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

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.

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.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[arjen-lentz.livejournal.com]

Telstra does everything from wiring to end-user/retail.
NBN is a layer 2 network, it's literally merely a road (for bits).
If, long ago, Telstra had been split in to infra and retail, there would have been less of a problem - but serious chunks of NBN infra would still be required as they're just not taken care of right now, not by Telstra either.

This thread, indeed, could've been conducted over a modem connection. I did stuff like that 25 years ago (no not exaggerating). However, *finding* this thread would have been another matter, as would be exchanging anything other than a few lines of text. Modems will not do now.

Re: NBN (nature of), cost & benefit

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Arjen... I'd appreciate your thoughts on the Coalition's alternative just announced today

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/10/2978634.htm

Coalition plans

[arjen-lentz.livejournal.com]

Doesn't cut it, for reasons described previously.
- it needs to be reasonable high speed now, and able to grow further
- decent upstream bandwidth.
- standard wireless trickery does not satisfy these needs
- satellite is useless as it's a) high latency b) no upstream.
- available to everybody. And I do mean everybody not some funky % that excludes people outside major population centres. in AU.

This is vital for our future as a country: business, education, health.
It also affects what kind of business are possible (how green they can be) and where they can be located, as well as whom they can employ. It's critical.