Tomorrow, a road convoy will set off from Port Hedland in Western Australia for a journey across the country. Two more convoys will leave Perth and Cairns on Thursday. By the end of this week, 11 convoys will be in motion, all heading to a single convergence point next Monday. This is the ”convoy of no confidence”. [SMH]
Finally, the mainstream media has realized the Convoy of No Confidence is historic, real, and unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Monday, the news was front page of The Australian (Mass convoy to make ‘real’ voices heard), and thanks to Paul Sheehan, was featured by The Sydney Morning Herald too (Cattlemen driven to desperation by Canberra).
FOR some it’s climate change alarmism; for others too much wasted taxpayers’ money on boatpeople, school halls, or pink batts; and for others still it’s the importation of Chinese apples, the temporary ban on the live cattle trade, or same-sex couples rearing children.
But the common thread in what is emerging as a national Tea Party-style revolt in the form of a “Convoy of No Confidence” to Canberra is a burning conviction that politicians of all persuasions have lost touch with the real-life needs of the common man and woman they are supposed to represent.
What began as a truckies protest against the carbon tax has grown into a mass alliance of those outside the urban elites who feel they have lost their voice.
It’s an amalgam of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers who are mad as hell and not going to take it any more. [Australian]
When is enough enough?
Top 50 Gillard/Rudd/Swan Policy Failures
1. Carbon Tax – “There will be no carbon tax under the Government I lead.”
2 Livestock export ban to Indonesia – near destroyed the economy of one third of the land mass of Australia
3. Malaysia ‘solution’ – WHAT A JOKE IT IS
4. Murray Darling Basin Plan – back to the drawing board
5. Future food, Overseas buy up of farms, Prime cropping lands lost to urbanization, mining & gas – no attempt at to address this issue
6. Continuation of restrictive environmental regulation on private property without compensation to landowners
7. Indigenous Housing Program – way behind schedule
8. Mining Tax – Continuing uncertainty for our miners
9. NBN – $50 billion but no cost-benefit analysis
10. Building the Education Revolution – The school halls fiasco
11. Home Insulation Plan (Pink Batts) – Dumped
12. Detention Centers – Riots & cost blow-outs
13. East Timor ‘solution’ – Announced before agreed, then Manus Island on, off & now on again
14. Cutting Red Tape – 12,835 new regulations, only 58 repealed
15. Take a “meat axe”‘ to the Public Service – 24,000 more public servants and growing!
16 – 49. Other examples like Green Cars Fund, Fuel Watch, Green Loans, Hospital reform….
50. Debt limit to be increased to $250 billion – to pay for all of the above and much more by us.”
The Thompsons’ refusal to give in is making waves
Details for each of the convoys are now available – click on the following links for your convoy: Convoy #1; Convoy #2; Convoy #3; Convoy #4; Convoy #5; Convoy #6; Convoy #7; Convoy #8; Convoy #9; Convoy #10; Convoy #11
For the original Convoy announcement, go HERE. For the subsequent Routes announcement, go HERE. To RSVP, go HERE. For what YOU can do, go HERE. For MSM mentions, go HERE.
I suspect it is the classic double bind.
If you start early enough to do some good, it’s said to be too early and won’t be supported. If you wait until near the next scheduled election, you will be told it is too late to consider your complaints and you will have to wait for the next one. By then it will be much too late and that is the idea.
The idea is that “they” don’t want to be bothered with ideas, requests, complaints, and petitions from the common rabble. They have a higher calling: to ram their repeatedly failed totalitarian ideas down your throats with an iron fist. They mean to rob you blind and you are supposed to accept it without a peep.
I say peddle to the metal and go for it with horns blaring. Make sure you can be seen as a force that cannot be evaded. Fill the streets with wall to wall trucks. That would be a NO that they cannot miss. What they will do about it is a different matter.
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A public display of no confidence sufficient to bring a government down would have to be a widespread public strike. And, unfortunately for the 11 Convoy, there is sufficient differences in the Convoy complainers and their complaints that the Convoy is clearly not an issue-movement that represents the general electorate (except that the voters are irritated enough in a general way to object).
The Convoy is about general, centralized governmental regulation of the non-urban, non-public sector. It is about a government with a social policy that affects the individual non-urban, non-public sector worker in the pocket book. As such the way Australia is being run is not enough of a difficulty that all feel threatened; actually, as the costs and outcome of the policies have not been clearly articulated, nobody can actually determine how much, if at all, their lives are threatened. And that is too bad.
Australia will have to wait to express its discontent in the next elections, by which time the politically savvy will be hard into spinning what has been done and what is going to be done, and the momentum of what is going on will help keep it going. Undoing is harder than doing. Canada has many good examples of this problem – from dumb long-gun registry/controls to additional taxes (GST and fuel-surtaxes)that can’t be killed even by those who campaign on killing them.
Bad policies drift away but slowly, like the regrettable spray of a skunk outside your bedroom window , for the simple reason that nobody is prepared to take the skunk to task.
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Australian Tea Party type movements were anticipated a long time ago. There is the clearly fake Australian T.E.A. taxed enough already outfit- clearly intended to divert / provide media attention… They do nothing, campaign for nothing and just steal the name for no good end. There was a Eureka flag outfit last year that looked right, but it died off. The last few tweets from them seemed to indicate family or financial trouble.
Other than the fake and the failure, the time has come for a general uprising against this government- and it is happening. The level of rebellion over the census, the thousands of those stupid, witless carbon propaganda mailouts returned to sender- the protest is happening.
It would be extremely foolish for the socialist elite to ignore it, as that will simply a much deeper outrage than has even occurred so far. It isn’t difficult to conduct a straw poll when more and more people (other than generational welfare cases and parasitic bureaucrats) are volunteering their anger to anyone who will listen.
The general population is being radicalised by the communists in power. And I say communists advisedly. We don’t need to and shouldn’t play the sheltered workshop media game of letting communists rebadge themselves as “socialist forum” or “green”. They are what they are- ideologically devoted followers of the discredited and disgraced death cult of communism, gillard, brown and the rest.
And then there’s Craig Thomson. #hookergate – my hashtag that just keeps giving. There’s your justification for an early election – byelection in Dobell followed by electoral bloodbath followed by Abbott taking power or triggering an election.
If the Peter Principle can throw up the current clown college junta in charge of Australia, all bets are off and every day is “Anything Can Happen Day”.
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I have to admit a smile touched my lips when I read the Thompsons were in the convoy. I hope this gets them some much needed media exposure. There will be critics of the convoy in the coming days, and most likely from the usual left-leaning MSM and ABC, but it will slowly dawn on people that this is real. They are pissed off and Canberra will have to emerge from their red (tape) tower to meet them.
I wonder if Joooolya has the intestinal fortitude to meet the crowd or whether she will simply cower elsewhere. I am thinking the latter. I bet Tony will make a welcome appearance, and the Nats will get mileage out of this as well. As for the Greens? They will be in hiding for sure…
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Ouch! This is such a bad headline, on several different levels.
Firstly, by “borrowing” the name of the American Tea Party you tie your fortunes to the rise and fall of that party. We are entering the the US election season, and anything could happen, and probably will.
Secondly, and for similar reasons, you risk confusing your message with the American one, where the only similarity is the concern over the Governments’ “borrow your way to oblivion” mentality.
Thirdly, it implies a certain level of donor funding that detracts from your “voluntary revolution” message.
Fourthly, as Carbon Worker points out, the name has already been taken (sort of) by a stooge organisation (organised, no doubt by a PR outfit in Canberra).
Fifthly, also as Carbon Worker alludes, you need a label (if you need one at all) that is distinctly Australian.
I can see a lot of PR hacks in Canberra rubbing their hands with glee …
Sorry to be negative, but I have to call it as I see it – professional pride and all that.
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15 Aug: Boston Herald: Evergreen Solar files for bankruptcy, plans asset sale
Evergreen Solar Inc., the Marlboro clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies to build an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy.
Evergreen, which closed its taxpayer-supported Devens factory in March and cut 800 jobs, has been trying to rework its debt for months…
The company also said it will lay off another 65 jobs in the United States and Europe, mostly through the shutdown of its Midland, Mich., manufacturing facility. That would leave Evergreen with about 68 workers according to a headcount listed in the bankruptcy filing…
Evergreen secured a $58 million financial aid package from the Patrick administration to help build the $450 million Devens factory. The state has been trying to recoup about $4 million in cash from the company, the once-promising poster child of the governor’s clean-energy economic agenda.
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view.bg?articleid=1358998&pos=breaking
Jan 2011: NYT: Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China
Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.
But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/business/energy-environment/15solar.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
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only the ABC bothered to report this failure.
26 July: ABC: Solar power shut down in far north SA
A multi-million-dollar solar generator is no longer operating in the far north Aboriginal lands of South Australia.
The $2.5 million state- and federally-funded sun farm was built at Umuwa in 2003.
Another $1 million was spent upgrading it in 2008, but it has not been running for the past year…
Energy Minister Michael O’Brien said the solar technology was flawed and is no longer economically viable.
“We did look at trying to resuscitate the project but at the moment we believe that the best thing to do is to mothball it,” he said…
“But the battery technology is coming ahead in leaps and bounds so it may well be that at a later date we give up on the existing battery system and pretty much start from scratch.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-25/solar-umuwa-apy-lands-sun-farm/2808796
26 July: ABC World Today: Sun sets on SA solar plan
South Australia’s Energy Minister Michael O’Brien says the company that built the solar project went bankrupt.
MICHAEL O’BRIEN: There were issues on this particular site with lightning strikes and it was the successive battery burnouts that ultimately sent the company into bankruptcy.
NANCE HAXTON: Three point five million dollars later though, that’s a lot of money that could have been spent elsewhere in what’s quite a poor community…
MICHAEL O’BRIEN: It is and that’s one of the difficulties with leading edge renewable technologies that sometimes they just don’t work out. It’s been put to me that probably appropriate technology but inappropriate siting at the particular point in time.
NANCE HAXTON: State Upper House Greens MP Tammy Franks says the solar farm was meant to last 30 years, but was not properly maintained, wasting millions of dollars in investment.
TAMMY FRANKS: We had a maintenance company in charge of maintaining this very valuable investment who wasn’t doing their job because they’d gone under…
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3278004.htm
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And right on cue the alarmist press is rattling again:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/10044462/wa-gets-grim-climate-warning/
This report sounds about as coherant as the mad prophets in Life of Brian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmyuE0NpNgE
Some things don’t change much over the ages… there’s always mad prophets, and for some reason we coddle them with Government grants rather than laugh them out of office.
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more fuel for the convoys:
11 Aug: Globe&Mail Canada: In Ontario, gloomy skies for solar power
Plans to hire more people and expand production are on hold as demand for solar parts wavers and stock sits unsold…
The government of Premier Dalton McGuinty has vowed to shut down all of the province’s coal-fired power plants, create 50,000 clean energy jobs and build a lasting green industry to reinvigorate the beleaguered manufacturing sector.
The province’s green-energy economy should be roaring, but it’s not. Thousands of jobs and $20-billion worth of investment commitments from around the globe are at stake…
It seems unfathomable to many that miracles would be needed in a government-supported industry created with great fanfare just two years ago…
Silfab is not the only solar-parts manufacturer struggling. Other recently opened factories have laid off employees, and dozens of solar installers are without work…
Some companies are already regretting making the move into Ontario.
“If I had thought that the utilities would simply not obey the rules and the government would do nothing about it, I would have never started here,” said Michael Carten, chief executive of Calgary-based Sustainable Energy Technologies, which makes solar inverters.
The industry, he asserted, has been “sucker-punched.”
At the start, the prospects seemed hugely promising. Along with guaranteed above-market prices for the production of renewable energy for 20 years, the Ontario government introduced domestic content rules for solar and wind projects, aiming to foster a new manufacturing niche. (The rules have triggered a complaint from Japan to the World Trade Organization.)
A green rush was born, particularly in solar, for which the most lucrative rates were offered – ranging between 44.3 cents and 80.2 cents per kilowatt hour…
The Ontario government maintains that 20,000 jobs have been created as a result of its green energy legislation. But it won’t disclose how many are permanent, how many are temporary construction work, or how many are on shaky footing. Before the cuts at Siliken, layoffs had remained largely outside of the public’s view…
Many energy observers point to another problem. Ontario’s green-power prices were set high without decreases staggered over time, spawning an early boom of applicants. A review of prices is scheduled for the fall…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario/in-ontario-gloomy-skies-for-solar-power/article2125904/
16 Aug: Age: Adam Morton: Solar power schemes fight for a place in the sun
UP TO 1800 jobs could disappear from Victorian solar power businesses if the Baillieu government allows a household subsidy scheme to lapse when it reaches its proposed limit in coming months, according to an industry analysis.
Under laws introduced by the previous Labor government, electricity companies pay households a premium rate of 60¢ per kilowatt hour for energy generated on rooftops and fed into the power grid…
But solar businesses say other states have made abrupt cuts to incentives and fear a Victorian government concerned about cost-of-living pressures will do the same…
An analysis for the council by consultants Intelligent Energy Systems estimated up to 750 jobs would be lost, mostly in sales and installation.
About 1000 more, including those in electrical engineering, were likely to be forced to find work in other industries.
Clean Energy Council policy director Russell Marsh called for the scheme to be extended for up to two years. He said there was a case for keeping the premium payment at 60¢, but indicated the council would support a reduced rate. ”Between 35-40¢ is the lowest you can go to keep a reasonable level of demand going and keep an industry going in Victoria.”…
Tony Thornton – chief executive of Australia’s biggest solar panel provider, Solarshop – said a similar cut in Victoria would be the ”final straw” for the industry. Government spokesman Simon Troeth said it was aware of the need to provide solar installers and the business community with certainty.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/solar-power-schemes-fight-for-a-place-in-the-sun-20110815-1iutc.html
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Rereke Whakaaro:
Agreed, but the same can be said for other names like ClimateGate for which I take full responsibility (the name, not the act of leaking the files). The media will always try to come up with an association that conjures a picture in peoples’ minds. It could have been worse 🙂
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never any acknowledgement that it is the taxpayer, not the Govt, who is paying:
8 Aug: Bloomberg: James Paton: Clean Energy Companies Seek $131 Million of Australian Grants
Carnegie Wave Energy Ltd. (CWE), Panax Geothermal Ltd. (PAX) and Petratherm Ltd. (PTR) are among companies planning to apply for A$126 million ($131 million) of Australian government funding set aside to help renewable energy projects.
“We will be seeking as great a contribution as we can possibly get,” Kerry Parker, managing director of Brisbane- based Panax Geothermal, said in a phone interview today. “Our main challenge is funding. The clear message from investors over the last six to 12 months is that they want to see a far greater portion of the costs contributed by the government.”…
The renewable program increased by A$26 million after Torrens Energy Ltd. (TEY), Green Rock Energy Ltd. (GRK), Greenearth Energy Ltd. (GER) and Hot Rock Ltd. (HRL) struggled to attract matching funding and failed to fulfill the requirements of a previous round of grants, the Australian companies said in a joint statement today.
The funding initiative announced today will be more “flexible,” according to Ferguson’s statement…
The geothermal company, whose shares have declined 67 percent in Sydney trading this year, will review the details of the program before deciding how much money to seek, Parker said. The company had decided not to spend additional money in Australia until more government funding is available, he said…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-08/clean-energy-companies-seek-australia-s-a-126-million-of-grants.html
no good news in here, despite the spruiking, except for selling CARBON CREDITS to electricity companies, costs with no benefits, cost which are then passed on to the consumer:
15 Aug: The Bull: Do you need renewable energy stocks in your portfolio?
The government’s carbon tax has pushed ethical investing into the spotlight and share prices of stocks in the renewables sector are starting to look greener. There has been some commentary in the media recently that investors without exposure to the renewable energy sector are at risk of losing out on future gains. Or, more to the point, investors with too high an exposure to carbon polluters could be at risk of faltering returns as share prices flatten…
The government’s $13 billion Clean Energy Package pushes the case for renewable energy – with $10 billion over five years to be invested in renewables and low emissions technologies (not Carbon Capture and Storage), with a further $3.2b in renewable sector funding.
The big investors, like fund managers and professional investors, are taking note. In its climate change report, Mercer argued that investment firms are beginning to increase their allocation to climate sensitive assets in order to capture new opportunities and help mitigate risks. Indeed, fund managers and professional investors are realising the benefits of bolstering exposure to companies and funds that benefit from a carbon tax, which include clean technology and renewable energy stocks across waste, solar, water, wind, biofuel, geothermal, carbon and others.
What does this tell us? Well, if the funds are getting in, the best companies in these sectors have only one way to go – and that’s up…
The table below offers a snapshot of the major sectors and companies in the renewable energy and clean technology space, and their yearly share price performance. As you can see, returns are hardly impressive.
Based on share price performance, there have been many more losers than winners over the past 12 months, with some stocks, like Infigen (INN), the old Babcock & Brown Wind Partners Group sliding by 65%. Another wind stock, Viridis Clean Energy Group (VIR), tumbled by 77% over the past year.
Worthy of note are a couple of standout performers, such as the Carbon sector stocks, CO2 Group and Carbon Conscious. CO2 Australia is a reforestation company that sells carbon credits to big companies like Origin Energy. The government’s decision to put a $23 price on carbon was the news CO2 had been waiting for…
It’s easy to get hyped by the dawn of a new carbon conscious world and throw all your savings into renewable energy stocks. However, the dismal looking share prices below are the reality of investing in new technology; it’s risky, and there will be many failures along the way.
