Australia ranked 61/63 countries for entrepreneurship
ceda.com.au
ceda.com.au
But I don't agree to “Australian companies are far less digitally advanced than their global competitors ". Compared to India where I know the ground reality and what I read for US/Japan/Germany we are well ahead here. I can buy $1m property sitting at home online completely paperless, I can pay tax online, open bank account online.
Australians are digital savvy. Almost 60% of mobile users here have an Apple iPhone. Big corporate bring features in their apps to iPhones first due to the market share but also because iPhone users spends more. We love using digital services, except perhaps the pensioner cohort.
The government can only force you to use backdoors you already have, for example if you don't use end-to-end encryption and already have the keys.
[0]: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997...
That's targetted, not systemic. And hey, you're not removing the encryption your just making it slightly less secure. Neatly sidesteps a whole bunch of restrictions in 317ZG.
It's only FUD until the policy makers decide it's the norm :P
But yes, targeted attacks are permitted, but only so long as they don't cause any collateral damage.
Making encryption systemically less secure is forbidden by 317ZG paragraph 3.
If you want to argue that backdoor powers are real and not FUD, please back up your statement with facts (e.g. a limitation on 317ZG or a case where it does not apply).
The key words here being systemic.
Sure, they can't create a backdoor that will allow weaken everyone's protections, but the way the whole 317ZG is written is that between the lines a "communications provider" can be compelled to provide targeted access to individuals.
For example, let's say all our phones have e2e encryption and cannot be unencrypted unless you have a password. There is scope within the act to commandeer Google/Apple (who both have offices in Australia) to push targeted updates to a specific user and save targeted plaintext data or even install a keylogger etc.
In other words, this would then give authorities access to plaintext data on the phone without a user's consent, all without being systemic weakness.
And I'm writing this based on many discussions with lawyers. I was very vocal about the AABill when most people Australian tech people didn't care, but I can tell you know that a lot of lawers were concerned and reached out.
It is commandeering Full. Stop. Want to disobey a TAR, TAN, or TCN? Go right ahead given that you say it's not FUD... but be my guest arguing with:
9 Subsection 3LA(5)
Repeal the subsection, substitute:
Offences
(5) A person commits an offence if:
(a) the person is subject to an order under this section; and
(b) the person is capable of complying with a requirement in the order; and
(c) the person omits to do an act; and
(d) the omission contravenes the requirement.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 5 years or 300 penalty units, or both.The example you give, if it's possible, is an example of an existing systemic weakness. Yes, the government is free to exploit it but the government can't compel its existence.
Apple and Google are free to eliminate it, if they so choose.
FWIW, I'd consider the possibility of such a mechanism to be a problem in itself. And I don't believe it is possible today. Android, at the OS level, will only install updates with the same signature as the currently-installed version.
> Apple and Google are free to eliminate it, if they so choose.
Pick one.
Again, a TCN compels a provider to develop a targeted capability, or face jail time.
If the system is secured in such a way that the targeted capability isn't possible (e.g. open-source project with e2e encryption and verifiable builds), the government cannot compel introduction of a systemic weakness (e.g. stop using verifiable builds) to make it possible.
My suggestion is that Apple/Google build their software such that it is systemically secure against targeted attacks.
It's the automatic update system, which ironically has to be there for security updates. The automatic update system means on devices that identify their customers, the act demands any software provider not only provide access to the device via that mechanism, they must also provide assistance such as writing software the host OS won't complain about when it is downloaded using the mechanism. That is why it's called the Assistance and Access act, 2018. It provides access to just about any device, and forces the manufacturer to any and all assistance required to get that access.
Devices that identify their users are ubiquitous. Anybody that sells you something in anticipation of getting an ongoing revenue stream from it will have to identify you. That includes Android, Windows, iOS, your Samsung TV, ... Any device that asks you to register with an email address or phone number can be targeted exactly. The act does devote many words to saying all bugs and spying devices must be targeted very specifically like it's some huge restriction, while never going out of it's way to make it plain just about all devices can now be targeted specifically.
And yes, security updates are systemic weakness. In fact I refuse to own stuff that is supposed to be highly secure that does allow security updates. Think security tokens, SIMs, credit cards, ... If it's broken I'll go down to the store and anonymously buy a new one thank you. And because security updates are a systemic weakness - the long and flowing waffle in the act about no introducing systemic vulnerabilities is there purely as a smoke screen. They don't need to introduce new systemic vulnerabilities - they already have a perfectly good one.
