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April 9, 2013
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that we increasingly live in an information and service economy, not a manufacturing economy of industrial cycles, business needs, tooling costs, central distribution networks, planned obsolescence, seemingly abundant natural and synthetic resources and tghe poisoned industrial urbanscapes of heavy industry.
David Pope
We see the impact of these changes not only in the ravage and rot of former industrial cities but also in the rhizomatic boom in edge-city development and sprawl. We increasingly work, live and play within a technological, economic, and cultural infrastructure that has long moved on from its industrial base. Australia's future is tied into communications and technology connecting new industries and global markets, thereby making high speed internet a key economic development issue.
The Coalition has dragged its heels on acknowledging this fundamental economic shift. It's initial position was a Luddite one and it has taken 5 years to come up with its second rate policy for high speed broadband infrastructure--- fibre optic cable to the node, which then relies on old, dodgy copper wiring for the last kilometer from the node to the premises.
They talk about is the cost to build the network not about the benefits the NBN could offer Australia’s digital economy, even though the digital economy, as the only likely growth sector that can complement, and ultimately replace, the mining industry as a key economic driver. As Peter Gerrand points out:
The digital economy is already a larger employer than the mining industry, and it has the advantages of providing a much greater diversity of highly paid, high-value jobs, which can be teleworked virtually across Australia – given enough access bandwidth.
The Coalition's claim is that their quick-fix proposal is better than Labor's fibre to the home because it is cheaper and its much lower upload speeds is all that we need.
These will be unusable in the future, and we will be marooned indefinitely on copper and on the equivalent of ADSL. Turnbull knows that the Coalition are building something that will be obsolete on the day that it’s built. So we are being offered a quick and dirty policy.
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Hmmm.. looks like a Holden.
I thought this morning on it being a bit degrading, Malcolm doing the oaf's selling and explaining for him.