However, Mercer has a point when it warns that retail investors need to start studying this sector more closely. And this is particularly the case if fund managers start dabbling in it as well. When the flow of money hits this sector, you’d want to be on board…
http://www.thebull.com.au/articles/a/22000-do-you-need-renewable-energy-stocks-in-your-portfolio.html
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WTF is this?!? The organisers of the convoy are going to have to decide what their protest is about. If it’s general tea-bagging then it will fail. Everyone in this country has been exasperated with our politicians for decades. There’s nothing unique about griping on with the government other than owning a big truck, unlike most people.
If the CoNC want to affect some real change then the leadership group are going to have to exercise some discipline when they open their mouths in front of the media. If the message is not narrow and focused on real issues concerning the majority of Australians then, it simply becomes a well documented road trip by a bunch of lovable rednecks. Nothing more.
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Hi Jo,
The Australian and Murdoch MSM outside of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair and Miranda Devine and a few others has run pretty dead, being one of the first to embrace Rupert Murdoch’s planetary benefit of the doubt meme.
Also as the arguments have ever been economic in the main, which they claim as some kind of Laureate status they have been slow to retreat. In consideration with all other msm bar the Opinion drive time radio, the msm Murdoch at least have given opposing views a chance rare but they did preferring to stay in Canberra group think in the main though.
At the end of the day, the models so abused and tortured, were originally devised for econometrics because that was where the funding was. That’s how the fraud got up on it’s one leg and stayed so long. (and merchant bankers and their clients propping it and of course the UN, that corrupted thing it is).
I agree the opinion was face saving at best, but hey it’s not like anyone can say mass transit mysteriously appeared.
The right of assembly peaceful, is the most powerful symbol of democracy at work and the carbon tax is undemocratic and totalitarian by sleaziness.
For the record main street and rural and regional bankers, are not environmentalists or anit per se but can see the business propositions as they effect their client bases.
It builds a whole new un necessary risk chain in a main street’s banker’s business models. Most bankers I ever met would have sneered at this crap msm journalist’s refused to write or balance opine about.
Main street bankers are attached to their clients wallets.
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9 Aug: Bloomberg: Clean Energy Stocks Fall as Solar Sector Hit by ‘Triple Whammy’
Clean energy stocks fell the most in more than two and a half years, outpacing declines in benchmark indexes, led by solar stocks hit by falling prices and demand…
Renesola Ltd. (SOL), a Chinese maker of solar panels, led declines in solar stocks, closing down 18 percent at $2.76, after the U.S. credit rating downgrade caused investors to retreat from riskier assets. Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., a China-based maker of solar panels, fell 11 percent to $5.08. Solar stocks have fallen this year due to cuts in subsidies in Europe and manufacturing overcapacity in expansion in Asia…
JA Solar Holdings Co., a Chinese manufacturer of solar cells and panels, fell 69 cents, or 17 percent, to close at $3.35 a share in Nasdaq Stock Market trading…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-08/clean-energy-stocks-fall-as-solar-sector-hit-by-triple-whammy-.html
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Rereke Whakaaro
Like Bulldust I agree with you.But it will be the MSM that will ride this linkage with the Tea Party to try to disparage the convoys
( sorry Jo , I’m not associating you with the MSM but I disagree with your headline).
The Tea Party in the USA has been seen by the left leaning media, at least , as as some sort of far right party . I don’t agree but as they say in politics it is all about perception.
I think the convoy leaders should take up RW’s suggestion and come up with some sort of real Australian “label” for the media to latch onto so they can be disassociated from the Tea Party , but it would have to be done quickly.
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You mean you actually claim the name of Tea Party?? That’s hilarious!! Seriously, this site is the funniest thing on the net. I love coming here and getting a good old belly laugh at the stereotypical rednecks and their absurdities! You do realise don’t you that Sarah Palin and her ilk have the IQ of gorilla snot?
[Oh -look a new professional bluster boy has turned up to throw names. The Tea Party has risen from nowhere in 2 years to have a major influence on the most powerful nation on Earth. Of course they need to call it rude names. The anonymous trolls don’t even try to make a point, they just hope people fall for their transparent attempt to influence opinion with programmed fake “ridicule”. — JN]
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Austria – stand up for what you know is right, and move forward: you are making history, we are with you!
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O/T but interesting piece in the SMH (I know, I am always surprised when I find a worthwhile piece in there):
http://www.smh.com.au/business/its-ripoff-time-for-the-us-economy-20110815-1iuvq.html
Staurt Washington describes one way out of debt for the US Government… it involves ripping off the people of course. There’s always a slight catch 😉
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Simon Crean could have positioned himself as a future leader of the Labor Party, but he had to open his silly moouth:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/regions-are-embracing-vital-carbon-pricing-reform/story-e6frg6zo-1226115492879
I think the Convoy is showing how the regions are embracing Labor’s vision of the future.
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I agree with Waffle@12
When I first read here about the Convoy I thought it a great idea over a very specific grievance: one that affects not only you folks in Oz but everyone in the western world (albeit in slightly different ways).
The more ‘noise’ this protest makes, the more it will reverberate in the EU, UK, and US, perhaps to our mutual benefit.
If, however, it is going to be diluted into a mass of unrelated causes it will achieve absolutely nothing – the overwhelmingly left-wing media will simply ignore it, or report it as just a “bunch of country bumpkins letting off steam”.
Nevertheless, I wish all Convoy-eurs a safe and enjoyable excursion!
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Colin Henderson @ 16
The last time Austria did that they did make history, but I think you’ll find that we were all against them!
OK, I’ll get me coat . . .
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To all those paticipating in the convoys, good luck, happy motoring, stay safe and when you get there on monday and the formalities are over, party on dudes.
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Perhaps not a Tea Party but a Diesel Party? Well, so much for humor.
Maybe I shouldn’t council another to take chances. But remember what’s at stake for you if the going gets tough. You must end well in addition to beginning well.
People all over the world wish they could be there with you. And that includes this little known computer programmer toiling away in a back office doing stuff that only a few people in the world will ever see.
This could be the second, “Shot heard ’round the world.”
Take lots of pictures and video for the rest of us.
Roy
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One last news link for the morning… Graham Young, chief editor and founder of On Line Opinion, has written a piece at The Australian talking about the spirit of dissent and the dangers of group think, with a particular emphasis on climate science:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/dissent-makes-a-smarter-society/story-e6frgd0x-1226115488941
He seems to be of the opinion, however, that the internet will increase the group think phenomenon, but I beg to differ. Here’s what I posted (assuming it gets up):
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I have a great deal of time for Paul Sheehan, however he has done us a disservice in this column. As Joanne and Andrew Bolt have previously warned “The Convoy of No Confidence” was always going to be at risked of being compromised by lack of focus. This is probably the nature of the beast. Witness many demonstrations over the years for left wing causes, which featured disparate groups canvassing all sorts of issues to the detriment of the main cause.
Sheehan focuses here on the cattle trade issue and indeed that is of concern. I have communicated with many people around the country who are involved in organising this protest and The Carbon Tax is the main issue here. Of course other issues such as government waste and the cattle trade are symptomatic of a widespread belief in this government’s incompetence.
BTW. As soon as any video footage is available from the start at Port Hedland, can it get a prominent post here or elsewhere. We’ve still a few days to inspire participation from the other starting points.
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Dear Jo,
I think it is important to distance ourselves from the TEA party in USA as much as possible as it aligns those involved with an perceived far right wing ideology (NB I’m not saying they are “far” right wing but those unfamiliar with US politics may have that preconception) that I don’t necessarily believe the convoy participants all share.
Many look to me like lifelong Labor voters who have become disgruntled, and rightly so, with the neosocialist ideology of New Labor. Those in the convoy who have voted Labor all their life need to be front and centre and express their reasons for jumping ship to the waiting media- this is a powerful message that will ring alarm bells among wavering Labor pollies. The message should be that Labor no longer represents working class Australians because it is no longer looking after their interests and has stopped listening to their concerns.
As far as the same sex marriage “issue” is concerned- this needs to be dropped forthwith because Gillard has repeatedly said she is not in favour of this as policy, and Penny Wong’s private life is her business, not ours. Please stick to the main issue and do not dilute it with 100 other minor gripes that have no bearing on this government’s performance or incompetence. Otherwise the MSM will have a field day painting good people as a bunch of whingers having a gripe about a changing world.
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All journeys start with the first step, this will be ours. These guys are legends and will be remembered for a long time.
What is needed after this is something to back it up, another display of Australian unity.
Although I don’t like the idea a National One day strike may want to be considered. If everyone was to stop work for one day, business to stop trading for one day, we may be able to force these government failures to recognise that the level of No Confidence is across all walks of society.
I don’t think we should stop the confrontation though, once it has started we should push the throttle down and rev it up.
I wish the Convoy a safe and successful trip.
Say YES to an election now !!
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mikemUK said: If, however, it is going to be diluted into a mass of unrelated causes it will achieve absolutely nothing – the overwhelmingly left-wing media will simply ignore it, or report it as just a “bunch of country bumpkins letting off steam”.
1. This is still another double bind. If it is a focused single thing, the left will say it is too specific and too easily danced around. If it is many issues, it is not specific enough and the don’t know what to do about it. That is except use the iron fist of government to cram their repeatedly failed programs down your collective throats.
2. As for the many causes being unrelated? Nonsense! The common cause is too much government taking too much power and using it to limit individual choice, rights, and liberty.
3. The ONLY legitimate function of government is to protect and defend the individual rights of its citizens and to provide a nonviolent path for redress of grievances. The instant government steps outside those two functions it has become an illegitimate violator of those individual rights It becomes indistinguishable from a gang of thugs. Simply because government is the biggest gang of thugs with the most guns in the neighborhood does not make it right. It is irrelevant how may pieces of paper they print that says otherwise.
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Looks Like we got ourselves a convoy… See you in Canberra people
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I hope some of you are good enough to tell those who are in the convoy to protest about same sex couples raising children to get stuffed and get their own convy for their bigotted ignorant beliefs.
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Honestly I’m shocked and appalled that you even put that in there Jo. I guess some are probably complaining we are being swamped by asians (not just apples).
At least the more extreme the ideas the more the convoy will be treated as a rabid fringe. Hopefully there is some good media of posters saying “God hates teh ghays”.
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Sorry I see it was Paul Sheehan who said that… you guys should give him a right bollocking for including that,
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I wish them all the luck in the world with their protests – they just need to make sure they capture it for the record and promote it online as much as possible. I look forward to seeing pictures of a sea of people..
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[…] Is this Australia’s Tea-Party Moment? […]
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Don’t know how this would work, but rather than have a strike, which really only hurts the people striking, I’d love to see a mass non-vote at the next election. Let the clowns in Canberra try and convict a million people who failed to turn up at the polls. And the next election too and the one after that. Second thoughts, the clowns in Canberra would probably create a huge department dedicated to convicting every non-voter.
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Good luck on the convoy, good luck getting the government to recognise that there’s more than one voice in Australia apart from the urban intellectuals, and I really hope it tips the balance against the “fertiliser tax”.
But please don’t stop the NBN. Investment in infrastructure by a government during a boom is a good thing, fibre to the home is a good thing. The future is definitely digital and we need those cables to make the bits nice and speedy. As you’ve seen, the internet drives personal freedoms and unexpected advantages (this blog is the perfect example). We need to keep building the infrastructure that supports it.
However, I realise that it was proposed by a Labour Government so obviously cannot be a good thing in the eyes of the die-hard Liberal partisans here. Please just give a good policy a chance instead of outright condemning it because you don’t like who proposed it.
[But Winston, so much for internet freedom. As I understand — the government want to shut down the copper network and force everyone to go through a few major hubs that they control? Give me slow, cheap and free… –JN]
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Winston, the American TEA Party is not far right, or even conservative. It’s made up people from many parties and political persuasions. TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already, and nothing more. The TEA party is not involved in any social issues, and couldn’t care less about gay marriage.
The erroneous image you have of the TEA Party is due to malicious Democratic Party propaganda, malicious Orthodox Media propaganda, and malicious Republican Party propaganda. Obama’s paid trolls and reporters have spent thousands of hours spreading myths about the TEA Party in order to discredit it, but it’s membership includes as high a percentage of Democrats as the general population does, and it has a fair percentage of participating Blacks and Hispanics, which the Orthodox Media bend over backward not to report.
Now the Entrenched Powers that Be are spreading the story that the TEA Party is fading. Fat chance. It’s bigger than ever, and once it has elected enough new thinkers to office, we may start seeing many long-overdue perp walks.
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I see there’s a protest out the front of Parliament House in Canberra today.
I can just see the lead story on the ABC tonight, with the cameras actively seeking out the banners that they perceive as being in bad taste.
All this from the same ABC that snickered at the float showing John Howard as a dog sniffing at the fundament of George W Bush, and showed that often.
Note in the ABC News site today in the article about today’s protest, they showed those offending banners as the main image.
The search for those banners in fact provided the lead in for the Lunch Time ABC’s World Today live cross to the rally.
I’m willing to bet the same will apply to any coverage of the Convoy.
Thank heavens some of us have learned to ‘see right through’ the ABC.
We need it, but we also need it to be unbiassed.
Fat Chance that.
Tony.
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Curt@37
You’ll notice that I did put in the above disclaimer. I don’t pretend to have intimate knowledge of the TEA party or it’s inner workings or policy directions, but my comment was directed at public’s perception, that’s all. I apologise if the post gives the impression I am being critical of them, far from it. If the party’s platform is as you suggest, then I would be completely in favour of at least some of their policies. However, for the sake of public relations, I’m still not sure that aligning oneself with them is wise, given the lack of knowledge in Oz about their intentions and affiliations aside from MSM sound bites which are coloured in an unfavourable way. This is a propaganda war and as such perceptions are more often taken as more important than intentions, unfortunately. This is the world we live in, mores the pity.
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[SNIP]
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Does anybody know of a way that i can designate posts from MattB as spam in my in box whilst allowing every other post to come through?
TIA
Crakar24
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To remind everyone what is happening in the real world I’ll quote in full a forlorn comment from a namesake (not me) who posted on the Oz website this morning:
Unfortunately, Jo, I think you should not use ‘tea party’ in Australian context. Aussies are parochial, and hate the US in all its glorious cultural silliness. It doesn’t work here. Not least: there is no Boston in Oz, and convicts crave rum, not tea.
So, try Rum Rebellion or Eureka Carbon Stockade, not Tea Party (and never ‘One Nation’).
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Grumpy
The NBN is fine theoretically, but then so was building infrastructure in schools but unfortunately Labour governments are notorious for ballsing up the figures, jobs for the boys and general inability to pick the right option. Unlike roads which are long term investments and unlikely to be totally superceded in the foreseeable future, most computer related technology has a short lifespan (remember your old Commodore 64) and speeds which we now consider rapid will be insufficient in years to come to carry the load expected of them. Tying yourself to very expensive infrastructure isn’t necessarily the way to go if it becomes outmoded, even though there will be undoubted benefits for the bush etc in the meantime, I grant you. The cost is likely to be very prohibitive (400 billion estimated is likely to blow out…600…800 billion- wow!)and I would argue that the current economic climate hardly augurs well for enough people to be able to afford to utilise it to be worth the enormous expense.
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I hope the GG creates a precedent and calls a well justified double dissolution, now. No to the “Tea Party” title, how about “The Conservative Party” which would be accurate.
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GoF in 36,
The NBN is a crock of shit no matter who’s policy it is. How can it be called good policy when the Gov. paid Telstra 8 to 12 billion (not sure exact total)just to keep quiet and then went and spent 4 times that amount to replicate the Telstra/OPTUS networks that already exist?
The billions they paid Telstra to keep them happy could have been used to pay Telstra to build the network and really all they had to do was put in fiber to every house (which wont happen anyway under NBN) and upgrade a couple of exchanges here and there and presto we have a super super fast network. But hey if i was Telstra i would take a brown paper bag full of money any day, then sit back and watch the gov. bungle another grandious project.
NBN good policy my arse.
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Have followed your blog for some time… first time commenting. I have been a part of the Tea Party movement in the U.S. from day one. I flew across the country on September 12, 2009, to Washington D.C. to join a million others like myself who were finally finding the courage to speak out against a government gone mad. Over time we were first ignored or dismissed as astroturf in a hope that we would just go away, then mocked, then sexualized with profane name calling. Then, as the left (including or even especially the mainstream media) grew more and more frightened of our growing numbers, influence and power, we were called racists. Then in their desperation they even stooped to calling us terrorists. The bleating du jour is that the Tea Party is “fading”. They wish. We are growing stronger and more determined with every shot they fire. So take heart. Reading Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals” will help you anticipate and prepare for their attacks thus enabling you to withstand them. Wishing all of you all the best, and courage, to continue the good fight. You know, ITS WORTH IT!
Oh and for the record, our Tea Party Platform has only 3 points:
*Fiscal Responsibility
*Free Markets
*Constitutionally Limited Government
POWER TO FREEDOM LOVING PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!!!!
Susan in Seattle, Washington, USA
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In Jo’s defence the thread title states “is this Australias tea party moment” thereby referencing this moment in Australias political history to that which has recently occurred in the US. THe title does not in any way shape or form infer that Australia has its own tea party modelled on the US version.
