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Comment by Benjamin_Dobell | Hacker News Reader

R&D Tax Incentives are pretty much the only thing the Australian Government offers - http://www.business.gov.au/grants-and-assistance/innovation-...

Massacring the NBN and generally not giving a shit about technology really highlights how out of touch the Australian Government is with the general population. We are among the highest adoption rates for technology (smartphones etc.) worldwide and give a huge amount of money to US companies getting a hold of the latest tech.

Our government is ready to completely ream us once more by signing the TPP - despite the fact the US has clauses for things like "fair use" nothing of that nature exists in Australian law. We'll just adopt the shitty parts of US law and none of the (partially) redeeming parts.

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Didn't you hear? Coal is the future, get digging.

FYI non-Australians, I give you (former) PM of Australia, Tony Abbott:

July 17, 2015 - "For the foreseeable future coal is the foundation of prosperity"

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/17/for-tony-...

That just about sums up the amount of vision in Australian politics.

To be fair, he's probably right. Australia has no new hydro planned (we can thank The Wilderness Society for that), and no plans, that I'm aware of, to shutdown any coal fired power stations.

So, pending catastrophic climate change, I'm going to guess Tony will turn out to be right.

And besides, politicians aren't selected for their 'vision', they're selected for some other set of characteristics, whoever knows what. P.J. O'Rourke has plenty to say on this subject.

"For the foreseeable future coal is the foundation of prosperity"

I take that to mean 'Coal will provide the prosperity that takes Australia forward', rather than 'Coal will continue to provide our electricity'.

i.e. We should invest in Coal, train our children to mine for it, research new ways of producing it, at the expense of other fields like high tech.

I believe he also said 'coal is good for humanity'[1]

The mininig industry has very deep pockets and huge influence on policy, so in turn other industries miss out.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-13/coal-is-good-for-human...

If you think your startup will only succeed with a fast internet connection you should probably find a better idea.

Do you think Netflix could have been started in Australia? Not all startups require fast internet connections, but an entire class of business ideas are flat out impossible here.

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