I wonder though: if the keys needed to sign an update are stored in say an American or Korean HSM and no person located in Australia has access, can the Australian government still compel their use?
* me
* my money
* my house must keep going up in value
* selling mineral resources to other countries
* selling energy resources to other countries
* selling residential real estate to other countries
* selling agricultural land and farms to other countries
* other stuff
Things that matter, but not much, or not at all:
* environment
* other people's financial position
* Australian sovereignty (huh... what's that mean?)
* the countries around us
* Our defence
Things that governments really don't think are serious at all, but they will pretend to think they are important:
* Technology
* Broadband
* Startups
* Entrepreneurship
I will agree though that entrepreneurship does not rate highly for most people. Most just want a 9-5 they can forget about when they go home. "Hustle" culture is slowly weaseling it's way in, but it's not entrenched yet.
You can't draw a single conclusion about why you ended up with a 0 or 1, based on the hundreds of issues that swirl around at election time.
Unless you want to of course, in which case yes you can read a win or a loss as a clear message on one of the election issues.
I would suggest that most younger people have a well tuned bullshit detector and have a pretty good idea of what is important to their and the countries futures.
Politian's who try to pull the fear lever have a fairly small audience these days, as evidenced in the recent federal election.
IMO this is pretty much top of the priorities in Sydney. How much money someone is perceived to have is usually intertwined into their description along with where they live and how much money their parents have.
I really like the feel though — everyone in the VC world here seems to know and support each other; haven't seen that much politics and infighting yet.
However, the science / grant world here is pretty crazy, as one professor put it "In Australia everyone loves to fight over nothing" — "nothing" being the smaller grant sizes here compared to other places like Europe or the US
You can follow them all on Twitter so it's pretty easy to see that they do know and support each other. Not that surprising when majority of VCs are based in Sydney/Melbourne and the likelihood of co-investing is high.
The problem with that is you end up with a hive-mind, consensus-driven, conservative attitude towards investment. So even at the seed stage you end up needing solid traction, high quality team and some incredible metrics compared to investors in other countries.
And worst of all they love nothing more than startups who copy US ideas e.g. 15 min food delivery and try to apply it here. So you do see profitable startups but often are uninspiring and insipid.
FTTP services are increasing but still limited
For most people this is a massive reduction in the amount of faulty, old, poorly maintained copper that is being replaced:
https://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/01/worst-of-the-worst-photo...
DOCSIS version of the same type of cabinet with a better view: https://www.madicom.nl/wp-content/uploads/950_670-3.jpg They are essentially grey metal boxes on a concrete block with feed-throughs for tubes where the lines pass through, and then there's a backboard where you usually find DIN-rails or just screw-in devices and your labelled cables either go to a termination block or straight into the distribution block. The termination block has the benefit of not needing 'wire extensions' since once they are in they will never have to come out unless corrosion happens (but the gravel mixed with some absorbing stuff should prevent most of that).
Maybe I should go for some digital archaeology of public communication infrastructure gore because thinking about it some more it has to be at least as bad around here in some places.
The US has the world's eighth-fastest median broadband speed (<https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed>).
And so across all technologies they will soon reach a baseline 1Gbps and with so much direct fibre will have the capability to go higher. Australia is a very large, very geographically diverse country and so the investment has been significant and we are slowly starting to see the fruits of it.
That said, the quality of internet is such a silly metric. Almost all places, including rural Australia, have better than 25/15 with metro areas having fiber due to the NBN rollout. That really is not our limiting factor - our culture and generally small funding amounts is.
From my perspective an equal problem to lack of investment is very high property values and living costs.
There is not a great tradition amongst most Australians of trying to "Make it Big.". The Australian dream has been the house on the 1/4 acre block, not making millions in a Silicon Valley style buyout. Add to that the poor regard for those who are seen to be exploiting others for their personal gain and a strong dose of "Tall Poppy Syndrome" where the populous tries to tear down people who seem to be getting too big for their boots and you have a place where American style entrepreneurism is not encouraged.
That said, we tend to celebrate those who step ahead in business, but do it in a way that supports their workers and community.
My kids (low 20's) still seem to dream that owning a home (well at least having a mortgage) is something that they can aspire to on a normal wage. The one who has given up on this idea is now tending towards "not playing" as being a logical decision with regards to economic participation, and to be honest who could argue with them.