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Mattb 30 thru 32,
By reading these posts one can be forgiven for thinking you are a pregnant lesbian who hates Paul Sheehan.
Seriously, do you understand what a free society is? A free society is one in which you have the right to say NO, you call these people ignorant bigots but it is you who are the ignorant bigot for not allowing these people the democratic right to free speech.
What gives you the right komrade to dictate what these people are allowed or not allowed to do.
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I agree with Rereke – call it a Eureka moment.
But, I really think this idea of cobbling together many disparate complaints is a bad one. Just choose one issue, and run with that.
But then, I’m a concern troll, so why would you listen to me?
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I a word – yes this Austrailia’s Tea Party statement, its the same thing that happened here – enough is enough and we’re not going to take it anymore
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Apologies,everyone- should of course be 40 billion,…60..80. Not 400 Billion -oops – maybe I could get a government job with the Treasury with such terrific maths skills,Lol- Still Wow!
Crakar’s post @ 45 just reinforces my point (with thanks), even policies which have the potential to provide benefits become a disaster if put together in a ham-fisted way by rank amateurs who don’t have a clue how to put a scheme together, without so much as an appropriate cost benefit analysis to begin with. Business could do it cheaper and better, deliver it on time and charge you less for it in the end into the bargain. Labor- bad ideas done badly, good ideas done badly- at least they are consistent!
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Susaninseattle 46,
Thanks for the post, i think i read somewhere that in their efforts to smear Ron Paul they tried to connect him with the TP movement which to me would back fire a bit. I dont think he is connected politically with them but surely he is ideologically. Can you expand on this a bit?
To all, i think what we are witnessing is a global revolt against government, it all started way back with the tank man in China (who by the way has never been seen since), then Egypt, Syria, Bahrain etc where the Saudi’s came in with tanks. We are now seeing the TP in the US, riots in the UK and dare not mentioned in the press marches in Israel. We even have a modest gathering here in Oz in which two of our resident stalkers have cried foul over.
The bottom line is the people have had enough and yes sometimes this anger is misplaced (UK riots) or if you believe some shills words on a banner the anger shares the same source and the anger will not go away until governments yield and i know i have said it many times before i will say it again.
When peaceful revolution is impossible violent revolution is inevitable- JFK
Viva the revolution
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Or perhaps, Crakar24, “If the vote doesn’t go your way, don’t accept it.”
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Err, why did the U.S. start going bad on September 12, 2009?
Before George W Bush was elected, the U.S. had a budget surplus, and hadn’t spent $3 trillion on two wars. Nor had it passed a $1 trillion tax cut funded purely using debt.
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For all those who are complaining the convoy lacks focus, obviously you lack the ability to see the bigger picture. The convoy’s single view is that they have had enough of this farce of a Government – end of story.
I imagine there are a lot of Labor diehards who secretly agree with this, because they are tired of their policies being held hostage by a trio of independents and the Greens.
This Government hasn’t lost their way… they never really had a way, and the only real direction is not coming from the majority representation of the rainbow coalition. The major policy issues are being dominated by the Greens. It is destructive for the Labor Party, but more importantly for Australia.
At what point in the polls is it sufficient to say the Government has lost the confidence of the people? 40% 2PP, 35%? At what point do you say it is no longer representative of the wishes of the electorate?
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Grumpy Old Fart @ 36
Have you heard of the Gulags?
“….But the open internets power cuts both ways:the tools that connect,organise and empower protesters can also be used to track them down.”
“Narus” will probably be the firm which will construct and control the POI’s [points of interconnect] for NBN.
“Narus, now owned by Boeing,was founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts to create and sell mass surveillance systems for governments and large corporate clients…..”
Huff Post TECH
Timothy Karr, “One U.S.Corporations Role in Egypts Brutal Crackdown”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/one-us-corporations-role-_b_815281.html
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I don’t believe the Australian T.E.A. party have any involvement with the convoys.
I find it incredulous that some people believe it is only rural folk that are joining the convoys. If one looks at the routes map one would see that six convoys commence in the cities.
I will be departing from Brisbane in Convoy 4. There are two convoys leaving Brisbane.
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JB in 53,
What are you talking about?
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Oh i get it JB, when Julia didnt win the election she just cozied up to anyone she could, sold her political soul to nutjob independants and the Greens because she could not accept she did not win. Of course this meant she had change her mind a few times but hey thats what democracy is all about is it not?
Tell me where does it say in the constitution that no matter how inept a government is we the people have to wait for 3 years before we kick them out of office?
You not we are seeing now JB? Government without representation thats what. If ever there was a reason to kick this mob out then this is it.
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OK, I think there’s some misconception about the NBN. The bit that matters, that costs so much, is laying the fibre cables to the homes. That’s the bit we need. All the rest is ephemeral.
Yes, the routers that are attached to the cables at each end will be replaced after a few years, probably every few years as the technology matures. This happens currently with the copper network.
Yes, the government may put in central hubs that control what we see. But that’s just software, it can be changed at any time. And they don’t need fibre to do that, the copper network is entirely controlled by a small number of Australian companies that can be coerced into installing whatever the government want without telling anyone about it. There’s been stories about US ISPs being forced to install government black boxes in their router cabinets for years. There’s nothing magical about the copper network that makes it free.
The copper network was built when the only thing it was used for was non-packet POTS connections across the network from one fixed telephone connection to another. Some of you may remember having to book a line when calling international. I remember a 10-second delay on the line when calling the UK from Aus. That’s what the copper network was built for, in an age where packet switched networks, ADSL and the internet weren’t even dreamed of.
It’s reached the end of its usefulness and needs upgrading, because we really can’t fit more bits down that pipe. Upgrading to fibre will replace all those copper lines with lovely fibre-optic lines that have an almost unlimited (to our technology) capacity for transporting bits. Those lines will almost certainly be used by successive generations of telecoms technology, just as the copper ones have. In another hundred years we may hit the same problem again, and have to lay superconducting quantum-teleportation conduits (or whatever) to our homes, but at the present limit of our knowledge fibre-optic cables to the home is absolutely the best choice for this.
We’re going to have to upgrade at some point; the copper network is already obsolete. The private sector isn’t going to do it, it’s too big an investment. We might as well do it now while there’s competitive advantage to doing it and we’ve got the cash from the resources boom to do it with. Never mind that the idiot Conroy proposed it, get the fibre laid down and we can sort out the problems later.
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Fiber has a finite capacity and it is far short of “almost unlimited”
Another much cheaper option is a wireless connection from the home to the exchange which is what most people will get anyway under the NBN.
The NBN will have its own local exchanges and it will have its own fiber cables running back to its own main switching center (MSC)so in the end we will be replicating a system that already exists.
You do realise fiber is not the best thing since sliced bread, yes it does have advantages but it also has disadvantages. It suffers from loses just like copper or any other medium so we need to convert electrical impulses (EI) from the home into light, then convert back to EI at the exchange to get amplified then back to light, then back to EI at the MSC to get amplified and so on. Yes it is not affected by water in the pits but mice and rats still like the taste.
When it comes to filters what they do is “sniff” the traffic for key words etc it is not user specific this is the kind of thing they do in a communist or tin pot dictator lead country like China or Saudi Arabia, surely they would not do such a thing here?
Telstra as we speak are building a 4G network on the gold coast with speeds that match NBN, 6 years before NBN and at no cost to the customer.
Spoken like a true idiot….sorry i meant Labor politician.
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http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3294651.htm
Still a bit of sneering going on but the point is nevertheless being made 🙂
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What? Under the NBN 93% of premises will be connected with fibre, which will initially have capacity of 100 Mbps, with functionality for 1 Gbps available. And that is simply based on existing technology that uses only part of the light spectrum.
Your proposal that wireless is a viable alternative is clearly a joke. The more people that access a wireless network the slower it becomes, that is simply the laws of physics at play. Oh, and of course, mobile phone towers that have the highest demand are connected to each other using optical fibre!
But in order to saturate an optical fibre connection, you’d need thousands of people simultaneously downloading data at the maximum speed.
What an absolute load of nonsense! When you sign up for an ADSL2+ connection, the ISP will tell you that the connection speed is “up to 20 Mbps”, but depending on your distance from the phone exchange, that is usually in practice only around 10 Mbps, and if you are quite far from the exchange it can be under 5 Mbps.
With optical fibre if you pay for a 100 Mbps connection, you get a 100 Mpbs connection, because the length of the optical fibre doesn’t effect the way the light travels, whereas the longer a copper line is, the lower the signal to noise ratio, which means a slower connection.
Optical fibre is the absolute rolls royce form of internet connectivity, there is no connection method that is better, and there probably won’t be for at least several hundred years.
[Telstra as we speak are building a 4G network on the gold coast with speeds that match NBN, 6 years before NBN and at no cost to the customer.]
Absolute rubbish! Telstra’s 4G network WILL NOT have the capacity to operate at 1 Gbps, which is what the NBN will be capable of running at.
Oh, and what will Telstra use to connect their 4G towers to their internet backbone?
Oh that’s right OPTICAL FIBRE!
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Jo,
As others have mentioned, bringing in everythinganyone isupset will guarantee this convoys desired effect failing.
As an example, whilst I am truly sympathetic to some of the grievances, as soon as someone gripes about apples, same sex parents etc, I cannot and will not support said convoy whilst this is the case.
The petition is clear, and I support that, but come on, the nbn? ffs, copper is neither cheap free or secure. It’ an expensive dinosoar. ftth will come in much cheaper than the turncoat turnbull has been spouting. don’t trust his numbers or his knowledge of physics. His views on AGW are a clear indication of this.
The copper is neither inexpensive free or not being monitored. lets not delude ourselves here please.
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Not just that, but it is owned by a private company called Telstra, which means they will have a veto over fixed broadband policy while it is still reliant on the copper network.
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Ah yes another telco expert/labor supporter crawls out of the shadows. OK idiot i will play along
What is the capacity of the associated equipment used in support of the fiber, do you seriously believe “thousands” of people could connect at the same time and get 100 MBP? Do you honestly think the NBN will deliver on this and if it does at what cost.
This comment shows you are just another stupid troll looking for an argument, you do realise that glass (what you call fiber)will/does attenuate the signal or do you thik a signal inside glass can go on forever? Wow what an invention that would be………once again you are an idiot. and now idiot the S/N ratio does not “slow” it down it means the signal is so low it cannot be seen amongst the noise which means you get no connection FFS!!!!!!!!!!!
What will replace it in 100 years (in your professional opinion) once again you are an idiot, ever heard of microwave links? What you need to get your head around is that a signal can be transmitted in any medium, fiber is used across the country as it can be used in multi mode the mode the NBN will use from the house is single mode as you are the only user.
Telstras 4g network has the capacity of 100mpb which is the exact same as NBN but now you pull 1gb out of your arse as you have no response to this statement. You just make shit up to carry on your argument….once again you are an idiot.
The key word here idiot is “back bone”, what does Telstra use as its back bone…fiber thats right and back bone by definition means thousands of customers (see multi mode). So we dont need fiber to go from the home to the local exchange we need something less expensive, something less invasive. Oh gee i wonder if we could use a wireless connection? But no idiots like you dont have the mental ability to grasp the concept.
Remember you said this
You hear wireless and think mobile phone or some such not microwave links or anything like that. Try and follow me here, we have one line (medium) from a house to the local exchange, at the exchange we have a lines from every house, each line is an individual line. It then gets multiplex (all jumbled in together) and then leaves the exchange ON A FIBER CABLE.
The connection from your house to the exchange can be anything as long as it has the capacity to operate as fast as the overall system otherwise you get a bottle neck. How many meduims are out there that could run at 100MBp or indeed you flight of fantasy 1GBp?
So crawl back under your rock idiot and shut up whilst the adults are talking.
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Us average folk no longer trust the ‘self annointed elites’ and we are no longer willing to outsource the maintenance of our civil society to these leftist creeps. That’s the Tea Party. We just need a name suited to Australia.
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Yes, what happened to the Checks & Balances, that are required to protect a functioning & representative Democracy from the excesses of it practitioners ?
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Crakar24@66
Haven’t taken much notice before but am on Telstra cable (200GB/month access) and used to notice that the connection was at 100 Mbps. Just checking now it reads “Local Area Connection 2” “Speed 1.0 Gbps”. I’m in a Melbourne suburb. If that means gigabyte per second why on earth do we need to switch to optic fibre? Certainly not for speed.
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YES! because that is what the system has been engineered to support at the outset, with the ability to upgrade that to 1 Gbps in the future!
Dear oh, dear, at least READ about what you are attacking!
Unbelievable! Compare fibre to copper, copper attenuates the signal over just a few hundred metres, with fibre you can go for several kilometres without any change at all, and boosting the signal is done using an optical amplifier which amplifies the signal in the optical domain!
You don’t know anything about what you are attacking!
WTF! Microwave! What a load of nonsense. Any wireless system is subject to the laws of physics, the more people connect to it, the lower the signal strength, the lower the reliability and speed! That will never bee cheaper than sending light signals down a piece of optical fibre. you are arguing against the laws of physics!
What the crap are you going on about! Mobile phones USE part of the microwave spectrum!
You’re making up crap as you go along!
What the crap are you going on about? The fastest network type is optical fibre, not copper, not wifi, not 3G, OPTICAL FIBRE. There is a REASON why Telstra connects its mobile phone towers to its internet backbone using optical fibre, it is because, now read this carefully, IT IS THE FASTEST NETWORKING TECHNOLOGY IN EXISTENCE.
If you want the connection to houses to be as fast as the network backbone, you CONNECT THE HOUSES USING OPTICAL FIBRE!
1 GBPS? THERE IS ONLY ONE, optical fibre!
Instead of reverting to abuse, go off and read about the technologies you are talking about so you don’t present so much misinformation.
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That is simply the speed that your network card is connected to your router or to the modem.
In order to test your actual connection speed, go here:
http://speedtest.net/
And also keep this in mind. The cable network is owned by a private monopoly that doesn’t have to give access to it to other companies, hence there is no competition on the cable internet network. THat means you are paying more than you should have to for that connection.
Only about 3% of Australian households live in an area with 100 Mpbs compatible cable internet access.
Also, by using the NBN you will be able to cancel your phone (copper line connection) which will save you $20 – $25 a month.
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Sorry Bruce, I cant support Conservative Party, I think you will find many of those involved in the convoy and the rebellion against the current Government are long time Labor voters and still hold to basic left of centre politics. It’s just that this government does not represent Australians of any persuasion.
But yes an election now.
Bob
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If the G.G. did this, the High Court would most likely rule that the entire election is invalid.
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Llew@69
Sorry Llew, you’re out of your depth here. What you’re seeing is the speed oof the internal network connection between your machine and your router – not the speed online. Depending on what plan you’re on it is unlikely you will be getting anywhere near 20mbps (assuming you’re optimistically on ADSL2 and you’re close enough to the exchange and Telstra haven’t done your neighbourhood over by cutting corners).
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Sorry, Jo, but you’ve lost me on this one. If you align yourself with the extreme Right of the US Republic Party, you’re going to get grief in middle Australia. The American solution isn’t as simple as cutting taxes in a country with little safety net. The Green zombies are going to get a massive free kick out of this protest. I fear this exercise will do nothing but embarrass all of us in the silent middle class who want to be rid of this government.
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[Depending on what plan you’re on it is unlikely you will be getting anywhere near 20mbps (assuming you’re optimistically on ADSL2 and you’re close enough to the exchange and Telstra haven’t done your neighbourhood over by cutting corners).]
He said he is on Telstra cable, 20 – 30 Mbps isn’t rare on cable.
Only 3% of Australian households can access the Docis 3 cable network, which enables speeds at up to 100 Mbps, and remember there’s no competition at all on the telstra cable network, hence the high prices.
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“And also keep this in mind. The cable network is owned by a private monopoly that doesn’t have to give access to it to other companies, hence there is no competition on the cable internet network. THat means you are paying more than you should have to for that connection.”
Not quite right. Our intial internet provider on the same cable was Optus. Also had landline in same deal. Telstra undercut Optus prices by a significant amount. So we migrated. Every 6 months or so Telstra contact us and give us all sorts of discounts and “free calls” or reduced charge calls for being a “loyal” customer.
Their latest was a “Bundle” which gave us 200 gigabytes instead of 50 when we “Bundled” a new mobile phone plan into the deal. All at the same price as before but now including a mobile plan. We owned the mobile phone. If that’s not being competitive it’s near enough for me.
Governments utilities always significantly increase their prices over time, possibly to help pay the higher wages of their unionised employees, so I’m no fan of high charging government enterprises of any sort.
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Crakar,
Can we give up on the what will be used in 100 years argument please? It’s the precautionary principle in another guise.
If you think Wireless technologies currently being worked on are going to provide an upper boundary of 48tbps in a sturated environment, then maybe we can talk. Current wireless technologies suffer from crappy lag and easy over sturation. It’s still useful, just not for serious applications.
I hate this Govt, but after the disaster that was the telco situation of the previous mob, NBN is the one thing they have got right. Credit where credit’s due.
Now this is exactly why the message for the convoy should not be diluted.
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adam@76,
Thanks for the correction. I’d forgotten that cable even existed. It’s an alien concept out this way…
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Silly stuff ! Keep to the main issue and disregard this peripheral nonsense. Aussie tea party be blowed;sounds like real troglydite material.
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The NBN isn’t a government utility. It simply wholesales access to ISPs at the same price, whether they are Telstra Bigpond or a small state based company.
