We are already wireless, and my speeds are just as good as the city. It actually makes no sense to me. I can understand why they dont wont to roll out cable down here, most peoples driveways are longer than a city street. However that press release says nothing really, we already have that, maybe iam missing something?
Ice - Yes there are a few missing gems of info - chat to you when we next catch up - there's a lot of detail missing in the public announcements regarding the NBN.
The NBN will be swamped by wireless inside 5 years, about a day after they finish all the fibre optic cables. OC
Except for a brief 6 month period in 2005 our family haven't had ANY fixed line connections at our last 4 homes for just over 9 years now. (Our offices have high speed fibre already and the NBN won't make a dot of difference wrt whether we close those and work from home).
There was another thread a while ago (I'll try to find it) with a link to a graph that shows projected bandwidth demand over the next 10 years. The short version is that wireless can't cope with the amount of data we'll want to use in the near future. Wireless can't cope with the total amount of data we use now i.e. if we all switched from using our ADSL connections to using wireless, the wireless networks would go into meltdown. As the original article says, the copper network is at (or a bit past) it's functional lifespan and isn't being maintained. Even if we wanted to maintain it, the cost would be huge because it's old and corroded and needs huge chunks of it to be completely replaced. This is one of the things the engineers have been trying to tell the Liberals for the last 5 years - the technology isn't capable of doing what the Liberals want it to. It's not a political argument from Labor supporters, it's the laws of physics and they can't be bent to suit Liberal party policy. [Edit] Found the link to the bandwidth projection study: http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2012/06/14/3524848.htm Warning: It's long, but the graphs tell the story pretty well.
Good link Big A.D. IMO, the issue is with spectrum and frequency availability Until the can fit 100 mini antennas in a handset with high procesing speeds, fiber is the easy way forward.
You know China also pumped a huge chunk of stimulus money into their system as well, don't you? They waited a bit longer and they didn't target the spending very well, but they used the same basic counter-cyclical spending strategy we did. The "right way" to spend the money was to give it to people who would spend it on things they'd usually spend it on, i.e. encourage "business as usual" in the Australian economy. That's it. Keep everyone spending money and allow it to flow through the economy like it normally does. That isn't to say that the Australian economy doesn't need to ever change at all but changing the way money flows very suddenly is devastating. Entire sectors just crash and burn and the knock-on effects screw up the way other sectors operate. Ideally, change happens slowly so that everyone has time to adjust. By and large, that's what's happening. I agree, however would you rather be having this discussion in Australia as it is today or in an Australia with America's 8% unemployment, no growth, no jobs, zero percent interest rates, hard to obtain credit, mass bankruptcies, higher inflation and an impotent federal government unable to even begin the process of figuring out how to make things better? We bought ourselves time to adjust. Unfortunate I think we might end up squandering that chance through complacency and general intellectual laziness. We are "the lucky country" after all, and who needs a sensible public policy agenda when you're lucky?
I just realise i've written a large response below and I apologise if it is tedious. Yes, that's what I was saying from the start. I believe this is a core reason that Australian stimulus cannot be proven to have worked. This idea of maintaining the status quo assumes two things: 1) That the economy was running well before the GFC and there was no malinvestment 2) That the economy after the GFC needs to look exactly like the economy before it Both of those are incorrect IMO. I agree that letting sectors of the economy crash and burn is very devastating. And the more the business cycle is fought with stimulating policies, the more devastating the crashing and burning is. So Govt policy and ineptitude helped to make this mess (along with rampant consumerism), and now it has a big problem. The solution is still the same - crash and burn, maybe with some minor assistance, possibly relating to debt servicing. But ultimately it is the only way you can build a solid foundation from which to begin to prosper again. I expect some resistance on that. We'd be in a much better position with the unemployment, lack of credit, mass bankruptcies. Not sure about all the inflation, ZIRP and the rest, as we are not the USA, and should not be compared to them. Here's an analogy: Person B took time out of work in the short term, to fix the problems they were having. Person A maintained the status quo and 'hoped' the problem would fix itself if they merely dealt with the symptoms. Ultimately, Person B had a short amount of work downtime, yet Person A continued to work for a while and then was completely out of action after a nervous breakdown. The problem is, the Australian Govt does not want to take the short-term pain of restructuring the economy through the natural process of a 'bust', but rather wants to address the symptoms in the hope that it will fix itself. Yes it will fix itself with a depression (nervous breakdown). You say: "Unfortunate I think we might end up squandering that chance through complacency and general intellectual laziness.", which is a good comment. But do you realise why? We were never, ever going to take our chance and make things better. It was never going to happen outside of someone's thought bubble. The reason we would never make things better is that the malinvestment was rewarded and the prudent action was essentially punished. It sent the exact opposite messages to the economy. An example: If you were a clothes retailer, and took a massive hit in the GFC, rather than to re-evaluate whether clothes retailing is a good industry to be in, and whether there are enough consumers in the market now for you to stay operational, the Govt has altered the market to artificially persuade you to stay in business. Without this persuasion, you might have changed industry, perhaps become a teacher, or a farmer, or stayed at home to look after the kids, anything. You would likely go to work where the demand is. There would probably be some downtime though, maybe a year or two of unemployment, but when you took up your next job, it'd definitely be in a demand industry. If the economy was an animal, what you are advocating is the use of continual doses of antibiotics to prevent infection, when what it really needs is it's own damn immune system. If you keep along this line of thinking, our animal economy will become like a bubble-boy - doomed to a tragic death at the slightest possible infection.
