Politics

Pri­or to the elec­tion I had engaged in a run­ning e‑mail dis­cus­sion about the NBN (Nation­al Broad­band Net­work) with an inter­net ISP sup­pli­er I know, shared with mutu­al friends. Inter­est­ing­ly (or strange­ly enough) he did not see the ben­e­fits of Labour’s NBN mod­el FTTH (Fibre-to-the-Home) and found that the alter­na­tive FTTN (Fibre-to-the-Node) was ade­quate because it would “prob­a­bly get Aus­tralia to where we want to be with­out break­ing the bank … “. I found that an inter­est­ing view, espe­cial­ly as inter­net tech­nol­o­gy under­wrote near­ly every­thing he did busi­ness-wise. Most of what I write here was part of a reply I wrote back then. I actu­al­ly nev­er sent it, as it was obvi­ous he felt “ade­quate to our needs” was suf­fi­cient and going beyond that was a waste of mon­ey and we’d already argued about it for a while. I con­fess I thought these were views held because of a polit­i­cal view­point and intractable in nature, (as he prob­a­bly did about myself) so why con­tin­ue the argu­ment when there was lit­tle pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing ground.

We both under­stood the tech­ni­cal basics. He under­stood that “with a fibre optic cable, we don’t have such a prob­lem with noise or band­width…” and also said … “For a long line, exam­ple a cop­per tele­phone line, the band­width is about 1 to 5 MHz. With clever mod­u­la­tion tech­niques we can get 10s of megabits per sec­ond (for exam­ple ADSL), but the sig­nal to noise ratio lim­its this, and the longer the line, the high­er the noise, and the low­er the data rate.” No argu­ments with these facts. He con­tin­ued, … “Short pieces of cop­per can oper­ate very fast, giga­bits per sec­ond. The speed of cur­rent­ly ADSL2 (i.e. cop­per wire is about 10Mbps — Megabits per sec­ond) — glob­al aver­age on speedtest.net is cur­rent­ly 13.9Mbps. (megabits)”. So his basic argu­ment was, “So if we use opti­cal fibre for the long runs, and only short pieces of cop­per at either end, we can still obtain poten­tial­ly giga­bits per sec­ond of speed …. There­fore … the last mile .. that is short bits of cop­per wire (con­nect­ed to a fiber back­bone) … can go very fast … that is … A LOT faster than cur­rent ADSL speeds.” Most tech­ni­cal folks under­stand these dynam­ics but ques­tion the fit for pur­pose and pos­si­bly the “last mile’s” capac­i­ty.

True? — poten­tial­ly? My argu­ment was “poten­tial­ly” and “real­i­ty” were a lit­tle far apart, that the runs of cop­per were for most peo­ple are not going to be short (unless you lived next door to the node /exchange) and that we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ensure we had an “unlim­it­ed” future speed as opposed to an “ade­quate” one. As I said, after writ­ing and research­ing much of what is below, I decid­ed to dis­con­tin­ued this argu­ment for rea­sons that it was get­ting heat­ed & not worth affect­ing the “friend­ship”. The elec­tion came and went, folks tried to get the new com­mu­ni­ca­tions min­is­ter, Mal­colm Turn­bull, to see the rea­sons behind FTTH but have had no trac­tion either. Again polit­i­cal view­points do make folk intractable in nature. Then I read this Syd­ney morn­ing Her­ald arti­cle. [http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/telstras-copper-is-nearly-beyond-repair-and-an-absolute-disgrace-union-20131120-hv3mp.html] It was at this point I realised how big the gap between “poten­tial­ly” and “real­i­ty” was. If you want more detail than the very cur­so­ry & light on arti­cle in the SMH then read Nick Ross’s arti­cle. So I have changed what was my orig­i­nal E‑mail reply … into a blog.

Hope­ful­ly you, as a read­er, are more amenable to rea­son ??? Let me warn you I am sum­maris­ing some rather large blogs with sig­nif­i­cant detail. I would encour­age you to read them prop­er­ly before demon­strat­ing how intractable you can be. First off, let’s get my bias out in the open. I am a film mak­er with a strong inter­est in the new mod­els of con­tent deliv­ery over the inter­net exem­pli­fied by Magnolia/Magnet & IFC Mid­night dis­trib­uters as opposed to the old the­atri­cal release mod­els sup­port­ed by both gov­ern­ments (Labor and Lib­er­al) in their sup­port of the Screen Aus­tralia dis­tri­b­u­tion par­a­digm. Look up these Cin­e­ma dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­els here if you seek to under­stand how the Art’s indus­tries would ben­e­fit. On with what I wrote months ago — slight­ly mod­i­fied to remove a few per­son­al remarks and bring the past/present tense to ref­er­ence an, “after the elec­tion” status .… .