I agree with you that government ownership tends to be bad for utilities, the reason electricity prices have increased more rapidly in NSW and QLD than in other states is because the states own the distribution networks, and in some instances the generators.
One of the reasons why Australia’s internet access is on average half the speed but twice the cost of the OECD, is because Telstra owns the copper network, and has a monopoly on its HFC (cable) network, which is limiting competition.
We need a new system where all companies access the network for the same cost, and that will be the NBN.
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NEWS: is this just Weather, or Climate Disruption?
First Snow Falls on Auckland, in 80 Years !
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the trucks are coming,
nah, justa bunch of whiny aucklanders trying to fit in with the rest of nz 😉
They just about had a quake the other month, and now they got a couple if snow flakes.
Just wait for the spinners to explain how this global cooling is actually global warming…
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Jo,
I often wonder who benefits from the governments position on policy change?
A politician really is not that bright and have consultants plus many lobbyists knocking at the government trough of funding.
What unknown promise did the politician receive to push the policy change through?
Many politicians are high on committees, boards or become more wealthy by the “new” position they are in out of office. They know what is being looked at by the media in way of proper paperwork or expenses being looked into.
What is the motivating factor behind this push for the destruction of Australia’s economy. Certainly not the good heartedness to save the planet.
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Just passing Broome by…
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Adam Smith@81
My understanding was that individual user speeds are governed by such things as computer speeds. The computer,with the modem directly connected to cable, is definitely still showing a speed of 1.0 Gbps. As in the ad below the speed ex-Telstra for my plan is up to 100Mbps the shown gigabyte speed is most likely an error. However there seems little doubt that Telstra is sending at up to 100Mbps to those customers using its Ultimate Cable plan, in given locations. Thus the uload and download speeds must be a function of my system’s hardware and software
Two computers, connected to the same cable in our house are using a wireless monitor and the speed shown on both is 54Mbps
“BigPond Ultimate Cable plans can provide speeds up to 100 Mbps into the home for sharing across multiple users within the household. These speeds are so fast that they exceed the capabilities of many content servers and individual PCs. Maximum download speeds are based on Telstra tests. Average download speeds will be lower and actual download speeds a single user will get will vary due to a number of factors including customer hardware, equipment and software, server limitations, Wi-Fi reception/capacity, type of content being accessed and number of users online.”
From memory I heard Combet, on the radio confirm that businesses in big city locations already have speeds in excess of those touted for the fibre cable via NBN and that he was more interested in country and regional areas. The question of course is why? For downloading movies for country kids?
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MattB at 31, 31 AND 32..
HAHAHAHAHA, groan, tears, side splitting laughter, mirth guffaw chuckle chuckle…oh dear dear dear MattyB.
Priceless…..LOVE the righteous indignation angle.
Thanks for making my day…
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John Brookes: @49
Err sorry, I wasn’t listening, what was that squeaking sound?
Did you say something?
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That’s a measure of the speed of the connection between your computer and the modem, or your computer and the router. It just means you have a 1 Gbps network card in your PC.
It is NOT a measure of the speed of your cable connection back to Telstra’s servers and to the internet. In order to measure that speed you need to go to a website like this one: http://speedtest.net/ You will find that your internet connection varies depending on the quality of the signal to noise ratio at your location, and that may change at different parts of the day depending on other people using the network.
When I previously had cable internet I got speeds of around 20 Mbps.
Well why don’t you test it by going here: http://speedtest.net/
There is no way that your actual internet connection is 1 Gbps, because the Telstra network simply can’t work at that speed, 100 Mbps is the absolute fastest theoretical speed, but the practical speeds are usually much lower, whereas on the NBN the speed you pay for is the speed you get because optical fibre has a far higher capacity.
No, the 100 Mbps plan requires the customer to be on the DOCIS 3 network, which currently is only some parts of Melbourne and Sydney. Everyone else on the Docis 2 network will be limited to around 30 Mbps.
Again, that is the speed of your Local Area Network, NOT your connection to the internet. To measure your internet connection speed you need to go to a website like this one: http://speedtest.net/
SOME businesses have dedicated 100 Mbps connections between business locations.
Guess what technology is used to acheive these connections?
Optical fibre.
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Hey guys who is this Adam Smith? The man that can make communications technology faster than it is. Just by asserting it is so!.
Wow what a brain!
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Those tests you suggest are it seems computer specific and measure the effective speed of uploading and downloading. (That is indicated by those programs also offering to improve your computer speeds by “cleaning up” the software).
The Telstra information I posted said specifically that. Surely a fibre optical connection of the same speed would not make any difference to the computer’s speed capabilities.
Incidentally your URL showed a download speed of 83.01 & 94.69 Mbps (two trials only)on the directly connected to cable modem computer. Which may indicate the up to 100 Mbps “supply” is in the ball park. The page then suggests that that speed may be improved by looking for errors in Windows which again confirms that the computer capabilities, amongst others things, affects the speed indicated by those sort of tests.
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No they are not computer specific, they are specific to your actual internet connection.
When someone signs up for an ADSL2+ connection, they are told “up to 24 Mbps”, but most people are lucky to get half that, because ADSL2 is limited by distance from the phone exchange and the quality of the copper in their local area. Cable has similar issues, if a lot of people in your street use the cable, it will have a lower signal to noise ratio, and thus won’t be as fast.
The same doesn’t apply to the NBN, because it is sending signals over optical fibre.
No, a fibre optic connection of the same speed will be faster because the signal to noise ratio of the light can remain much higher even with more demand on the network. This is because the signal is being sent as pulses of light.
Yes, it sounds like you are in the 3% of households that have access to the DOCIS 3 cable network.
But just keep in mind that in a decade or so the NBN will be able to operate at 1 Gbps, which will never be matched by the HFC network.
What is your upload speed like?
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The convoy can be a Tea party Movement – you only need to keep it going. But understand, if you make a movement out of it, the press and politicians will vilify you and accuse you of all sorts of heinous things. But as most of the participants in the Convoy also have been skeptical of AGW, you are aware of these things. Best of luck to you and the convoy!
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Adam Smith @ 54, “Err, why did the U.S. start going bad on September 12, 2009? Before George W Bush was elected, the U.S. had a budget surplus, and hadn’t spent $3 trillion on two wars. Nor had it passed a $1 trillion tax cut funded purely using debt.”
Where did I say that it started to go bad on September 12, 2009? September 12th was selected as the date to have our tea party march in DC because of the symbol that 9/12 has become to us. On that day in 2001 our country was more united in spirit than on any other single day in our history. It did not matter what political party, what religion or lack thereof, what race, what ideology, what sex or sexual orientation, what anything you were. All the mattered was that you were American, and we rushed to each others aid. September 12th has come to mean “Together We Stand”. The tea party’s idealogy was silent for a long long time, often referred to as the “silent majority”. The fear that we were each alone in our beliefs was the goal of the elite ruling class. And it worked until this on February 19, 2009: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=1039849853 Less than one month later, March 15th (America’s tax day), I attended a tea party on the Washington State Capitol’s lawn. There were more than 5,000 of us. We have never looked back.
And Bush DID NOT inherit a surplus. That is another lying liberal talking point that if repeated often enough will be held as truth by lazy and gullible media dolts. You know like AGW. Clinton robbed Peter to pay Paul which gave the appearance of a surplus. But our national debt never went down. In fact it increased under Clinton by $18 billion. http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/30
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Crakar24 @52,
The Tea Party is not a political party. We consist of every political party. I have voted Democrat on many occasions in the past. In fact the last Washington State election was the first time I voted for a Republican governor. (And I’m old and have voted for decades.) I still vote liberal on social issues, ie gay rights, etc. The Tea Party is an ideology. It just happens that the Republican Party tends to align better than the Democrats with those ideals. Paul Ryan tends also to align with and speak out for:
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
FREE MARKETS
CONSTITUTIONALLY LIMITED GOVERNMENT
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John Brookes @ 53 “If the vote doesn’t go your way, don’t accept it.”
There is nothing wrong in my book with not “accepting” a vote that you believe to be wrong. When based on principles, one should never capitulate to the opponent. You may have to live with the consequences of such a vote for a time, but you don’t have to accept that it is the end game forever. And if the vote doesn’t go your way, don’t necessarily believe it. We are only beginning to uncover and to what extent voter fraud has played in our elections. It is a blind faith in government, a belief that those elected to represent us will always do the right thing for the people, that has gotten the U.S. into this mess of crony capitalism, breath-taking debt and corrupt, power grabbing, self serving politicians. It has taken decades of a patient and determined dumbing down and nanny state entitlements to lull us to sleep. (Sound familiar Australia?) George W. was my wake up call with his head spinning statement, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” (He has since admitted that his losing faith in the free market was a mistake.) But Obama has continued the downward spiral at an even more alarming rate. The debt is now 100% of our GDP! So what does Obama want to do?? He wants to borrow more to pay the debt! This is insanity. In a further attempt to demonize the tea party, we were accused of holding the American economy “hostage” because we didn’t want the debt ceiling raised yet again. But, if we hadn’t raised the debt ceiling we would not have defaulted (as Obama/democrats and some republicans tried to scare us into thinking in order to demonize the tea party). We simply could not borrow more under our own rules. We have enough income to pay our debt (for now), which, by definition, means we don’t default. The Republicans were not “playing chicken”, rather they were “standing in front of a washed out bridge warning that there is no salvation in infinite debt.” Our treasury choosing to pay for things other than the debt (which is questionable according to our law – U.S. Constitution 14th Amendment, Sec. 4 and ArticleVI which basically state the government has to pay its debts first before any feel good entitlements are paid for) is not the same as congress playing chicken. At that point it would be an unconstitutional autocratic choice placing us into default, not congressional deadlock. In the U.S. its a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
Do not believe for a second that the passion of the Tea Party is “fading”.
*FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
*FREE MARKETS
*CONSTITUTIONALLY LIMITED GOVERNMENT
Best wishes on your Convoys, Australia!!!
(Sorry for the thread hyjack, Jo. I’m done.)
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@ Adam Smith
I guess we’ll all have a quiet chuckle while we figure that one out.
Historically, governments have nationalised industries with the intention of “saving jobs” and for other ‘noble’ reasons such as keeping an industry going that had some strategic value but was economically unviable. This is the first time I can a recall a (supposedly democratic) government purchasing an industry (the Telstra comms network) purely for the purpose of closing it down. This move was the giveaway. The NBN was only ever going to be viable if the government forcibly intervened to close down competition. If this economic dog’s dinner ever gets to the kennel, come back and see us in ten years but leave your whinging about high prices and sub par performances at home because … you were warned.
As for the guy who thinks fibre will be king for the next hundred years, Ok Nostradamus. If things keep going in the direction they are, you’ll probably be right. The society we are creating will bring an end to innovation, invention, initiative and progress. Don’t be surprised if we’re not only huddling together in the library to keep warm but also to share the communal PC.
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I’m coming to this discussion about the NBN (among other things) a bit late … sorry for that – I spent yesterday getting to and from Canberra for the No Carbon Tax rally.
I was living in Spain and working remotely for a London-based investment bank. Initially, I was able to work fairly effectively with intermittent dial-up, using ISDN, but things improved significantly in 1999/2000 when ADSL became available. That was a whole 256 kpbs but it felt like I was back in the office. Over the years, the speed was increased (for the same money) to 512 kpbs, 1 Mbps and finally 2 Mbps. All that meant that large file downloads were faster but the basics of receiving & sending mail, UNIX command sessions and even intranet browsing and making Skype calls were handled just fine in terms of capacity and response times. Since returning to Australia, I have had ADSL2 connected and I now get about 7 Mbps. I can be working from home, with both wife and daughter using other computers in the house, without any capacity problems. At times, that will include me running a screen-share while my daughter is watching Youtube.
My point? All the above is what NBN proponents say it’s going to enable us to do. Just last week I heard someone say people will be able to work from home thanks to the NBN. Well, as I said, I was doing that 10 years ago on 256 kpbs. As data volume demands rose, the ISPs kept up with speed increases, all the while without raising my monthly charges. I appreciate that we’ll be doing things in the future that demand ever-growing volumes of data. But the track record is that private companies have kept the technology moving along, with incremental improvements to the network. We aren’t even at the end of the road with copper, e.g. VDSL with (theoretical) speeds up to 52 Mbps. I just don’t see why we have to commit so much money to a big-bang mega-project to install countrywide fibre, when there’s plenty left to exploit from our existing, installed copper.
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Well the Tea Party do not simply believe in free markets, because when the Obama Healthcare bill made changes to Medicare, many in the Tea Party protested against these changes.
On the one hand they protest against socialism, but on the other hand they protested against changes to their government benefits.
That isn’t consistent, and nor does it suggest that they actually believe in free markets. A purely free market health care system would see health care services available to those that can afford it, and leave those that can’t afford health care services without any access to services or insurance coverage.
Such a health care system would be a free market system, but it would be morally reprehensible.
The U.S. government and its people spend almost 2.5 times the amount of GDP on health care as Australia does, yet Australia has universal coverage, whereas even after the full implementation of Obama’s system, about 5% of the U.S. population will still be uncovered.
And the really hilarious thing is that U.S. consumers effectively subsidise the cost of medication for Australians, because unless they are on medicaid or medicare, they pay the full market price, whereas most common medications in Australia are subsidsed on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme!
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I agree with parts of this, but it isn’t a complete summary. Unlike say the U.S., most Australian industries were set up through government ownership or intervention. Australia didn’t have rail barons, we had the government building railways, and power stations and gas works. S.A. actually had private electricity generation, but it was nationalised by Liberal Premier Tom Playford when the power companies refused to cut their electricity prices, which was restricting the growth of industry.
This isn’t entirely true. Yes the copper network will be shut down, because it will be made obsolete by optical fibre, and in some areas it already is obsolete because the copper is such a low grade that it can’t work with ADSL, but what the Government is actually buying is Telstra’s optical fibre that is already in the ground. By doing this they have knocked about $8 billion off the cost of the NBN, because NBN Co won’t have to lay as much new optical fibre.
Well I say to you the direct opposite. When all of Australia’s telecommunications, internet access, television, radio and education services, and a bunch of applications that don’t even exist yet, are run over the NBN. Come and tell me that it wasn’t a good investment.
OK Nostradamus. I have absolutely no idea how you go from Australia having an optical fibre network that connects 93% of premises to some idiotic distopian future where people go to the library for internet access.
You’re seriously over egging the pudding mate.
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Whoops, I wrote “industries” but meant “utilities”.
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It’s not that Fibre is King for the next hundred years, I’m sure there’ll be some invention that improves on it at some point, and that will get implemented on the backbone the way the backbone network uses fibre now. It’s that fibre is a cheap-enough, good-enough replacement for the current copper network that it’s worth doing if we’ve got the cash to do it.
Remember we’re not talking about locking down the technologies that use the fibre, we’re just talking about replacing the existing copper network with something (literally) a million times better. The routers and comms protocols that shove the bits down the fibre will continue to improve, which they can’t do at the moment because we’ve hit the limit that copper can carry.
That replacement for the copper network isn’t wireless. I know the Libs plan is to oppose every single policy that Labour pushes, but on this one they’re just making fools of themselves by pushing wireless. They’d be much, much more credible to attack Labour’s implementation plans instead. Talk about breaking up the monopoly provider to introduce competition, or have better controls on the provider to prevent price increases out of line with inflation, or come up with a different plan for provisioning altogether. That’d be great and us techies would get behind that no problem, but to propose wireless instead of fibre to the home is just ridiculous.
The telecoms companies may install fibre to the inner suburbs, but the costs get way out of proportion when you start looking at wiring up the rural towns. But the rural towns are the ones who need it most. Enabling small businesses to start up on the internet in rural areas will help keep those rural towns alive. They can’t do it at the moment because the comms infrastructure just isn’t there; it’s always going to be a matter of moving to the city to get the bits flowing. It’s going to take a government to get decent connectivity to these places because the return on investment is decades, if ever.
I don’t care which party implements it, but fibre to the home is a great idea whose time has come. Let’s do it and not let the politics (for once!) get in the way.
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@Adam Smith.
You are the one talking rubbish.
The $8 billion is primarily being used to decommission the Telstra/Foxtel HFC cable network (the Optus HFC network has already been purchased) and the Telstra copper wires and ducts. This is purely to prevent Optus and Telstra cherry picking the highly profitable urban markets.
The $8 billion doesn’t buy any of the Telstra fibre backbone. That must be duplicated.
The Treasury has already stated that the NBN “business plan” is so weak that it cannot survive any real competition.
The NBN has less than 200 paying customers. Each customer cost (tens of) millions of dollars to acquire.
The claim that fibre will be futureproof is also nonsense. Much of it will be strung from power poles and highly vulnerable to physical damage from storms. A realistic life for this cable is <20 years.
To claim that fibreoptics will be the dominant technology in 100 years is laughable. No one can predict the future.
100 years ago home phones used party lines and manual exchanges.
100 years ago radio relied on Morse Code, spark-gap generators and 100metre tall long wave transmitters.
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A poster here claims fiber is the “Rolls Royce” for internet connection (see post 63) but one thing they fail to either grasp or acknowledge is that the environment dictates what is a Rolls Royce. So lets simplify things a little, Fiber, cable, ATM and space are simply transmission mediums for data. So if i wanted to transmit data from one mountain top to another how far would my “Rolls Royce” get going down the ravine and then up the other side? Not very far i would say so therefore in this situation a micro wave link is the “Rolls Royce” of internet as it would be cheaper and easier.