I'm not sure that's the dream. For me it's a massive cause of anxiety and recurring stress.
I've been renting for my entire adult life in NSW. Despite NSW (and Australia in general) having pretty decent tenant protections - it's getting increasingly difficult to find a landlord/real-estate agent who isn't trying to just outright screw their tenants, because they can get away with it.
- Constantly pushing rental rates, at absolutely every opportunity. Owning rental property is no longer just a solid investment that'll pay itself off, no, they're pushing the whole the-most-the-market-will-bear aspect.
- Forcing use of rental payment platforms that are privacy invasive and charge additional fees (rather than just free direct-deposit)
- Completely ignoring basic tenant requests, unless you force their hand.
- Outright abusive and even unlawful contracts and if you protest - well fuck you, find somewhere else to live.
You're never able to be totally secure, because landlords are able to just toss you out, no reason or cause - or able to construct causes if you're able to protest them.
But if renting is that bad in your world, i really understand.
Culturally, tall poppy syndrome prevents successful people from showing their success, and it is seen as a massive problem to fail. These two things alone make up a pretty chilling force.
You have few good local VCs (though maybe I'm out of the loop), a tiny stock market that doesn't "get" tech and a high cost of living/wage expectation.
At a policy level our economy's geared to property so what money there is goes there, a panel system for government which results in big overseas cos getting a huge edge and general low grade corruption/nepotism which makes the playing field less even.
- smack talk. Which if you are that good in your game you will expect.
- an assumption you screwed over someone - or many people.
You have to demonstrate you are not an arsehole. Until then, if you are successful, it will be assumed you probably are.
So considerably less monetary incentive to 'make it big'. For entrepreneurs who want to do that, why not move to the USA and come back to Australia when you want to settle down and have a family?
Even for the raw income tax rate you cite, any place paying the really high salaries, historically, has been at a similar rate.
The result is that unless you are able to acquire funding, you result to trying to getting something built outside of your job, which is much more difficult to pull off successfully with the limited time available.
In the capitals the cost of housing in inner suburbs (say 1 hour commute) have increased by an order of magnitude or more over the last 20 years with the ability to develop new outer suburbs reaching the limits of geographical constraints and commute distance.
With the growth in remote work and working from home, I think we're starting to see a housing boom in the more remote centres as people sell up in the big cities and go bush... Unfortunately this is then leaving the remote locals being unable to afford accommodation. The entire housing market is ripe for disruption, especially if we don't want to see a lot of younger people living out of the back of cars or vans.
- The entire housing market is ripe for disruption, especially if we don't want to see a lot of younger people living out of the back of cars or vans.
What kind of disruption are you referring to here? Policy level (I agree) or something else? Curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Many retired and near retired are selling up their houses and taking to the road permanently in caravans and finding that as long as they are careful their costs are vastly reduced and as long as they don't travel too far and burn too much fuel. This option obviously has limitations and is dependent upon health and the ability to fund the equipment required, however for many it's a way of spending a healthy retirement whilst also feeling like they are achieving something. The added bonus is that these people are spending time and money in more remote areas, providing much needed income to local businesses. Remote area councils, understanding the need are providing places for these Grey nomads to free camp at little or no cost. Facilities may be provided, but most of the travellers carry everything they need with them, just needing somewhere to park.
There is currently a movement amongst younger people towards "Van Life". Unlike their older brethren they are not normally running around in caravans, but tend towards self contained vans or small busses. They are taking up a nomadic lifestyle moving between jobs as they become available, many servicing the needs of the Grey Nomads. In a very pragmatic way, this is a way of moving "homeless living out of a car" into a lifestyle choice.
I can well imagine how a young employed person or couple, faced with oppressive housing costs could decide to live in a small van in the city, moving around each day or two and with a bit of stealth living from their vehicle.
This is what is happening now, and at the moment, it's not causing too many problems and in fact with regard to the Grey Nomads is helping to move money into remote areas.
So what does the future hold...
We're going to see more and more people, young and old being forced to hit the road, we're going to see an increase in a nomadic workforce, we're going to see the facilities (free camps) provided in remote areas become more stressed as more and more people use them, resulting in calls to shut them down. Now we have a bunch of people on the road with limited funds and no legal place to spend the night.
So what is needed?