Many experts say that fibre-to-the-node sim­ply can’t deliv­er the same speeds to most house­holds as the labor government’s more expen­sive fibre-to the-home roll-out. Some folk think you just have to get fibre to a node and let the cop­per take care of the rest. ABC’s Nick Ross has been writ­ing exten­sive­ly about the NBN crit­i­cal about the han­dling of it by the gov­ern­ment (Labour) and crit­i­cal about the oppo­si­tions (Lib­er­al) alter­na­tives. [Note: I wrote this month ago, remem­ber?] He has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on the sub­ject from tech­ni­cal, cost­ing and polit­i­cal aspect of it and while it is true to say his pub­lic advo­ca­cy for it is evi­dent, it is also true (to quote Media Watch) it “is made by a per­son with pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise or spe­cial­ist knowl­edge about the sub­ject mat­ter being analysed”. His most sig­nif­i­cant analy­sis is
[http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2012/02/21/3435975.htm] and called “The great NBN fail”. Again to quote Media Watch .. “Ross’s NBN opus is not only long … it’s impec­ca­bly well-researched.” It is damn long and you would only read it if you were acute­ly inter­est­ed in it. I fig­ure you lot are because your read­ing this.

You don’t have to go very far into Ross’s arti­cle before I could sim­ply say, let’s take this out of your polit­i­cal pref­er­ences and say quite sim­ply … “per­haps you need to think about one’s par­ents?” And if you can’t fig­ure out what I mean by that, you haven’t begun to read the arti­cle. Mul­ti­ply that by a lot of oth­er elder­ly moth­ers and fathers and let’s face it, none of my gen­er­a­tion are get­ting any younger. Again what has that got to do with NBN? Read the arti­cle!! It’s not about bits and bytes. It nev­er was and argu­ing about it at that lev­el is miss­ing the point, as most of the media (ABC aside — only some­times) is doing.

Some of you may have chil­dren. I do. When you get to his sec­tion on Schools per­haps you will rethink. If you don’t have chil­dren, I expect you won’t find this impor­tant. And since most of you are urban dwellers I assume rur­al com­mu­ni­ties don’t rate either. [OK that was sar­cas­tic but I hope you get my point]

It was to cost $50 Bil­lion the coali­tion said. Not entire­ly accu­rate if you have read past the sec­tions on affil­i­at­ed ben­e­fits. But what if they were actu­al­ly right by some mir­a­cle. [OK that was sar­cas­tic too.] The crit­i­cism of the short­sight­ed­ness of the set­up of NBN Co are reflec­tive of the time I had worked in I.T. in the Pub­lic Sec­tor. A more inef­fi­cient bunch of clowns I have nev­er met, and thank­ful­ly I no longer have to apol­o­gise for refer­ring to them as such. What if McK­in­sey and KPMG assess­ment was wrong and the coali­tions is right (not that they have an agen­da <sigh>). So what! Look at Ross’s Syd­ney Har­bour bridge anal­o­gy. $50 Bil­lion is prob­a­bly a drop in the ocean. Look at the returns on invest­ments — finan­cial AND social.

There are very good argu­ments that have been around a long time that sug­gest that Aus­tralia is wast­ing time and mon­ey being in the man­u­fac­tur­ing game. There is enough in recent press arti­cles about the unsus­tain­abil­i­ty of sup­port­ing it long-term. Coun­tries like Chi­na do it so much bet­ter than we do. Instead it is intel­lec­tu­al “prop­er­ty” where a still rea­son­ably edu­cat­ed coun­try can make progress. NBN facil­i­tates mak­ing this a com­pet­i­tive realm where we can com­pete inter­na­tion­al­ly. Or can we…. ???

