Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

If you posed the question "Who in the world would be the worst possible person to decide on how to construct a nationwide high speed computer network?", the you might come up with a list that included Tony Abbott.

I genuinely believe that Tony Abbott really didn't even understand what purpose the Internet serves, apart from email and playing games - he saw it as some sort of frivolous discretionary spend - definitely not anywhere near as important as roads and mines and coal.

It's an absolute tragedy for the nation that the original plan was changed by such ignorant luddites as Tony Abbott.

They made such an incredibly huge fuss about the cost, but only a month or two back they handed a $23 billion corporate tax cut over to companies and it barely made the newspaper.

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I have not an atom of respect for any of our politicians.

Off topic, to me all part of the same story is my absolute quivering rage that we are literally giving away our natural resources for nothing or close to nothing whilst every litre of natural gas that can be sucked out of the ground is shipped to other countries.

Meanwhile the politicians ride around in helicopters, leech the taxpayer blind with their kingly entitlements and are genuinely surprised when there is outrage about it.

Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots.

For HNers wondering who the hell Tony Abbott is, he's basically the Australian equivalent of George Bush (Jr): conservative politician and former prime minister who's, let's say, not known for his grasp of the finer details of policy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Abbott

He ate an onion. Raw. Skin and all. https://media.giphy.com/media/68HJUosvhSSI0/giphy.gif

>Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots.

Couldn't agree more. I've yet to meet a single fellow Aussie that has anything but disdain for politicians from any party. Labor, Liberal, Greens, One Nation doesn't seem to matter, they're all a pack of self serving con artists, and unless the major political parties take a serious look at themselves over the next few years, this is exactly what they're going to be dealing with. Especially as Millennials take their first steps into adulthood in a country that does nothing but tread on them and dismiss them as nothing but avocado loving morons that don't know how to make it in "the real world".

Can I suggest that if all the politicians seem to be bad, the problem might be located somewhere else? Namely the Murdoch-dominated media?

He's been bad enough in the UK, but it seems like he has even more control in Australia.

Nope, haven't watched Murdoch's media since the absolute rubbish involving their absolutely disgustingly biased election coverage a few years ago. According to Murdoch, the Liberals and co can do no wrong and everyone else is the problem! Haven't let that trash into my house in a long, long time. But it's a culture of disrespect and arrogance across the board from nearly every politician. Bunch of bastards the lot of them, especially since Trump has come up in America and we have spastic chumps like Hanson try and ride the wave of populism (thank god they're way waaaay too incompetent and divisive to truly capitalise on the anger at the system, their ugly policies will die out)

>but it seems like he has even more control in Australia

He started out here, no surprise that his stuff dominates.

I think there's lots of contributing factors. Not just the politicians. We should remember a lot of what the politicians say and do is driven by what will help them get re-elected -- i.e. by what the populace in general thinks is important.

(I am not saying "oh it's not the fault of the politicians, it's the fault of the populace" -- see my opening sentence that I think there's a lot of contributing factors. And each of these can go several layers deep).

For most voters, faster internet isn't one of their top concerns. Depending on the voter demographic it is more likely:

Young People * Housing Affordability * Uni Fees * Centrelink * Employment * Climate change

Middle Aged People * Super * Eduction * Health * Taxation * Infrastructure

Old People * Pension * Health

I agree (and probably made it on to a list or two). Our government agencies don't even need a warrant to see our call/web/email metadata now. Even the RSPCA can access it.

Imagine if Labor won.

* A robust FTTP that would be paid back nicely, and

* A carbon tax that would now be an "emissions trading scheme" doing it's part to reduce carbon emissions.

Yes but they didn't win. Instead they squandered government on in-fighting and backstabbing.

Truly Kevin Rudd can be credited with remarkable vision for proposing the NBN in the form that he did and it is a great pity it did not come to conclusion.

Labor/Rudd/Gillard/all the shadowy Labor background figures gets the blame for the "true" NBN not happening because they just could help themselves fighting and grasping at the crown.

Er, what? Labor came up with the idea of the NBN and started it. The Coalition then stopped building it properly and switched it to the watered-down version when they gained power. The Coalition deserves the blame here.

Labor losing the election while the NBN was still ramping up allowed the coalition to ride in and dismantle it while it was still vulnerable

Rudd was promising the NBN since I was in primary, and it didn't happen after two terms. The insane amount of in-fighting in the last two years before the election didn't give me much hope.

I mean, ultimately I voted for the Pirate Party, but you can't blame people for not having faith that Labor would achieve in their third term something they'd fail to achieve in the previous two. Keeping someone in power despite not fulfilling their promises is how you get Howard.

The parent is saying that the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd battles lost them power. It's a narrative which probably has some truth to it.

It's also worth noting that Labor was slow rolling out the NBN. They did have 6 years in power, and didn't get NBN in the hands of many people at all.