Younger people need a roof over their heads. they need somewhere to store their goods and cook their meals. They want safety and some degree of comfort. They want flexibility of being able to move accommodation easily as and when jobs or life requires. The need access public transport and services so that they can get and keep their jobs.
They don't need 5 star accommodation.
At the moment the options for a young person are: Live with their parents, Life with their friends in a shared house, Live in a rented room with somebody else, Rent a unit, Rent a house, live out the back of their car/van as described above.
Most of these are starting to be, or are already not affordable (or even accessible) to young people unless they are very lucky or earning a high wage.
Given that the traditional 4 bedroom brick veneer on a 1/4 acre block is not even a pipe dream for most younger people what are the other options.
Seems to me that there is a lot of inner city office space that is currently massively under occupied. In most cases these spaces are designed to be easily remodelled and could be turned into suitable accommodation. You do need to be concerned about not turning these places into ghettos, but with a little thought I think you could provide accommodation that can be occupied on a short or long term with minimal difficulty. Done right, with a AirB&B type setup you could do it in such a way as to reduce the administrative costs.
Once you have that sorted, start looking at the nomads living a Van Life. You just need some space, maybe install some toilets/showers pay a resident to keep the place clean and charge a small rental for somewhere for people to park their caravan, car or van.
I'm sure this is not anywhere as simple as I make out, you have to deal with zoning laws, tenancy laws, insurance and compliance, but all you need is to get some example sites approved by council and a desire to have them succeed.
What is really needed is an understanding that they don't need to extract every $$ possible from their tenants, working with them to ensure that they feel respected and that they will respect the space they are living in.
The train/rail/bus system gets you to beaches and national parks. Even with fairly low grant-funded salaries we can afford to dine out, even though it's fairly expensive, bc we don't have car and other expenses we had in the US.
It's a lot like Canadian living — the comfort kind of lulls you into complacency. We were joking that while US startups optimize for product growth, Aussies optimize for work life balance.
Because of taxes, even if you have a really high salary, you don't end up pocketing THAT much more money, so there's a negative incentive to work really hard. You kind of get punished for it.
And yes, housing is really expensive — my partner and I live in a 1br apartment in the Inner West for AUD$2k/mo, but the costs are comparable to American cities. Everywhere is walkable/bikable though.
That is not going to last very long. High interest rates will pop the Japanese style property bubble.
This is very much a capital-city-centric view, and maybe a few larger cities adjacent to the capitals.
Live much outside of the cities, and your ability to get anywhere with PT drops off rapidly.
The barrier to entry is quite low in Australia, if you earn x you pay y in tax, your accountant will just help you lower y. In France, a simple payslip can't be understood easily, it's like the government is asking you to understand their mess before you can do anything. As a result, all the people I know of in France who start a company complain on the system whereas that's not the case in Australia.
We were once described as the "lucky country" which was used to encapsulate advantages Australia benefited from naturally, like distance from problems elsewhere in the world, great weather and natural resources. The origin of that label was a 1964 book The Lucky Country by Donald Horne where the author points out that:
Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.
Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society."
When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a British derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits.
These quotes hopefully show the underlying Australian attitude through a 1964 lens. All these criticisms are roughly speaking true, though the quality issue is not one of them. Australians can achieve high levels of quality and precision when needed, but it depends on what's 'needed'.
The book The Australian Ugliness by Robin Boyd from 1960, also describes a difficulty in Australians performing economic tasks like Art that are not strictly speaking useful or tasks which have risks outside the normal business mode.
Most Australians decline to recognize the patronage in the British and American attitude in such enterprises as Vogue Australia or the Holden car, and do not wish to be reminded of the facts that their country is still known abroad as an artistic and intellectual desert, and that they themselves would never be taken seriously without their denying to some extent their Australian upbringing and background, and that highly talented Australians in any of the non-useful fields of art or science have to face a dramatic decision early in their careers. They can stay here in easy-going comfort with their talent and their frustrations both working at half pressure, or they may wrench themselves from their own country in order to develop themselves.
The necessity to leave Australia to achieve "full pressure" artistic or talented work, is the most important part of his criticism.
Passionate, heart felt, anger and fear driven action you can see in the Americas, does not result in economic activity over here in the same way. Passion and "whims" are more likely to guide an Aussie into the desert, loose and lost in impotent landscape that cannot form a feedback loop to success.