As for the sub­ject of speed, here we are already behind the eight ball as a coun­try. (Note that Aus­tralia does not even get a men­tion — even though we sup­ply India with so much out­sourced work) or try this link to the state of the inter­net. Depend­ing of cri­te­ria you select the sta­tis­tics may vary (but that all depends on the col­lec­tion meth­ods and tim­ing of the data, obvi­ous­ly). Nev­er­the­less it is hard to find a coun­try in Europe or State in Amer­i­ca with slow­er aver­age con­nec­tion speeds than Aus­tralia. So are we com­pet­i­tive inter­na­tion­al­ly? Are we going to be social­ly advan­taged or dis­ad­van­taged? Are we real­ly invest­ing in a future or “the future” be damned?

A few extra things to think about when con­sid­er­ing the future of the inter­net in this country.

.… .

The above (between the dots) is large­ly what I wrote back at the end of July. I real­ly don’t think any­thing has changed except that it will at least be anoth­er three years before Aus­tralia has a remote chance com­mence down a path to be com­pet­i­tive inter­na­tion­al­ly, in the intel­lec­tu­al futures of the Inter­net. The con­tent deliv­ery mod­els for film, I spoke of ear­li­er, will not be realised in this coun­try over the next three years, so the old par­a­digm will con­tin­ue, while Amer­i­can and Euro­pean mar­kets streak ahead of us.  And if you are real­ly inter­est­ed in what the future needs for an inter­net com­pet­i­tive coun­try I would sug­gest you read this arti­cle by the com­pa­ny See-Change and see where Tony Abbot­t’s vision of “more than enough” will leave us.

For a con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment that pur­ports to be inter­est­ed in sup­port­ing big busi­ness mod­els that pro­vide inter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive strate­gies, the fallover to the FTTN mod­el — giv­en the real unsus­tain­abil­i­ty of the cur­rent cop­per net­work in this coun­try — is just short-sight­ed. Ulti­mate­ly it is not about good sup­port for for­ward look­ing and com­pet­i­tive busi­ness mod­els but about the pol­i­tics of intran­si­gence that refus­es to see the val­ue in some­one else’s ideas.

Accord­ing to the 2011 cen­sus fig­ures, appar­ent­ly there are half a mil­lion Aus­tralians who work in the cul­tur­al indus­tries — how­ev­er that may be defined — and mil­lions more who rely on it, read it, see it, lis­ten to it.  Despite this we went to the elec­tion, and notwith­stand­ing the grandiose words from the coali­tion’s arts spokesman, George Bran­dis, there was no offi­cial arts pol­i­cy — cost­ed or oth­er­wise.  No arts pol­i­cy, means of course, there can be no claim to any man­date on sub­jects involv­ing arts, cul­ture and enter­tain­ment.  To be fair, George did gen­er­ate some rhetoric about the arts pri­or to the election
but in terms of a con­crete pol­i­cy, espe­cial­ly in terms of cost­ings or sub­stance, there was a sig­nif­i­cant absence (and still is).  This was in par­tic­u­lar, appar­ent, when pressed for a response, by Fair­fax news­pa­pers. In regards to their pol­i­cy ques­tions, the coali­tion’s response was notice­ably absent.

Inter­est­ing­ly, despite George Bran­dis being interned in a posi­tion of Arts Min­is­ter  .. and the Sports Min­is­ter …. and the Attor­ney Gen­er­al, there still is no spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy for the Arts side of his port­fo­lio.  Giv­en there was none before the elec­tion, there can cer­tain­ly be no pre­tense of a man­date for the Arts. Not that I have ever being a fan of the “pre­tense”, that polit­i­cal par­ties give to, what they describe as, “a man­date” — (giv­en how fraught with selec­tion bias, emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion, polit­i­cal jar­gon, nar­row mar­gins and men­tal lethar­gy exhib­it­ed by vot­ers, that the elec­tion process man­i­fests). Tony Abbott has cer­tain­ly sug­gest­ed he has a man­date for all man­ner of deci­sions he allud­ed to before the elec­tion and now is hell bent on imple­ment­ing; but the Arts, have not attract­ed the coali­tion’s atten­tion.   Unlike “Sci­ence”, they have at least cho­sen to assign a min­is­ter to it,  … well at least as one of his roles to the nation.  Cer­tain­ly no “one to one” sin­gu­lar atten­tion by a ded­i­cat­ed min­is­ter is on offer­ing, so con­se­quent­ly lim­it­ed atten­tion is like­ly to be paid to it.