Yes it was a big project, but it's hard to argue that more speed was impossible.

It's very easy to argue that. Thousands of people to train, thousands of connections to plan, thousands of pits to retro fit, asbestos to handle. Business to be created, processes, negotiations with Telstra.

The biggest problem was not going fibre to the pit. It would have saved one of the most expensive parts of the operation - the lead in to the house.

I recently listened to a Tyler Cowen interview where he (briefly) mentioned trying to measure consumer surplus of internet services, part of the wider difficulty economists face in trying to quantify the value of the internet to people. He likes to play the contrarian.

The default method of measuring consumer surplus is measuring (using econometric black magic) the difference between how much people would be willing to pay for something and how much they actually paid. IE, if you would have paid $17 (but not $18) for a burger but it only cost $12, you accumulated $5 of surplus. By this measure, the internet (home usage) is not very valuable. If prices of (eg your mobile data plan) go up by $15, many people would pass. That implies the user surplus (for those people) is less than $15. Overall, the traditional economics analysis of personal internet access looks similar to cable TV or other "frivolous discretionary spend."

I don't really think you can sum up the internet in this way. The broader cultural impacts of internet access seem far more interesting than cable TV, to me.

yeah nah, she'll be right mate, why don't ya have another stubbie and watch the footy.

Bloody game's finished and it's still buffering...

>Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots.

Nothing can be done until Australians demand Constitution reform. This is the crux of the problems with Australian politics - its Constitution is absolutely atrocious.

Which parts of the constitution do you think are bad?

E.g. it does not explicitly outline the right to freedom of expression. It is sort of implied within Government, but not necessarily.

I don't know if it is related to the constitutional issue, but someone was convicted of having Simposons pornography because it pictured child characters from the show.

The UK, Canada, NZ etc. and otger countries (to a weaker extent) have similar laws. It is ridiculous in my view.

You can get started here:

https://independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display...

Neither Britain or New Zealand have written constitutions, I'm not convinced that Australia's is the problem at hand, though I guess it could be that a poorly written one is worse than none at all.

The fact we don't have a Bill of Rights (or even an equivalent to the First Amendment) is ridiculous. But on the plus side we stopped with the ridiculous gun-toting crap 20 years ago, so some parts of our constitution are more reasonable than other countries.

One of the more worrying issues is that the Governor-General (and thus by proxy the Queen of fucking England) has vito power over our laws.

We don't need a bill of rights. I have never had anyone give me a convincing argument on why a bill of rights is needed.

Also, its veto, not vito and the Governor General's reserve powers are a check on the Government. In the history of the Commonwealth of Australia these powers have been used twice: 1) On 13 May 1932, when the Governor of New South Wales Sir Philip Game dismissed the Government of New South Wales. 2) On 11 November 1975, when the Governor-General of Australia Sir John Kerr dismissed the Commonwealth Government.

In both cases an election was held very soon afterwards and, again in both cases, the dismissed government was massively defeated by popular vote.

I really wish they would teach better civics in schools.

> We don't need a bill of rights. I have never had anyone give me a convincing argument on why a bill of rights is needed.

We don't have any legal (let alone constitutional) right to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and a few other freedoms that are present in the US bill of rights. There are some laws that provide protections for certain kinds of political speech, but those are incredibly narrow compared to the First Amendment in the US. In fact the only people in Australia who have freedom of speech (even surpassing the US because libel laws don't apply to them) is politicians in the House of Reps and Senate -- ordinary citizens don't have those freedoms.

> I really wish they would teach better civics in schools.

To be frank we have more serious issues in our school system.

The Australian Constitution does not explicitly protect freedom of expression. However, the High Court has held that an implied freedom of political communication exists as an indispensible part of the system of representative and responsible government created by the Constitution. It operates as a freedom from government restraint, rather than a right conferred directly on individuals.

In Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills (1992) 177 CLR 1 and Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v the Commonwealth (1992) 177 CLR 106, the majority of the High Court held that an implied freedom of political communication exists as an incident of the system of representative government established by the Constitution. This was reaffirmed in Unions NSW v New South Wales [2013] HCA 58.

This right is limited by certain laws a.k.a Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Its worse than you think. The Australian Constitution is highly racist. One set of laws for whites, another for the natives. This should be the first thing we fix.

Then of course, there's the fact that Australia is a British dependency. This needs to go. Australia is not a sovereign state - it is a colonial property. Yes, even still today.

The Constitution also doesn't protect the Australian Parliament as a democratic institution. It doesn't address, nor protect, the Australian environment. Equality: not guaranteed, at all, by the Constitution.

There are just so many things wrong with it.

I don't think you can really blame this on Tony Abbott. Malcolm Turnbull was the communications minister and is now the prime minister and he seemed to be the one driving his copper bullshit.

I hate Abbott as much as anyone but Turnbull seems like the real problem.

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