There are no Great Plains to manifest destiny across. From day one of the First Fleet landing in Australia, creating a survivable colony was a hard won enterprise where getting the basics like agriculture and resources in place was filled with setback and difficultly every step of the way. The interior land may be full of mineral resources, but sustainable living areas are far fewer than needed to support flights of fancy. So we stick to rivers and lakes on the coast. A naturalistic instinct for sticking to peaceful relationships and useful business has stuck in the heart.
The kind of passionate, determined, self-motivated desire for risk taking you see in the USA for nearly any idea you can dream up, is difficult to pull off in Australia. You can't burn relationships here at the cost of a fanciful dream. You can't demand everybody serve your passion in an instant. The economy in Aus is setup to keep the useful businesses going. High-energy, fast-paced startups that need some novel and specific item delivered yesterday, or thousands of man-hours of overtime demanded in the moment to solve a novel problem, is going to struggle badly. The government's stability, centralization and influence over the culture, causes an attitude of wait-and-validate to novel problems and otherwise sticking to tried and true conventions.
The USA has a massive advantage in startups over the rest of the world, it can run them like an economic war. Australian startups are more frequently nurtured into existence, if at all, and have a more narrow window of actionable appeal to locals.
If you want to innovate you have to go overseas, as can be seen with the international Aussie successes and all the local small startups that make it big when bought out by American companies or move operations overseas. If you want to re-implement a tried and true idea into a solid and safe business, you do it in Australia.
I think this is a fair comment.
For me, being a wage earner, I have to date been able to have a pretty decent middle class lifestyle without having to scheme, hustle or con anybody and I take a pretty dim view of those that do. But that is changing. As others have pointed out, it's now almost impossible for the average wage earner to aspire to home ownership, it's hard enough to even find a place to rent. Cost of living is going through the roof, and many are discovering that that social safety nets that they thought they could rely on may not be big enough when a significant proportion of the population can't earn enough to both house and feed themselves.
We have a younger generation who are massively disaffected. They know their futures has been sold off and they are not happy. Political shifts are starting to rattle the establishment with an understanding that just doing the same thing is no longer good enough. Recent elections have telegraphed the changes that are coming.
If our exports to China and everywhere else get significantly reduced again, the same cycle could continue. Last time we pulled out of depression with manufacturing.
A snippet from Chapter 24 - Manufacturing Industry in the Year Book of Australia 1938 [0]:
The number of persons engaged in factories in Australia reached its highest point before the depression during the years 1926-27 to 1928-29 when the average for those years was slightly in excess of 450.000. The downward trend in manufacturing operations which began early in 1930 continued with increasing force until the number engaged had fallen to 336,658 in 1931-32, a decline of 25 per cent, on the average already quoted. In 1932-33 employment began to increase and gains were recorded in each year thereafter until a new high level of 523,948 was reached in 1936-37.
The classes of manufacturing that employed the most were:
Although factory employment in 1936-37 was considerably greater than pre- depression levels the gains have been confined to comparatively few classes. The largest class of all— Industrial Metals, etc. —now employs 30,000 more persons than before the depression, Textiles 15,000 more, Food, Drink and Tobacco 7,500, Miscellaneous Products 4,500, Chemicals, etc. 3.500, and Paper, Stationery, etc. 3,500. Five classes reported less employment in 1936-37 including the major classes, Clothing and Woodworking.
We really should be pushing rooftop solar and key home-made items as much as possible, maybe even legislating it as a requirement where it makes economic sense. Lowering costs as much as possible could make a lower wage bearable. Tackling the difficulty with love will be key in softening a more authoritarian turn in the '40s for fear of secondary economic effects.
In every downturn there's plenty of opportunity, the next depression might make the next manufacturing mega corporations out of Australia.
[0] https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/1301.01...
Negative gearing allows you to use expenses from owning property as a land lord against your own income to reduce your taxable income. while the asset (property, land) balloon in value. [0]
Eventually you can sell the property and land for huge profits while using it as a tax avoidance strategy while the asset grows in value and even then at sale, you get massive Capital Gains Tax discounts.[1]
There's so many incredible benefits to being a land lord in Australia which is helping fuel the ballooning property market, which is why this is typically the first investment priority for most people here.
[0] https://rentbetter.com.au/view/tax-benefits-for-landlords/
[1] https://www.realestate.com.au/advice/how-to-avoid-capital-ga...