Another example, if i wanted to transmit data to and from a mobile phone whilst driving would i:
A, have a spool of “Rolls Royce” hanging out the back of my car from my home or
B, Use a wireless connection.
Obviously in this situation wireless would be my “Rolls Royce” and it would be cheaper and easier
How about a data connection between Sydney and CHCH? I could lay a cable of either copper wire or fiber but how expensive would that be? No much cheaper and easier would be to rent a channel from a Telstra sat.
So it is obvious the statement
is a misnomer.
Now lets take a closer look at the NBN.
Firstly the government paid Telstra near on 12 billion in compensation for their copper network and shut them out of the NBN, secondly the NBN did not budget enough to get fiber to the home whose price came in at an eye watering 12 billion +.
So we have a Government that has spent 25 odd billion before even a sod of dirt is turned, whats more this is your money they are spending and once you get a fiber cable next to your house you still need to pay to use it, you will need to pay for the fiber to Cat 6 cable conversion and said cable being run in your house and then you will need to pay for the privilege to use it…WTF!!!!!!!!! and this is the achilles heal of the NBN. I have ADSL2 and my son downloaded 100meg of music the other day and it took all but 50 odd seconds so why oh why would i want to drop Telstra and join NBN? Why so i can download 100 Meg of music in 25 seconds and for this i have to pay more than what i pay now? So the less people use it the bigger the white elephant becomes.
Lets get back to the “rolls royce” equation.
The Telstra network uses fibre optic as its back bone but uses mainly copper wire from the exchange (or node in NBN speak) now this is not good enough to transmit 100 meg so if you want to go higher you need to upgrade. NBN will not be able to just simply pull out the old copper and shove millions of kilometers of fiber through it, in most cases they will have to dig new trenches, dig up concrete driveways, up root trees or simply suspend bundles of fiber on existing power lines (wont that be a sight for sore eyes) so you can see why it will cost soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much to get FTTH, to a home that it will most likely not be used.
So what are the alternatives? Well a smarter way to do this would be to just simply build your network from the node/exchange all the way back to the international gateway and for the very few users you have you can provide a wireless connection (oh how i can here the cries now) but think about it, you only supply a connection to your customers you dont need to supply a connection to every house in the country because most people wont want one. So rather than piss away tax dollars on an assumption you simply spend what you need to spend and expand as you go. This notion that the connection to the home MUST BE FIBER IS STUPID and a complete waste of money.
I could go on but what is the point? Here are just a few notes about fiber etc, what we are talking about is the physical connection or if you like layer 1 of the OSI model.
This is all we are talking about, when it comes to how fast it is as in 100 meg or the mythical 1Gig it really has nothing to do with it, some here speak of fiber as if it rivals the eradication of small pox or challenges the developement of the internal combustion engine as the greatest discovery known to man. The bottom line is when inflation goes through the roof and the government coffers are bare dont come crying to me.
.
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@bananabender 103
You’re missing the point. 100 years ago the manual exchanges, morse code and party lines were being used on *the same* copper network that we’re using now with ADSL2. Those copper lines running between the exchange and the house have lasted 100 years. The technologies that used them haven’t.
We need to upgrade those copper lines because we’ve reached the limit of what we can pump down copper wires. We need to replace the 100-year-old copper wires with fibre, because fibre is the best and cheapest solution we have available now. It should last another 100 years until we need to replace it again. After all, the copper wires did.
It doesn’t matter that they’re strung from trees for now, they can be buried later during routine maintenance, same as the copper lines were.
It doesn’t matter that the routers in the exchanges will be replaced every few years as comms tech improves. That happens now with the copper network.
It doesn’t matter that the government of today wants to install black boxes on the network to watch what we do. They can always be removed later when sanity returns.
It doesn’t matter that the network backbone will be replaced with whatever tech comes next; the backbone pays for itself and will always be up to date
What matters is replacing those copper wires in your street. Until we do that, your connection speed will always be limited by the bandwidth of a copper wire. And no, we can’t replace those wires with wireless, it just doesn’t cut it.
@Crakar24: your entire argument is based on three things:
1. people won’t want a fast broadband connection
2. 100 meg is enough for anybody
3. The NBN plan is being mismanaged by Labour
1 and 2 are plain wrong. A few minutes spent reading up on telecoms history will demonstrate this.
3 is almost certainly correct, so let’s work to get it done better by someone else.
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Hey GoF,
Is it true we had PVC in 1911? I suspect you are incorrect when you state
More dissinformation………………….
The original lines were made of lead and wrapped in paper, todays lines are copper under PVC. Please get your facts straight before shooting your mouth off in the future TIA.
Your senile arent you, firstly have you ever heard of the telecommunications standards? Obviously not otherwise you would know that you cannot simply string up cable with the atitude of “heck that’ll do we’ll fix it later”. They will do it once and once only stupid.
So you feel it is cost effective to simply replace your network infrastructure every few years on a whim?
Oh yes thats right the boxes will be removed later when we get the time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The back bone is the backbone if it cannot handle the traffic of all your users then your system will fall over.
The three points
1, People have fast broad band connection the question is are they willing to pay extra for something their taxes bought in the first place that will not give them value for money. Why pay extra just to save 5 minutes downloading a pron movie?
2, What is enough GoF, what is your preffered speed and why?
3, Why did they isolate Telstra? After all it is 51% owned by us!!!!
GoF
Rather than frothing at the mouth whilst you run around in ever decreasing circles explain to some technical level (ie not faith and belief) why wireless just wont cut it.
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yeah, I would reply, but I don’t like the tone the debate’s taken. I’m not frothing at the mouth, shooting my mouth off, or stupid.
I suspect that further debate will only bring further abuse, so I’m bowing out here.
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Yes there will be advances, but it will involve sending more data down optical fibres, such as by using different parts of the light spectrum. Fibre is the fastest technology now, and it has the most potential for improvement into the future.
I completely agree. In fact, Turnbull has realised how big a fool he was making himself look, so he has now shifted the Coalition’s policy to support fibre to the node rather than fibre to the home. So essentially the Coalition has now adopted Labor’s policy circa 2006 – 2007, but the Government put out tenders for fibre to the node and found that none of them were good value for money, and what turned out to be far better value for money, especially in terms of future proofing the network, was doing fibre to the home now while it was relatively cheap.
No, we don’t want competition for the network itself, we need competition for the utilisation of the network by retailers.
We need to do what we have finally done for rail, we have one company that owns and maintains the network, then any company can access the network provided they pay a set fee. Having a fibre network is a NATURAL monopoly that we only need to build once, we then let any company sell access to it at the retail level and pay the same fee.
Well what is that plan? There is a reason that the Coalition is simply criticising the technology, becuase they know that the Government’s policy of separating Telstra between its retail and network arms is right (and should’ve been done before it was privatised) and they know that it is right that there should be a fibre network that wholesales but doesn’t retail access.
This is what the Coalition refuses to accept. They still think that some people should have fibre access while others shouldn’t. They just want the market to decide, but this is a time that Government needs to step in to get the network built, once it is built we can finally have a competitive fixed line sector the way we have a competitive 3G mobile internet sector.
If you leave it to the Liberals we will get competition in metro areas, and no competition anywhere else, and there will even be hundreds of thousands of house holds in metro areas that still don’t have access to truly competitive broadband internet because their phone line can’t get ADSL.
Let’s build a fibre network, do it right, do it once, and then let the market work to acheive the lowest price for broadband without a private monopoly called Telstra having an effective veto over access to the network.
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This is wrong, it won’t cost $8 billion to shut off the copper and HFC networks, that can be done by flicking a few switches.
But yes, I do note that it is unfortunate the government has had to hand over a heap of cash ($11 billion?) to get access to Telstra’s existing fibre. That just demonstrates how idiotic it was for the Howard government to sell off Telstra before seperating its network and retail arms. Labor’s botched the corporatisation of Telstra too, so there is a lot of blame to go around, but at least now we have a Government that has the guts to split Telstra between its retail and network divisions, which is a problem that has damaged competition in the telco sector for the last 15 years.
Completely wrong! Telstra sells its fibre to NBN Co, it becomes part of the NBN.
Err reference? NBN will have a return of 7% p.a. by 2025.
There’s no reason to revert to flat out lies!
By the next election about 1 million households will have access to the NBN, and it is estimated that there will be 400,000 subscribers. Oh, and if the NBN is so bad, why have the Coalition now promised that they won’t shut the NBN network down if they win the next election?
LOL! What and telephone wires aren’t vulnerable to physical damage from storms?
Realistic life is 20 years? Where do you get this crap from? There is optical fibre in the CBDs of Australia’s capital cities that has been there since the late 1980s. I don’t see CBDs being dug up to replace optical fibre!
In fact this document details that optical fibre has the following advantages over copper:
Benefits of fiber include:
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Part of post 109 was truncated. Here are the advantages of optical fibre over copper:
Taken from here:
http://www.transition.com/transitionnetworks/Resources/en/PDF/fiber_wp.pdf
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What the crap are you going on about? You are bouncing back and forth between an analogy and a practical scenario! If you install an optical fibre between the mountain tops, you could send data hundreds of times faster using that link than a microwave transmitter could!
Well gee, how about WIFI n connected to optical fibre?
Dear lord, there’s no reason to revert to idiocy. Any future wireless network will run through the NBN. All mobile phone towers will connect to the NBN and that is where the data will go. You are shooting yourself in the foot, because you don’t realise that the NBN will simply make wireless networks faster because there will be less congestion.
HOLY CRAP! You honestly think a satellite connection will be faster than NBN optical fibre between those locations? So you are saying that everyone should install massive satellite dishes in their backyards, and satellite transmitting stations for the upload link? WACKY CRAP!
Yes it is obvious that optical fibre is the absolute best telecommunications connectivity technology in existence. In fact, your bizarre examples suggest you need to familiarise yourself with what optical fibre is and what it can do:
http://www.transition.com/transitionnetworks/Resources/en/PDF/fiber_wp.pdf
Yes, it was wrong that the Howard government privatised Telstra before separating the retail and network arms. I agree.
What are you talking about? THe NBN is operating in parts of Tasmania, QLD, SA, and even Melbourne right now.
Well gosh! What a bizarre criticism, you are saying the NBN is bad because it won’t be free to use? What are you a socialist?
Err, that’s not how it works. You plug the NBN cable into an Nbn modem, then plug the modem into your network card or into a router, you know like ADSL or cable internet, but different.
1) So you can cancel your copper phone subscription, thus saving yourself ~$20 a month
2) The NBN conneciton is faster, because it isn’t limited by the vaguaries of copper lines. If you sign up for a 20 Mbps connection, that’s what you get. If you sign up for 100 Mbps, that’s what you get. And it doesn’t depend on your distance to the phone exchange. If you are on cable, the NBN will work out substantially cheaper because there is no competition on the cable internet network. That’s what Telstra being a monopoly gets you.
What? I thought you said 100 MB in 50 seconds, how did that suddenly drop to 25 seconds?
But anyway, only a tiny minority of people live in an area where they can get 100 Mbps internet access. Why should they be excluded from something you can access?
The Telstra network uses fibre optic as its back bone but uses mainly copper wire from the exchange (or node in NBN speak) now this is not good enough to transmit 100 meg so if you want to go higher you need to upgrade.
What the crap are you going on about now? Stringing optical fibre to 93% of Australian households, schools, universities and businesses is EXACTLY what the NBN Co is doing! That’s what the NBN is, a fibre to the premises network!
What on earth are you talking about? We have optical fibre as the internet backbone, what we need is better connections from households to that backbone, and the best way to do it is using optical fibre. You still can’t get past the problem that you think that the best connection system is copper phone lines, when it is blantantly obvious that optical fibre is better. You then crap on about wireless, but the more people that access a wireless network the worse the performance becomes, so that means you have to build more towers everywhere. Wouldn’t it be better to just have the NBN, then build wifi everywhere, and pay people a monthly fee to use it? Wifi is still far better than 3G wireless on mobile phone towers.
What on earth are you talking about? 1 Gbps fibre is NOT “mythical” as you put it, it is an EXISTING technology. Sure it is very expensive, hence the NBN will start up with a max of 100 Mbps, but 1000 Mbps is being factored in to the initial construction of the network, so will be available at the retail level when there is demand for it. More here:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/google-bestows-1gbps-fiber-network-on-kansas-city-kansas.ars
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Well you seem to be one of these “wireless will save us!” types. How often do mobile phone companies upgrade those networks? The answer is CONSTANTLY, because they are operating in a market where downloads are doubling every 1.5 years.
The back bone is optical fibre! And there is a very good reason for that, because unlike wireless and copper, optical fibre has an enormous amount of bandwidth, and it can be retrofitted to facilitate even more bandwith as electrical engineers figure out new ways to cram data down the glass.
It is extraordinarily presumptuous for you to say “people have fast broad band connection” have you lived in an area that can’t get ADSL because it is too far from a phone exchange, or because the grade of the copper is low, or because their line is pair gained?
You are also completely forgetting that once someone is on the NBN, they don’t need a copper phone line! So they can say goodbye to paying a $20 – $25 phone line rental each month! The NBN modems include sockets for regular POTS telephones, and your phone calls get sent over the NBN
WHAT are you talking about! Telstra has been privatised, the Future Fund has about 15% of Telstra’s shares, but the government has no power to tell Telstra what to do.
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The answer is simple! The more data you want to send using a wireless connection, the more electromagnetic spectrum you need to use. This spectrum is finite, and is used for other things as well.
With optical fibre, you just send more bits down the stream of light, and engineers are figuring out ways to send a greater spectrum of light, which has slightly different refractive indexes, which means you can send even more data without it slowing down existing data.
Australia has a pretty good 3G mobile phone network and Telstra and Optus have plans for 4G (LTE), but you need to keep this in mind. There will come a point where there are mobile towers in so many places that they can’t install anymore. At that point they will move to WiMAX2, which will require a network backbone with enormous bandwidth to avoid congestion.
That network will be the optical fibre based NBN.
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This is what the “wireless will save us” people are up against. Here are some examples of the capabilities of optical fibre:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Optical_fiber_communication
Can someone find me a wireless connectivity system that can operate at 100 Petabit per second?
Of course a home NBN connection won’t be able to work that fast, but that is what the wireless advocates are up against.
Optical fibre is the rolls royce of internet connectivity.
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2 questions. 1 – What changes were made? and 2 What were the objections?
I can tell you that you are totally clueless on that issue. The change to Medicare was a cut to providers. About $500b. Obama is trying to pin that on the republicans, but that is all democrat. The object the Tea Party has with Obamacare has nothing to do with medicare, but of FREEDOM. Please, if you are going to talk about something, learn first, spout second.
Another spouting of ignorance. The reason Obamacare leaves people uncovered, is because it has NOTHING to do with care. it is a mandate on INSURANCE.
You made a statement then showed the reason. Indeed, if it were not for the americans, your health care would suffer. You stated the obvious, but in your zealotry, failed to understand it.
BTW – every American is covered for health care. Period. We just have a system of private and public payment, where yours is public and american.
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Well, you should know this, but here is a start:
“…spending and coverage cuts in Medicare Advantage, slowing the growth of Medicare provider payments (in part through the creation of a new Independent Payment Advisory Board), reducing Medicare and Medicaid drug reimbursement rate, cutting other Medicare and Medicaid spending.”
Medicare Advantage was the new prescription drug benefit introduced when the Republicans controlled the Congress, it was funded purely using debt.
Is enacting new entitlements that are funded with debt rather than other spending cuts or tax increases a good idea?
What were the Tea Party’s objections? Well, that Medicare was being changed! Apparently government spending on entitlements isn’t bad when one of the beneficiaries is members of the Tea Party!
Err, freedom of what? Freedom from what? Freedom for who? If someone loses their job and loses their health insurance, how exactly has their freedom been enhanced? Do you mean they are now free of health care coverage? I guess that is a kind of freedom, but is it a desirable form of freedom?
But also, if socialism is bad, why is cutting Medicare entitlements bad? Medicare is a system of government subsidised health care, I thought government subsidies are bad?
Well that’s how your corrupt system works, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies make a fortune, while people in need of health care go uncovered, and the people that have coverage spend a fortune on it.
Compare that to the Australian system where everyone pays 2.5% of their taxable income, and EVERYONE GETS COVERED! And it costs 2.5 times less (in terms of GDP) than what Americans spend!
Americans get ripped off left right and centre by the drug and insurance companies, and yet the Tea Partyers then blame the government for high health care costs! It is absolutely hilarious. The people that win are NON-AMERICANS, because we get most of our drugs DIRT CHEAP, while Americans pay full price!
What are you going on about now? America should have a system of universal coverage. Health care systems that give care to the rich and leave the poor, and even simply those that are unemployed, uncovered are morally reprehensible. Having universal health care means everyone is treated with the same moral worth irrespective of their wealth.
Oh no! Not this again when you start telling Australians how their country works!
Australia has BOTH a universal public system called Medicare, AND a system of private insurance and private hospitals for those that wish to pay for extra coverage!
Australia has a mixed system too! But adding both the public and private systems together Australia STILL pays 2.5x less, even though EVERYONE HAS COVERAGE OF SOME SORT!
