on this issue.