All the more rea­son for the emer­gence of a polit­i­cal Par­ty in this cli­mate that will indeed sup­port the Arts agen­da and devel­op poli­cies in con­sul­ta­tion with Artists, in the vari­ety of “cul­tur­al indus­tries” that exist in Aus­tralia.  “The Arts Par­ty” is such an organ­i­sa­tion.  It is not yet a reg­is­tered Par­ty, as it is still pur­su­ing the num­bers and fund­ing nec­es­sary to get it off the ground and into the polit­i­cal are­na.  Using a crowd fund­ing site, the Art’s Par­ty is seek­ing to build the num­bers it needs and the ini­tial finance required to get it under­way.  Ulti­mate­ly, if you work in the fields of film, jour­nal­ism, archi­tec­ture, music, web design, pho­to retouch­ing, hair dress­ing , cook­ing, fash­ion design, illus­tra­tion, authors, direc­tors, act­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, singing, prop and wardrobe design, dancers, acro­bat­ics, mod­el build­ing, sculp­ture and any oth­er man­ner of Artis­tic endeav­our; then if you are expect­ing polit­i­cal sup­port from the incum­bent gov­ern­ment; don’t hold your breath.  Not only is George the only polit­i­cal sup­port for this com­mu­ni­ty, I haven’t even to begin to list Aus­tralian Sports nor his legal respon­si­bil­i­ties as the Attor­ney Gen­er­al.  The lat­er duties which appear to be tak­ing front and cen­ter, keep­ing secret Abbot­t’s recent activ­i­ties by deny­ing jour­nal­ists access to infor­ma­tion.  As Clint Howitt not­ed of this lat­er role, “Attor­ney gen­er­al George Bran­dis has made it more dif­fi­cult to obtain details of gov­ern­ment deci­sions by tight­en­ing up the grant­i­ng of Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion requests, mak­ing the pro­ce­dure more con­vo­lut­ed and more expen­sive.”

So per­haps George has oth­er pre­oc­cu­pa­tions than serv­ing com­mu­ni­ties of artists — of which Jour­nal­ists are a par­ty to — and for whom he is busy deny­ing them oppor­tu­ni­ties to do their job.  Of course, we can wait till the Coali­tion gen­er­ates an Arts pol­i­cy, it has giv­en no pre-elec­tion promis­es for; appears to pre­oc­cu­pied with restrict­ing free­dom of expres­sion for ele­ments of the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty;  and for which there are no polit­i­cal lob­by groups in exis­tence seek­ing a quick res­o­lu­tion.  What do you think will be the cov­er­age and sig­nif­i­cance of such a pol­i­cy?  The lib­er­als do have a page in which all their poli­cies are out­lined [http://www.liberal.org.au/our-policies], so by all means let me know where the Arts Pol­i­cy is?

The alter­na­tive?  Try throw­ing your sup­port into the — as of writ­ing this — still unreg­is­tered Arts Par­ty.   They hope to ulti­mate­ly be in a posi­tion to raise the pri­or­i­ty of Arts on the polit­i­cal agen­da.  If you want that, then start  by going to http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-australian-arts-party/ and sign­ing up.

What have you got to lose?  Oth­er than a career? [Why, … is that impor­tant to you???]

 

Post Turn­bull Appendum:

Since Tony Abbot­t’s evic­tion, the Arts port­fo­lio is yet again shared with oth­er port­fo­lios and still has not been giv­en a sin­gu­lar advo­cate.  While Bran­dis has moved on, the poli­cies of the par­ty have not.  Sen­a­tor the Hon Mitch Fifield has become Min­is­ter for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions AND the Min­is­ter for the Arts. Still this min­is­ter has not found the time to draw up a pol­i­cy for the Arts at the Fed­er­al lev­el because one pre­sumes he is busy with the mess the pre­vi­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tions min­is­ter left behind him with the more expen­sive­ly grow­ing NBN pol­i­cy and imple­men­ta­tion. Aside from keep­ing Indige­nous artistry and lan­guages alive, the poli­cies of cut­ting or divid­ing up fund­ing for the Arts has con­tin­ued unin­ter­rupt­ed. The Arts Par­ty in the mean­time is not only reg­is­tered but put up a can­di­date in Joe Hock­ey’s old seat and attract­ed 2% of the vote for a first time can­di­date, Lou Pol­lard, (a local Clown Doc­tor) in a par­ty most peo­ple had­n’t even heard of in North Sydney.