And to top it all off, if you add together Australia’s taxes as a portion of GDP including the Medicare and the money Australians spend on private health insurance (again as a proportion of GDP), AUSTRALIANS PAY 29.9% of GDP.
What do Americans pay? 34.7%!
And here are the figures:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/health-care-costs-and-the-tax-burden/
NOTE: Bruce Bartlett was an economic adviser to Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr, and to Jack Kemp and Ron Paul!
America may have lower tax per GDP ratio compared to Australia (I think it is currently about 5% lower), but once you factor in the enormous amount of money Americans spend on private (rather than public) health coverage, they come out WORSE than Australians by 4.8%!
Yet in Australia we have 100% coverage and a pharmaceutical benefits scheme that means the drug companies don’t hold Australians for ransom over drug costs.
PhilJourdan, with sincere respect, your entire country is being ripped off, and yet you go along with an idiotic system that doesn’t even cover everyone!
So let me summarise:
America has a health system that covers a lower proportion of the population than Australia
Australia has a health system where 100% of permanent residents and citizens are covered.
America has a health system that costs more in terms of GDP than Australia
Americans pay more for health insurance, Australians pay less for health insurance
Americans pay more on health care and taxes than Australians
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Adam Smith@116
Wrong. Medicare is self funded (with a 3.3% tax on employer and empoyee that the employee winds up paying all of). It was not funded by debt, but it did hasten the insolvency of the plan.
Wrong – there objection had nothing to do with Medicare. Many others have a problem with the cutting to medicare, but the Tea party’s concerns are unfunded mandates.
That does show your ignorance. Freedom to live their lives without government requirements to purchase items they do not want! Freedom from onerous regulations that stifle the ability to earn a living. Freedom from a tax burden that will bankrupt the nation (as has already started). A concept you are apparently not familiar with.
Strawman alert! Socialism is bad. Period. Because eventually you run out of OPM. Then what do you do? Have bread lines that are miles long like in the old USSR? great move there Adam.
non-sequitur. I could also say your mother wears combat boots, and it is relevant how?
You apparently did not read your own response. YOU said america was subsidizing Oz. And you are wrong. America SHOULD NOT have universal health care or coverage. If americans want it, they are free to move to a country that does (Canada is close). But if you DO NOT want it, there are very few places to go. Besides, it is not a right, and therefore is a CHOICE. Something socialist do find alien.
Non-sequitur. You were discussing the American system and the Tea Party, both of which you are woefully ignorant of. I have not commented on the Australian system, nor do I care to get dragged into your talking point diatribe.
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WHOOPS! It is 1.5% of taxable income. You’d think I would know this considering I (gladly) pay it!
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[Wrong. Medicare is self funded (with a 3.3% tax on employer and empoyee that the employee winds up paying all of). It was not funded by debt, but it did hasten the insolvency of the plan.]
Medicare ADVANTAGE
Wrong!
http://www.slate.com/content/slate/blogs/weigel/2011/04/19/poll_70_percent_of_tea_party_supporters_oppose_medicare_cuts.html
They don’t have to purchase anything. If they don’t want to purchase health insurance, they just pay a fine.
With some minor exceptions, everyone in Australia pays the Medicare levy, which has resulted in a health system that costs 2.5 X less in terms of GDP!
The only thing that will bankrupt the U.S. is the insanity of spending so much while keeping taxes so low.
I live in a country where the debt to GDP ratio is 6% (compared to about 70% for the U.S.) where spending as a proportion of GDP is about the same as that of the U.S., but where we have a SANE tax system that raises 5% more as a proportion of GDP.
But of course as I just explained, if you factor in health insurance costs, Americans pay more than Australians, and get worse coverage!
Sounds like you are being ripped off!
Holy crap, you aren’t very smart when you claim a strawman but then write a sentence that implies the USSR still exists!
I’m happy living in Australia thank you very much, which is an interesting country because its economy was deregulated in the 1980s by a social democratic Labor party that worked in conjunction with trade unions to institute things such as universal health care, compulsory superannuation (what you call 401K), while cutting taxes and spending as a proportion of GDP. It did things like floating the dollar, deregulating the banking sector, and selling things like airlines and banks, but all of these things were done with a social objective of making the economy stronger and society fairer.
If that’s socialism, let me have more of it!
Yes and I stand by my comment. The drug companies wouldn’t give Australians such a good deal through the PBS if they didn’t know they could extort Americans with drugs that cost 10, 15, 20 times as much as the price paid by Australians.
So instead you are happy to stick with a system which means that taxes plus health care costs for the average American are higher than those paid by the average Australian, yet they get worse coverage and pay more for drugs.
Americans shell out so much on health care costs that the entire system probably dampens economic activity because so much money that could be invested, or saved is just wasted on something that other countries do so much cheaper!
That’s insane!
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its the same thing! it comes form the same pot of money. Quit reading your talking points and do some research!
nice bait and switch. However we were talking about Obamacare. You did not read the poll internals or actually the article itself! The problem when you post links is that people can see how you distort the truth for your own gain. You are very ignorant of America and Australia. And you demonstrate it with each post.
You have to try hard to be that stupid. A fine is paying.
You got the first half right, but the second half wrong. I guess you did not know that the top tax rate is over 60%? How much more can a blood sucker take? how much more of your ignorance can you show?
No, again it is called freedom. I chose not to be insured for part of my adult life. I wanted to maximize my income. that was MY Choice, not yours, not Obamas, not Bush’s. MINE. Freedom is a foreign concept to you. Frankly I do not care. But stop being an ignorant buffoon and either discuss the issue at hand, or not. But your statements about America and the Tea Party are only exceeded by your embarrassing lack of knowledge of your own country.
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@ Adam Smith
That’s the trouble when you get yourself locked into a single issue without regard to the broad context. You need to be more widely read. This policy is being brought to you by the same people who have quite publicly and seriously urged us to go to the library and sleep with our dogs in order to keep warm.
At any rate, as with many issues, the debate has been clouded. You guys are arguing the benefits of fibre optic which is undisputed. The issue is not the benefits or otherwise of FO but rather who should build it and when. There was a lot of fibre in the ground long before this government was dreamt of.
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More ignorance. For the majority of Americans who have health cover, the treatment available is second to none. The standard of treatment, both medical and dental, in the US is superior.
That ‘E’ word keeps popping up: ‘entitlements.’ Funny how “entitlements” and “rights,” when referred to by a certain part of the political spectrum, always end up entailing one group getting its hands into the wallets of another group. And, of course, when people focus on their “rights” and “entitlements” we end up with the population being in a state of dependency, which of course is what the proponents of big government want.
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You don’t see anything a bit ironic in what you just wrote?
A lot of the existing fibre optic cables in the ground was built by Telecom Australia, when it was 100% owned by the government. In fact, it was built by Telecom Australia before it was even a separate corporation, and was essentially just a subsidiary of the department of communications.
But anyway, I get back to my earlier point. What wireless technology has the potential to send data at 100 peta bits per second?
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GoF 107,
Yep thats what happens when you are shown to be talking rubbish.
Cheers
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Adam in 111,
Mountain tops: The point is that the cost to dig a trench to lay the fiber would not only be near on impossible but the cost would be severe, you do such a thing in the real world so you use another medium. Its not hard to understand unless you are entirely educated on this subject via the internet.
Hang on a second…..you have been telling us wireless is not good enough to run at the speeds of NBN so how could the NBN make the wireless run faster? You obviously have no idea. If the limiting factor is wireless (as opposed to fiber to the home) then the NBN will not make wireless any faster at all will it!
Please explain to me what are the limiting factors of wireless? Not a cut and paste you tell me what you think is the limiting factor.
(starting to get bored) The nbn will provide a cable, i will say again a cable to your home. You will need to pay for it to be connected, it will not magically appear out of a hole in your wall like the Telstra phone line you have now.
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Adam,
You have written so much crap that i dont even know what your position is anymore so i suggest we start again. Let state my position and if you disagree so be it.
Before NBN we had the Telstra network which uses fibre through out a majority of it network, the problem is they still have copper twisted pair to the home. This has basically stopped home users going beyond ADSL2, when Optus came into being Telstra were forced to allow Optus access to their copper network and Optus today also have quite an extensive fiber network throughout australian. Now so far i have talked about land lines but we also have mobile, the mobile network is totally seperate from the land line network, for example if you want to call a land line from a mobile the switching occurs way back at the main switching center.
The mobile network uses a combination of fiber and (shock horror) micro wave links to connect a tower and usually multiple towers back to the MSC. There are various methods of dividing the spectrum into usable chunks for the individual (as i am sure you know) but for others the main 3 are Time Domain Multiple Access (TDMA which is used for Global Systems for Mobiles (GSM), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) used by TNZ, Hutchison mobile etc and of course Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). Now when i talk about wireless/microwave i am not talking about the existing phone service, for example i can by a dongle modem from Telstra for less than 100 bucks and i can get a wireless internet connection. This connection is competing for band width with poepl using their mobile phones. The wireless connection i am talking about is a dedicated wireless link from the home back to a tower.
You claim this will not be good enough, but good enough for what? The cost of implementing this wireless system will be a hell of a lot cheaper than FTTH, i have already shown it has cost us 11 billion to buy out Telstra and it will cost at least that again to actually lay all the fiber. This fact you glibly dismissed some time ago….oh well thats your problem not mine.
The bottom line is we already have very high speed fober back bones in this country but yet we are going to build another one WTFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The bottom line is we will spend near on 25 Billion just to lay the fiber so everyone can download porn faster, once again WTFF!!!!!!!!!
The bottom line is this NBN for Labor is more about a phallic symbol “look how good we are, look what we can build”.
I question the need to build the damn thing to begin with as the multi billion dollar price tag could have been spent on more important issues, but if you must build it by God build it with common sense.
There are plenty of towers around you could use to get the wireless link then use Telstra and maybe Optus to carry the traffic on existing (upgrade where if needed) fiber back bone. Straight away i have saved this useless inept government most of that 25 Billion and probablt saved them 5 years before the stupid idea is complete.
Now Adam you may argue over the finer detail but surely you must see the horrendous waste this will be.
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In the real world, people don’t live on mountain tops, so I have no idea what you are going on about.
Well you obviously have no idea. If a wireless network is connected to an ADSL2 line that just can’t do more than 20 Mbps, if you plug it into an NBN connection that can do 100 Mbps easily, then the wireless network can operate faster.
Spectrum, and the laws of physics.
Well this is half right. Once the copper network is shut down, every household will get an NBN box so they can plug their phone into the NBN. It looks like this:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/this-is-what-the-internet-looks-like-meet-the-nbn-box/story-e6frfro0-1226038357458
Just because you have a phone line doesn’t mean you get a free connection and 100% free calls!
If you were interested in facts you would know that an NBN subscription includes one of these NBN modems, which as you can see at the back also enables a phone connection over the NBN, which means you can kiss goodbye to your ~$20 a month phone line rental fee.
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It’s bad starting a post by just writing abuse, because it suggests to the reader that you don’t take your own arguments seriously.
Well, this is wrong. Telstra has a lot of fibre around the CBD of the capital cities (because copper simply can’t transmit all the calls in and out of CBDs), it also uses fibre to connect phone exchanges with each other, and has fibre connecting many, but not all, mobile phone towers to phone exchanges.
That may sound like a lot of fibre, but when you consider all the copper lines connecting homes and businesses to phone exchanges, you quickly realise that MOST of the network is still copper!
Of course NBN Co will take ownership of all of Telstra’s fibre, and will use it as part of the NBN once Telstra shareholders approve the deal between Telstra, NBN Co and the Government. It is estimated this will cut $8 billion off the cost of the NBN, which is a substantial amount, but demonstrates that most of the phone network is still copper.
Well hold the phone mate! The poor quality of copper and the distance from phone exchanges means that some people can’t connect via ADSL at broadband speeds (the Government now defines broadband as at least 1.5 Mbps). Some people are on RIMs and pair gain phone lines, so they can’t get ADSL at all! And yet the operation of the market hasn’t fixed these blackspots, and has left these people either on cable or 3G wireless, which is extremely bad value for money.
Let’s face it, when Telstra was building the phone network in Australia it was government owned, and the government essentially built the network at the lowest cost, which means our lines aren’t as good for ADSL as other countries, hence we need an NBN based on fibre.
Optus has fibre in the capital city CBDs, that’s it. They don’t even use fibre to connect their mobile phone towers, which is a major reason why their 3G network isn’t as good as Telstra’s.
Wouldn’t it be better to just have one big fibre network, then let all companies access it, and compete each other to offer the best prices to consumers?
There’s no such thing as “the mobile network”, because there are multiple networks. Telstra’s mobile network is completely seperate from Optus’s.
Err, why did you write “shock horror”? Mobile phones are microwave transceivers, that’s how they work!
This is all completely irrelevant. If you think the future is every house hold installing a microwave transceiver on their roof, you are in absolute dreamland.
And it will be a hell of a lot crapper. We may as well just stick with crappy copper phone lines. Microwave would be a complete waste of money.
FFS! NBN Co isn’t “buying out Telstra” It is BUYING TELSTRA’S FIBRE NETWORK, which will become part of the NBN. Telstra is then agreeing to shift ALL of its fixed line phone and Foxtel customers onto the NBN, and it will over time shift its mobile phone network over to the NBN too.
UNBELIEVABLE! The reason we have a high speed fibre backbone IS BECAUSE NBN CO IS CURRENTLY BUILDING IT!
You’ve got fibre going into areas of Tasmania where people can’t get ADSL at all because all their lines are pair gained. You’ve got fibre going into far north Queensland, where people are still stuck on analog modems or overloaded 3G towers that fall over whenever their is a storm. You’ve got fibre going into Victor Harbour in S.A., which can’t run ADSL at all because there is no physical room in the local exchange to install the equipment.
There’s fibre going everywhere thanks to NBN Co, something the private sector had a chance to do years ago, but never did.
What we need to do is build a fibre network once, do it right, then let companies access it and COMPETE to make broadband costs as low as possible.
At the moment we have a patch work quilt that is full of holes where people have bugger all broadband choice.
The bottom line is we will spend near on 25 Billion just to lay the fiber so everyone can download porn faster, once again WTFF!!!!!!!!!
The bottom line is this NBN for Labor is more about a phallic symbol “look how good we are, look what we can build”.
I question the need to build the damn thing to begin with as the multi billion dollar price tag could have been spent on more important issues, but if you must build it by God build it with common sense.
There are plenty of towers around you could use to get the wireless link then use Telstra and maybe Optus to carry the traffic on existing (upgrade where if needed) fiber back bone. Straight away i have saved this useless inept government most of that 25 Billion and probablt saved them 5 years before the stupid idea is complete.
Now Adam you may argue over the finer detail but surely you must see the horrendous waste this will be.
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So great, your argument is actually about pornography. That’s not a very strong case against the NBN
OK Dr Freud! You’ve run out of actual criticisms, so now you are reverting to psychoanalysis!
Well hello! The Coalition has now shifted its policy to Labor’s policy of fibre to the node for 90% of the populace. That would cost about $12 billion.
What on earth are you talking about? There will come a point where Optus and Telstra simply can’t build more 3 and 4G mobile phone towers, and then everything will have to switch over to WIMAX2, but for that network to operate it will need to be plugged into fibre, which is what the NBN will be for!
No, it will be a tremendous investment that will unleash economic activity and enable rural and region areas to fully participate in the digital economy.
It will facilitate new forms of broadcasting, medical care, education opportunities, and dozens of applications that we can’t even think of yet because we don’t have an internet network capable of enabling them to be developed.
This will go down with the Snowy Mountain scheme as a great investment that showed some politicians Labor, Green and Independent as willing to think of the future, instead of just government based on week to week opinion polls.
Yes the NBN will be expensive, but put it in perspective, over the time the NBN is built, the federal government will spend something like $3000 billion, the NBN is 1.5% of that.
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A couple of things being said here by various people range between delusion and spoiled brat syndrome. For a start…
And why exactly does anyone need to go “beyond” ADSL2? What is the real need for Fiber-To-The-Home? Surely not the speed?
Ten years ago most people were still transitioning from dialup at 52kbps, but mostly to areas with cable Internet at 1500kbps (ie yet another copper wire). By 2004 a significant number of people had moved to broadband in cable or ADSL (and YouTube did not even exist yet). Now in every city and most towns (for over 90% of the population) you can get ADSL2+ for under $25/mo which in practice runs at least at 4000kbps and often faster, with less packet latency than cable. What can this copper communications capacity actually do?
By comparison, the main Channel Nine Digital TV station sends video at standard definition (720 x 576i) at an average 5Mbps in a digital sub-channel which has only 6.6Mbps maximum allocated to it. (Real measurements here) Clearly Channel Nine believes for a wireless broadcast that has to reach far flung areas that 6.6Mbps gives acceptable quality for video.
Remember that digital TV’s 6.6Mbps allocation uses only MPEG2 compression and contains a lot of redundancy to help overcome radio noise which is not present in a wired physical connection. Using BluRay-style MPEG4 compression schemes video at 720p HD resolution can be sent at less than 5.1Mbps in high quality. Live video is the highest bandwidth service that houses can legitimately claim to want. File downloads can take as long as they need to because they aren’t live. Business transaction data is a legitimate realtime demand, but the data amount is typically tiny compared to video. Therefore there is presently no legitimate way for domestic consumers to use more than 5000kbps Internet access, since even 5000kbps is capable of streaming broadcast-quality video over ADSL2. Yet people do still actually watch short YouTube videos encoded at only 800kbps and enjoy it.
Yes, even with only 800kbps you can really fly.
By comparison the very high bandwidth of 100Mbps claimed by FTTH is enormously expensive to roll out to individual houses and does not solve any real problem that is not already solved by ADSL2 over copper cable. To pretend otherwise is to pretend that the majority of street addresses in Australia are a block of flats, or an IT company, or a major research facility in microbiology and astrophysics. A developer making a block of flats or office can afford to put fibre to the building which is amortised over all the residents, and such services are routinely available, but this is not the common case. Very high bandwidth is not a real need like food, shelter, employment, and heating. Very high bandwidth is a luxury which the free market can provide at a price.
If the goal is to get the legitimate realtime transfer demands satisfied in every last address no matter how remote, then even in such a communist central planning regime there is still no good reason to use FTTSS (Fiber-To-The-Sheep-Station) instead of wireless technologies such as WiMax or Satellite. WiMax is vastly cheaper to install than optic fibre, cheaper to maintain, cheaper to scale (up or down), no cables to be accidentally cut, and yet it delivers multi-megabit speeds in all weather to a region of 8km radius around the base station. One tower can serve a whole country town where there are few tall buildings to block the signal. Of course most towns would have copper already which makes the point rather moot, but wireless is nonetheless the better value for money if there is no existing cable infrastructure. And really, when you want to stream live video while mobile on a train or ute then how are you going to achieve that with fibre or copper?
As for the proverbial sheep station, satellite is the only answer and they already have their dishes set up. You can already get 2Mbps satellite from Optus and indeed under the NBN Co rollout there is 6Mbps satellite Internet access available at the (subsidised) rate of $60/mo for 3GB. The high latency on satellite means it’s not so good for playing action games, but it’s enough for video. Any Internet access is a luxury and 6Mbps is phenomenally better than nothing for a sheep station 100km out of coo-eee.
And remember that’s the absolute worst case experienced by less than 1% of the population.
Here’s another comment…
Fallacy of the false dichotomy. There is no need anywhere in the world for a single consumer building to consume 100 Petabit per second. And since that means the NBN (regardless of design) does not have to provide this to any end user, it is therefore NOT what wireless advocates are up against.
There’s no doubt optical fibre is the Rolls Royce of communications technology. So if you scream loudly enough that you demand a Rolls Royce in your driveway does that mean the taxpayer must buy you a Rolls Royce? And how superior will you feel when, courtesy of taxpayer subsidy, everybody has a Rolls Royce in their driveway? Rolls Royce would become the Australian equivalent of the Lada or the Skoda. It’s state-sponsored fiberism. In the real world, quality has diminishing returns and money doesn’t grow on trees.
All the evidence says that copper, satellite, and WiMax can already “go the last mile” and do what is actually wanted at far less cost than FTTH. Fiber is needed on the backhaul, not to the household. (Even fibre to the nearest street could be an order of magnitude less costly and people could keep their current ADSL modem yet it would run at 12Mbps or more.)
That is why I have never understood this push for Fibre-to-the-Home as anything other than an uneconomical exercise in pork barrelling and another example of successful regulatory capture by Telstra to get taxpayer money for profitable busy-work and to force other companies to pay Telstra to access the fibre pits in the street which are majority owned by Telstra. FTTH is profiteering and the very fact it was not being done already by private industry is the de facto proof it is a waste of money.
We already had an NBN. It was a broadband network with nationwide extent, built by Telecom and private industry. All that could be justified was an incremental upgrade in key areas, not a total replacement in a tax payer funded 24 billion dollar telco bonanza.
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What about the households that can’t access ADSL because of their phone line quality? It is estimated that there are 2 million house holds IN METRO AREAS that are stuck in this situation!
This is a ridiculous comparison. To acheive this, TV stations have massive transmitters on top of mountains, and everyone has a big aerial on their roof!
Oh, and of course the NBN will simply facilitate broadcasting over fibre, which will mean more channels and more choice.
Well this is a wank, because fibre to the home solves one massive problem. There are several million households that can’t access ADSL2, so they are either stuck on cable, which is expensive because there is no competition, or they use 3G wireless which in metro areas is frequently congested.
Signing up to a 100 Mbps connection won’t be compulsory! People can sign up to a 12 or 25 Mbps plan, but unlike ADSL, they will actually get the connection speed they pay for, when you conceded that many ADSL2 customers can only get 4 or 5 Mbps even though ADSL2 in theory can operate at up to 20 Mbps (if you are right near an exchange and are on good quality copper).
WTF are you going on about “communist”? There is nothing communist about building a natural monopoly network, then selling wholesale access to retailers for the same cost so they compete to offer the best services! That’s capitalism at work!
We don’t need companies fighting over building fibre networks, we just need ONE network that ISN’T owned by a monopoly (like the copper network) so that competition can flourish.
WiMAX and satellite are part of the NBN for the 7% of premises that won’t be connected by fibre.
One thing you didn’t mention is that satellite and wimax are much more EXPENSIVE to run than fibre, because the transmitters inherently require more power than sending light down glass.
No cables can be cut? What about the cables that plug the wimax base station into the copper network? But of course Wimax is part of the NBN, but it is not needed for metro areas where residential addresses are so dense that it is more cost effective to just install optical fibre and be done with it. Once that is installed once, we will have a state of the art telco network for hundreds of years.
You install wifi into public transport and connect it to the NBN via wimax.
The NBN will be designed to allow 12 Mbps for locations not connected by fibre.
Yes they are up against 100 peta bit per second, because the “Wireless will save us” crowd keep crapping on about wireless somehow some day surpassing fibre!
In the real world the market has left us with a patchwork quilt where many people can get ADSL2 but many others can’t, where some people can access cable – which Telstra doesn’t have to let any other company access – but many others can’t.
The real world has provided us with a brilliant example of market failure, which has required the government to step in so that broadband policy isn’t held to ransom by Telstra and its constant arguments with the ACCC.
Australia needs to build the NBN ASAP, it does it once, it does it right, and then greater competition will flow. Business opportunities will flow, companies will come here and start developing new applications that can make use of the NBN. It will create investment and jobs, it will revitalise rural areas as people will be able to move there but not feel that they are out of touch with the metro areas and world markets.
All the evidence suggests that copper is an obsolete technology, and relying on it for the next several decades will mean that some people pay a fair price for brodband internet access, while others will get royally screwed paying high prices for cable access.
Even HD 3D content that exists now is in the order of 30 Mbps, how many ADSL2 connections reliably work at that speed?
Dear oh dear. The problem wish fibre to the node is blatantly obvious! Telstra owns the copper network, so every connection from people’s premises to the node would require the government to pay a fee to Telstra!
So the Government would’ve spent $7 billion on a fibre to the node network, then every month customers would have to fork out a Telstra tax to cover the cost of the extra link of copper tot he node.
The other option was for the government to buy the copper network, but what is the point of that? Copper is obsolete. The Government received legal advice that this could cost $15 billion, so instead the government opted for the plan of building a fibre to the home network, and instead buying back Telstra’s FIBRE network via NBN co, and then simply getting Telstra to agree to shut down the copper network and use the NBN for phone calls.
This costs more money, but it means the public gets a fibre network that will last hundreds of years, and the GOvernment isn’t shelling out billions for the copper network.
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The argument is getting worse post by post. Choice of what? The four original channels couldn’t provide content. The current lot is loaded even more with repeats. Who on earth would want more choice. There is no content, man.
Andrew McRae. Amen
Adam Smith unlike his namesake is not an economist. He’s an ideologue. Successive governments (including Labor) have progressively privatised Telstra. Both sides claiming “reform” as the name of the justified game. This crowd doesn’t know it knee from its elbow. While pursing the backgrounding of Telstra (of which it is a major shareholder) it is actively building another telecommunications monopoly. ?????
Has anyone raised the question of ethics in Her Majesty’s Government handing over, (what is it $11 billion) to a company in which it is a major shareholder.
The whole thing is a crock from any angle.
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CORRECTION: The Labor government corporatised Telstra, it didn’t privatise it.
The Future Fund has sold down its share holdings in Telstra, last time I looked it was under 15%.
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enough! you’re nit picking. The future fund in the last week sold down from 16.4% to 10.9%. Are you suggesting that is not a major shareholding? Let’s say you’ve had the last word as this is going nowhere and way O/T.
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Pointing out your errors of fact is not “nit picking”.
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Theodore Roosevelt’s (January 6, 1919) famous last words seem appropriately apt: “Please put out the light.”
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I gave a little cheer when I heard that the Thompsons were part of the Convoy of No Confidence. Good on them.
This Convoy is a great idea. There is just no way the media can ignore a big mob of bluddy big trucks….. or fail to notice the steely determination to see this lying dysfunctional government out of office.
If Gillard has a shred of integrity left, she will bow to the overwhelming opinion and put her “Carbon Tax” to the Real Democratic Test…… An Election.
If she fears Democracy…. Then she has no right to lead one.
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On what basis is it useful to force me (perfectly happy with my ADSL) to change to a different technology (almost certainly more expensive) because of someone else who has problems with their copper?
None of which explains why it’s a good idea to mess with my perfectly working connection.
There’s nothing natural about the NBN monopoly, it exists ONLY because of governmet interference in the market. That’s central planning.
I have 12 Mbps now, I find it adequate, I repeat the question, on what basis does forcing a new technology on people like me serve any useful purpose?
Let me tell you what’s going to happen with the NBN. Commercial uptake will be poor, prices will be aproc $15 per month higher in order to pay for the new infrastructure. When the copper network starts to get shut down (i.e. attempting to use force to make people pay higher prices) then the political fallout will start and it will make the Carbon Tax look like morning tea break at kindergarden. It won’t matter which government we have at the time, they will back down. Telstra saw this coming and put an escape clause into their agreement (read it if you don’t believe me).
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You may want to read this:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/345628/lte_wimax_unlikely_find_future_nbn/
but if you can find any official NBN statement that they will be rolling out WiMAX then I’d be interested.
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On what basis is it fair that some people in metro areas can’t get ADSL at all, and thus must use expensive alternatives such as cable or 3G wireless?
So let me get this right, you are saying that broadband policy should be based around what YOU personally have access to? How does that make any sense?
Go look up what “natural monopoly” means in a basic economics text book.
Under the NBN 12 Mbps will be a MINIMUM speed, currently the minimum speed for most regional areas that is mandated in legislation is 42 Kbps. Why is it fair that some people have a 12 Mbps connection, while people in many rural areas are still stuck on analog modems?
Well rather than us relying on you predicting the future, look at some of the new NBN plans. Exetel 12 Mbps download plan with 20 GB download a month, $34.50:
http://www.exetel.com.au/residential-fibre-pricing-mainland.php
And remember, once someone is on the NBN they can cancel their phone line subscription, because their phone calls can be sent down the NBN, so that is a saving of about $20 a month.
So get real, the NBN is a massive opportunity for our country that will put us on par with Japan and South Korea as having the best internet infrastructure in the world.
Stop spreading lies, the just announced NBN plans are better than existing ADSL plans once you take account that you don’t need a phone line subscription.
This is an absolute load of crap, Telstra hands over its existing fibre to the NBN once the agreement goes through.
The Coalition has said it won’t shut down the NBN once it has been built, because they know doing other wise would be economic suicide.
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Exactly, the current digital TV channel bandwidth is already more than they can fill and OMG there is no way they current ACMA plan can back out of digital TV at this late stage. That die is already cast, digital TV over the air is here to stay for the next few decades at least.
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Sending TV signals wirelessly is an a waste of spectrucm, which is a public resource. We would be much better off sending TV signals over the NBN, and then using the wireless spectrum currently used for TV for wireless internet connectivity.
Digital TV has shown how much spectrum the analog TV system wasted, but in a few decades it will be much better to just send TV streams down the NBN, and then use the wireless spectrum for other things.
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So I asked a question, but rather than attempt to answer it, you want to talk about fairness instead. I would define “fair” as a competitive free market with a choice of carrier based on my needs. How do you define “fair”?
Well, me and all the other people who also have perfectly working services right now. I suppose you don’t think this adds up to all that many people, and in the next few years we will get to see how many (especially when the election comes round).
But then you believe that a natural monopoly exists because you declare it so, and at the same time pretend to not support central planning.
You accuse me of spreading lies, but you cherry picked the smallest of the Exetel plans. Let’s look at the other Exetel ADSL plans compared with equivalent NBN huh? From exactly the same page you linked to:
OT-100 ADSL2+ w/ 100G quota: $29.50 ADSL + $20 phone rental = $49.50 per month.
NBN-A-100 w/ 100G quota: $59.50 per month
Oh wait! NBN comes out more expensive.
OT-200 ADSL2+ w/ 200G quote: $39.50 ADSL + $20 phone rental = $59.50 per month.
NBN-A-200 w/ 200G quota: $74.50 per month
Larger NBN plans are more expensive by a bigger margin.
Now, tell me what was the point of NBN again? Give us the talk about the infrastructure thingy… and we are supposed to be doing all this on a 20G quota per month? What a joke! You either can’t do basic math or you are deliberately attempting to deceive people. If someone is using a 12M link with a 20G monthly quota they can use that link approx 0.5% of the time (or about 4 hours or usage per month). That’s the great future Australians are supposed to be looking forward to? 4 hours of Internet per month?
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The general idea is that we have an auction, and because there’s a price on the resource it does not get wasted. That’s a fair and free market approach.
So says you, in your central planning fantasy land. Why should I believe you? Are you out there buying spectrum with your money? Apparantly you only have bright ideas when it comes to spending other people’s money via tax collection.
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You didn’t even read the agreement did you?
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you’re wasting your time (and bandwidth) Tel. This guy is arguing ideology, not economics. What the hell has “fairness” got to do with anything other than taking money off one and giving it to another? Why should people who choose to live in remote areas (BTW with lower property values and lower overheads) expect to get the same priced service as people in high density population areas? This is the same madness that dictates equal wages for Tasmanians with houses and mortgages 1/2 of central Sydney. Economic illiteracy.
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Australian doesn’t have a competitive free market for fixed line broadband services. For ADSL1/2, all companies have to pay Telstra a fee to access the copper phone line. That’s not a free market, that’s a monopoly.
It is this state of affairs which means Australia broadband that is half the average speed as the OECD while double the average cost.
So again you are asserting that about 2 million house holds in metro areas shouldn’t have access to affordable broadband in a competitive marketplace, yet you are accusing me of being against the free market? This is an example of market failure pure and simple. The free market hasn’t improved these people’s phone lines so they can get ADSL2 services. The reason for that is pretty simple, phone companies won’t invest in upgrading copper when the future is fibre.
Again these sorts of statements demonstrate that you don’t understand what “natural monopoly means”, maybe this link will help:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22natural+monopoly%22
What on earth are you talking about? The average broadband connection in Australia is 1.5 Mbps! You may be able to get 12 Mbps, but even those Exetel plans average 8.5 Mbps download and under 1 Mbps upload!
You can’t even get ADSL2 plans that reliably give people over 20 Mbps, whereas there are 100 Mbps NBN plans for $50 a month!
The point of the NBN is that we shouldn’t judge the quality and cost of internet access based on what YOU can personally get. We need a system that isn’t based on a private monopoly owning the network which all other ISPs also supposed to compete against. We need a system that will work at speeds far greater than what can be provided using ADSL2. We need a system where everyone in a metro area can buy a 100 or 1000 Mbps) connection if that is what they want.
Err, how is letting TV stations send their broadcasts down the NBN not a free market approach?
You should believe me because you are wrong. The Howard government DID NOT auction off digital TV spectrum, it simply GAVE 2 channels to all the existing commercial networks!
A much better way of sending TV would be over the NBN, so the spectrum can be used for other things like wireless internet.
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Smith, you really love to just shift the topic whenever it suits you, I asked plain and simple for your definition of what is “fair” and you can’t be bothered providing that. Yet you continue to argue that fairness allows you to tell people how to run their own affairs.
This is partly correct. The cost of access to copper pairs is not a substantial proportion of ASDL pricing, it is fixed by the ACCC at $16 per month which must be paid for a “naked” DSL connection. What’s more, the current monopoly situation is vestigal of the old days of full government monopoly (under Telecom) and we are left with the legacy of that government decision. This has slowly changed because choices for last mile connection have become more diverse, the same Exetel page that you linked to above, also offers fiber (both AAPT fiber and Optus fiber) and was offering fiber long before the NBN even started rolling out (despite government propaganda, fiber is already available in Australian cities), and the same Exetel also offers wireless internet on mobile plans. That’s a diversity of options, and these things have only been available for approx the past decade.
If you want to go beyond Exetel, there’s Big Air who will offer point-to-point high bandwidth wireless. Even more diversity of options.
The free market has been steadily correcting itself after the massive government monopoly that was Telecom Australia.
Since you refuse to define “Natural Monopoly” and instead link merely to a search engine, I can presume you intend me to take my selection from the available links. Very well sir, I choose the following:
http://moneyterms.co.uk/natural-monopoly/
and also…
Of course, we automatically have inter-operability in the Internet space, because Internet Protocol is a worldwide standard, so that part is solved. We have had ACCC regulated prices for a long time in terms of competitors access to Telstra infrastructure.
So please, show some actual evidence of your “Natural Monopoly” assertion.
I never asserted any such thing! Can you point out where I said “2 million house holds in metro areas shouldn’t have access to affordable broadband”? What I actually said was, “None of which explains why it’s a good idea to mess with my perfectly working connection”.
With regards to use of wireless spectrum, quote from #142 above:
and followed by quote from #147:
Oh I do believe you have completely shifted your position, and had a go at misrepresenting my position too. How about you try honesty for once? You might learn something. Can you point out where I ever said that TV stations should not be allowed to use Internet for their broadcasts? Hmmm? Or are you so gutless as to shift your position once again?
Speaking of shifting your position, I note that you were happy to quote the price of an Exetel 20G quota when you thought it suited your argument, now you seem mysitically unable to even read some basic prices on higher quota plans when I spell them out for you. Hmmm, funny about that, do you really thing you fool anyone?
My comment:
In reply:
I’m talking about monthly quota larger than 20G… just like I spelled out perfectly clearly above. I’m comparing the price of ADSL2 plans as compared against the 12 megabit NBN plans. But you must have known that, I mean anyone who can even read would be able to figure that out, so I can only presume you are deliberately attempting to confuse the issue, as you have done on many other occasions.
So let’s go through this once again, if you buy Exetel ADSL2 with 100G quota with a phone line, it costs $49.50 per month, if you buy equivalent Exetel NBN it costs $59.50 per month, or 20% more than ADSL2.
If you buy per Exetel ADSL2 with 200G quota with a phone line it costs $59.50 per month, if you buy equivalent Exetel NBN is costs $74.50 per month, or 25% more than ADSL2.
See how that works? NBN is more expensive, by following you own example. Feeling silly yet?
Want to apologise for accusing me of lies when it turns out that you are the one spreading lies?
Or perhaps you want to explain how all the wonders of the NBN are going to be workable on a 20G per month data quota (just to remind you, that’s 4 hours usage per month, and I’m going to keep reminding you until you admit that your own example proves you wrong).
Errr maybe you can point out where I compared any other plan than the basic 12 megabit plan? Oh there you go attempting to misrepresent me again.
That’s your only agument, assert and repeat. Sorry, still doesn’t make it so, any more than it did last time.
Assert and repeat, assert and repeat, empty air, nothing more.
Well the Howard government made its share of mistakes, once again we had a government trying to tell the industry what they wanted, when at the time everyone was perfectly happy with analog TV (and right now, 15 years later, most people are still happy with analog TV, what they actually want its better content not a better carrier). The trouble was, once the whole digital TV transition got underway, the government needed to keep pushing in order to be able to reclaim the analog channels (we have had dual broadcasts for about a decade now).
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It’s fun watching him squirm: never willing to even define his position on “fairness”, nor willing to openly admit that he is really in the business of taking money off one person and giving it to another.
That’s the first job when dealing with crypto-socialists: make them admit what their real position is, then any onlooker can say, “yuck, I don’t want to live like that”.
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And you keep saying that we should judge equity of broadband access based purely on what YOU personally have access to! You don’t see anything wrong with such self-centred analysis?
So your whole idea of a free market is to have a regulator – the ACCC – determine what the monthly price will be, and Telstra always argues that it should be more, and the ACCC says it should be less, and they end up going to the federal court every few years! And not only that, but other ISPs compete against the company that they have to buy network access from!
That’s a VERY STRANGE ‘free’ market you are trying to defend!
If you have any credibility you would’ve inserted a criticism of the Howard government here for privatising the company before it had been split between the network and retail arms so that ISPs wouldn’t have to compete against a private monopoly, but you have no credibility so you didn’t do it.
Hell mate, the Government knows capital city CBDs have fibre, because it was built when Telecom was a Government subsidiary.
You’re conflating completely different issues mate. I agree that there is good competition in the mobile broadband space, but there isn’t in the fixed line space, and the reason for that is simple. Telstra owns the copper network, and will do absolutely anything it can to shaft every other ISP in access to the network. You still haven’t explained how that analysis is wrong.
Again you are dealing with irrelevancies. There’s no wireless tech capable of competing against fibre for speed and download quotas.
Congratulations for finally figuring out what “natural monopoly” means. Now that you know what it means, you have no excuse to use the term “monopoly” in the place of “natural monopoly”.
You should now also understand why Australia should build ONE fibre network, and sell access to ALL ISPs, INCLUDING TELSTRA BIGPOND, for the same fee, instead of having broadband policy held to ransom by Telstra’s ownership of the copper phone network.
[Of course, we automatically have inter-operability in the Internet space, because Internet Protocol is a worldwide standard, so that part is solved. We have had ACCC regulated prices for a long time in terms of competitors access to Telstra infrastructure. ]
Holy crap! So you start by attacking me for opposing Telstra owning a monopoly on ADSL connectivity (the phone line part), but now it is YOU that is asserting that we need the ACCC to regulate prices for the connections! HOW IS THAT A FREE MARKET POLICY?
The reason we need the NBN is so that NO COMPANY THAT SELLS INTERNET SERVICES ALSO OWNS PARTS OF THE NETWORK!
Why do we need that? SO WE DON”T NEED A PRICE REGULATOR, we just have WHOLESALE PRICES that everyone pays irrespective of if they are big or small!
It is YOU that is proposing government intervention and regulation of ISP pricing, I am proposing we build a world-class network that all companies can use SO THAT WE CAN GET RID OF THE REGULATION and the Telstra V ACCC V OPTUS court cases that are holding the entire industry back!
You are spreading lies. There’s no such thing as a reliable 100 Mbps ADSL2 plan for $50 a month.
HOORAY! Finally!
Both major parties have screwed up in the telco space for many years. But we finally have a government that has had the guts to split Telstra from its network and retail arms, something that should’ve been done in the early 1990s. Even Turnbull has said it was the right thing to do, and should’ve been done by the Howard government.
But we also have a government willing to invest in fibre to the home for 93% of households, businesses and schools, so we will finally have an world class fixed line internet network that isn’t owned by a company that also sells access!
That’s forward thinking that should be commended. Instead you are saying that we should go on with the existing broken system and just rely on the ACCC and mountains of government regulation to stop Telstra from extorting other ISPs on their copper phone access costs.
You are completely opposed to the free market on this one.
This makes no sense. Analog TV is an extremely inefficient way to use spectrum. By switching to digital TV, the analog spectrum will be able to be used for other things like internet access. Digital TV is more reliable with better picture quality and sound too.
How is that a problem? People LIKE better picture quality and sound, people LIKE technological advancement. Are you using the same computer now that you were using 10 years ago? For someone who says people shouldn’t be told what to do, you have this strange habit of telling people to lower their expectations and accept lesser technology.
I have defined fairness several times. The quality of internet access in Australia shouldn’t be determined simply on the quality of Tel’s connection. The quality of internet access in Australia should keep up withe advances in other countries, when currently the average connection is half the speed and costs twice as much as the OECD average.
Well the Opposition’s policy is now fibre to the node for 90%. That would involve “taking money off one person and giving it to another”
But unlike you, I am opposed to a system of the ACCC continuing to regulate internet prices. We need a competitive free market on a world class fibre network that isn’t (partly) owned by a retailer.
Instead of name calling, stick to debating the issues.
You call me a socialist, but it is you that proposed more government regulation of internet by having the ACCC set the prices for access the network.
You’re the socialist on this one.
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Two words you must learn the meaning of; ASTRO-TURFING. There is always a large section of society pissed off with the government. Under the Howard regime there was FAR more popular discontent; by the media tycoons and big corporations weren’t interested in bankrolling that, nor wealthy individuals. This is not a grass roots movement but a rift-raft cobbled together by big money for the stated aim of getting the Liberal party into power; nothing more.
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Once again you misrepresent my position. It was you who brought equity into the discussion. My point was always that I have a perfectly good working connection, it suits my needs, and I have yet to see any rational explanation why it would be useful to screw around with that. If you can explain why “fixing” something that ain’t broke is a smart move then by all means go ahead.
No, that is not my whole idea of a free market, as you know perfectly well. The current situation is a vestigal of previous government monopoly as we transition towards a more free market solution. In particular my comment was in reference to the quoted source explaining that telecommunications is NOT a natural monopoly (you know, the bit that you ignored and deleted out). I never suggested that what we have now is the best of all possible worlds, so please show a bit of respect and stop deliberately misrepresenting my position.
You can forget about giving anyone lectures on credibility BTW. Yes, the Howard government could have done better, but if you have such brilliant hindsight then maybe you should just buy a ticket in last week’s lottery? You could pick the winning numbers so easily!
If you want to do some basic research on what happened back in 1996 when the T1 privitazation decision was being made you might observe that the ALP policy was to just keep it as one big government monopoly. There was extensive discussion both in the media and in parliament, here’s an example:
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media%2Ftvprog%2FDLP20%22
No one at the time was discussing the potential of splitting wholesale from retail. They were discussing whether to sell or not to sell, and what percentage should stay in government hands. The ALP platform had a fundamental flaw that they were pretending to be establishing a competitive market, but the government was both the regulator of that market, and the biggest player in the market that it was regulating — an obvious conflict of interests.
You can’t have a properly competitive market unless the government becomes only the umpire and not a player at the same time.
Anyhow, Keating lost that election (everyone thought he had an excellent chance of winning), Howard had a very clear election promise to sell a fraction of Telstra and he went ahead and did what he promised. No one at the time knew where the ADSL market would go, they did not have crystal balls looking into the future. Blame the people of Australia if you must blame someone, they voted for it. In reflection though, Howard’s option was better than the ALP option (the only choices on the table at the time).
Well let me see… replacing an existing partial monopoly (Telstra) that is gradually coming under more and more competition as time goes on, with a complete and total monopoly (NBN) that is backed by force of government legislation, and will never be competitive stands as a massive backward step, and a step towards central planning. But, maybe that’s a bit too bleedingly obvious.
That’s about the most ridiculous thing you have said. With the NBN in a monopoly position they get the power to set wholesale prices as high as the market can bear. We are not the least bit better off than we were under the old Telecom monopoly. Anyhow, the ACCC automatically gets the opportunity to regulate NBN prices because NBN will be an acknowledged monopoly, putting it firmly within the ACCC’s territory. Needless to say, the problem of the umpire being a player in the game will still be just as much a problem as it ever was, and the whole lot will descend into politics. This will make it very difficult to sell NBN shares on the stock market, because no one can ever know what they are buying.
When I said “AAPT fiber” I mean the AAPT that is not Telstra. When I said “Optus fiber” I was talking about the Optus that is not Telstra, you know, the other guys, the competitors, the alternative choice, not the incumbent. But hey, maybe I need to clarify in case this is getting too complicated. Let’s have a little peak at the government’s own research that they did leading up to the NBN:
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/broadband/national_broadband_network/fibre_in_new_developments/Fibre_in_greenfields_consultation_paper.pdf
I’ll quote for you:
More than 10 different operators, by gum, all out there being competitive. Or rather, they were before the ALP came along and decided that one operator to rule them all was a better idea.
Feeling silly yet?
Hmmm, the old analog TV bands were 7MHz, and the new digital TV bands are (drumroll) 7MHz so that’s a saving of a massive, err nothing! All we get from the switch to digital TV is more TV channels, that is generally more old programs from the 70’s and 80’s coming back as reruns. I sometimes watch ABC news 24, and what I have noticed is that they don’t bother showing 24 hours of news, they show 6 hours of news three times over, and pad the rest with pocket pissing and back slapping. The shortage of content is becoming really sad.
Yeah, that explains the very sluggish uptake of digital receivers. Broadcasts began in 2001, and by 2004 we had achieved 10% uptake, by 2007 we had achieved 28% and by 2010 it was 75%. In other words, people waited for their old TVs to fall apart before buying something new. The current government has been pushing set top boxes into people’s hands at great expense to the taxpayer because the Australian public are so enthusiastic about digital TV. Do you just naturally get everything wrong, or did you have to study that?
If you want to check Big Air’s web page they advertise point-to-point microwave links up to 100 Mbps with a range of quotas (you have to ask for detailed prices) probably not cheap, but you can buy one today rather than waiting years for NBN. I can only presume you have some sort of advanced tertiary qualification in wrongology.
Please cite the comment number above where you first provide a definition of “fairness”.
I very clearly said on many occasions that I was making a price comparison of 12 megabit plans… you either can’t read or won’t read. Please apologise.
I’m going to call you a blockhead now, and it’s not name calling, it’s a direct observation. I never once proposed more government regulation, I was describing the current situation. If you don’t understand that the ACCC is setting prices for network access (and has been for years), then you shouldn’t even be attempting to grapple with these issues because they are clearly way beyond you.
I’ll repeat one more time, before NBN came along, the current situation was transitioning nicely towards a free market and Telstra last-mile monopoly was weakening.
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There NEVER will be a free market solution while part of the network is owned by a privately held monopoly! There will ALWAYS be a conflict based around Telstra trying to charge more for access to it network, while the other ISPs saying they should be charged less. So you will ALWAYS need to have a government regulator stepping in to say what the fair price is, and then using its powers to enforce that price. Whenever Telstra gets pissed off, they will just head back to the federal court.
There’s your free market system! A load of nonsense with broadband policy run by Telstra.
OF COURSE it is a natural monopoly! We don’t have a Telstra phone network and an Optus phone network, we have one lot of copper. That’s a perfect example of a natural monopoly.
Now we simply need to shift to a fibre based natural monopoly network, then let all ISPs compete to provide the best services on it.
LOL! Thanks for the laugh, this from the person who runs out of argument so he just calls people a socialist!
Come on, you can do it, you can criticise the HOward government for letting Telstra both own the network and sell services on it, which meant they then had to pile on government regulation. Not very free market at all.
Well gee, you can see THIS conflict of interest, but for some strange reason you don’t see any conflict of interest in Telstra both owning the copper network and competing against the companies that it sells access to! Your hypocrisy is astonishing.
That’s the whole point of the NBN! We get a state of the art fibre network that is run by a corporation separate from the government, yet that corporation is explicitly forbidden in law from selling retail services on that network, all it can do is make money by selling wholesale services! The ACCC has ABSOLUTELY NO ROLE IN REGULATING ACCESS the the network, because NBN Co. must sell wholesale access at the same price for EVERYONE!
What an amazing own goal! You just endorsed the thing that you say you are criticising!
You’re doing a massive re-write of history here. No one thought Keating would win in 1996.
Which was a MASSIVE SCREW UP, because he started selling Telstra before spinning off the network into a seperate company. But no, you can’t admit that this was a screw up, because it doesn’t fit with your bizarre view of how the telco market works.
This is ridiculous. This wasn’t just about ADSL, it was about every phone service. It is idiotic having to heavily regulate a private monopoly that owns both the network and retails on it. They should be separate!
WHAT? Not in the least bit better off? We will have a fibre network accessible by 93% of Australian premises, and it will be owned by a company that doesn’t compete for customers on said network! And yet we won’t be better off! Unbelievable!
Wrong, the ACCC will have no role regulating retail prices on the NBN. That will be left to the free market. Again you find yourself in the strange position of calling people socialists while you yourself are advocating socialism.
The umpire won’t be in the game, because there will be no umpire, the ACCC will have no role regulating the retail prices of the NBN network.
NBN shares will be an extremely tidy investment. You’ll have a lot of Telstra shareholders dumping their Telstra shares to buy NBN shares.
Don’t be an idiot, even you should know that you can cram more channels with better picture and sound quality using digital encoding and compression than you can using analog.
So what the hell is your point? You were the one saying that somehow the government is forcing new technologies that they don’t want. Clearly people DO want digital TV.
LOL! Yeah that’s right, the transition to digital TV started in 2007. Whatever mate. Digital TV transition started 10 years ago, but no, you have this thing about never criticising the Coalition.
Yeah right mate, we are all going to get microwave, good luck with that. Fibure can get GBs per second.
Mate, just because you’re losing the argument doesn’t mean you should revert to abuse.
Again mate, if you need to revert to such abuse, it means that you’ve lost the debate. Grow up and stick to the issues.
And that’s the situation we will never get away from until the network is owned by a different company.
If the government wanted to just buy the copper network it would cost something like $15 billion. That cash would be better spent on a fibre network, because copper is going the way of the dodo. So in a strange way you are proposing socialism of the weirdest sort, you want government investment in something that will be obsolete in decade.
I KNOW this is what the ACCC does, and I think it is WRONG, we need a NEW system that doesn’t REQUIRE this sort of price control.
But you only get that by building a new fibre network that ALL companies from Telstra down compete on at the same cost.
ABSOLUTE LOAD OF CRAP! Telstra will NOT surrender its copper network without the government stepping in to buy Telstra’s fibre that will go into the NBN. That’s the only way we can get them to junk the copper network.
See, John Howard completely screwed up, but you still can’t admit that he got it wrong! You are still defending over regulation of the fixed broadband sector!
You’re a socialist.
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What the hell is that big long cabley looking thing running down my street suspended from the power poles and snaking up under the eaves of my house? Part of a previously unannounced sprinkler system perchance.
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The digital TV thing is interesting because the bandwidth they use is not much bigger than the analog, with analog you need to send all the information every frame (which means a lot of data) however with digital they only send the information that changes from one frame to the next hence they get more room for more channels etc.
You know rather than putting in fiber or whatever why dont we simply surf the net over the 240V power lines, all the infrastructure is already there, it has been tested and works OK so why not do that?
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[…] exports. On the so-called climate change sceptics’ JoNova website in support of the convoy is a contribution by “Carbon Worker”, capturing the feeling of this and other recent protests: […]
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