So the Chinese stimulus worked and prevented both the Chinese economy and the Australian economy from crashing but the effect of the Australian stimulus is iffy? Not sure I see how that works. Either counter-cyclical government spending works at preventing a recession (or at least lessens the effect) or it doesn't, and there are plenty of industries and businesses that are affected faster and harder if people here stop buying stuff than if China doesn't buy as much iron ore from us next month. No it doesn't, it means that malinvestments and unsustainable businesses need to be squeezed out gradually over a period of time rather than just going "pop!" and all of them imploding at the same time. Doing that allows people time after the initial shock to re-examine what they're doing, pay down debt, sell off unproductive assets (maybe at a small loss) to other people who are prepared to take some risk and turn them around (and therefore take a smaller loss if it doesn't work out), postpone or cancel "adventurous" expansion plans that are no longer viable, make targeted redundancies to give staff a chance to find decent jobs that they're qualified for, look for new markets that hadn't been considered before and generally get stuff in order. Alternatively, you get a whole bunch of businesses that find themselves at the end of the week and unable to make payroll. Of course we should compare Australia to America. If we don't then we don't know either how we got where we are now or where we're headed in the future. There are plenty of lessons we can learn from America's screw-ups. A year or two of unemployment? Are you serious? A year of Newstart allowance is $12,800 and you can't live on it. Why put people through that when it isn't necessary? And why wait for a catastrophic failure to occur and then try to pick up the pieces when it's easier and cheaper to do preventative maintenance and avoid the catastrophic failure all together? I can tell you there are plenty of clothes retailers out there who are re-thinking the way they're doing things and some are leaving the industry and some are making big changes to the way they do business. The important thing is they didn't all go broke within a few months of the GFC hitting. If they had, okay the rag trade would be "rightsized" but there would be thousands of people who'd be completely wiped out in the process and we'd be just like the U.S. with the aforementioned mass bankruptcies, home foreclosures and no credit to get anything done. What you're talking about is economic carnage. Change doesn't have to happen like that.
A person would have to be a fool to think that stimulus has zero effect. All I argue there is that it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to prove whether it was Australian stimulus, or in fact Chinese (or other international) stimulus that prevented a technical recession in Australia. What you describe is great - if it could work (which it can't). As I explained, it sends the wrong message. What actually happened, was banks became bigger, retailers went into permanent sale mode (excess competition vs reduced demand), manufacturing kept making the stuff we obviously don't want (at that price), wages stayed high, debt stayed inflated, the property bubble got bigger, and we became the great quarry down-under. But not directly. We can compare property bubbles, stuff that is the same. But last I checked we didn't have trillions in Govt debt. Although we are similar in some other ways. Shouldn't be a year or two of unemployment, but realistically I think some areas of the economy would have that. It takes time to reskill and to build up demand in the right industries. I've also underlined a few spots in this part where you are clearing talking about actively manipulating the economy. The economy is complex. Any manipulation of the economy, by providing money, tax breaks or any sort of preference to one person/group directly takes something away from another. It's central planning! You're so right. If more people in politics respected the business cycle, it wouldn't need to occur like that at all - it'd be mild recessions followed by mild booms. What the Keynesians seek is no recessions and constantly powerful booms. They're like teen rev-heads at the wheel of their first V8. Slow down? Hells no.
What you've just called Keyesian economic theory is actually closer to what occurred immediately prior to the GFC and, if I recall correctly, that period was presided over by Western governments with a particularly "classical economics" bent. This is from just the introduction to the Wiki entry on Keynesian economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics My underlining to show how badly you mischaracterized Keynesian theory.
It was Keynesian from 39-79 according to Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes#The_Keynesian_ascendancy_1939.E2.80.931979 Then brought back again recently according to Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M...the_Keynesian_resurgence_of_2008.E2.80.932009 But from 79 to 2007 wiki says it was classical economics, which could be true up until the Tech Bubble popping in 2000, after which Greenspan did his thing. And here we are. Greenspan may have had a liking for classical economics, but it doesn't matter which type of economist you have if the Govt itself is destroying the country with policies. The US is a legal nightmare, a perfect breeding ground for the corruption that killed Greenspans initial desire for the 'free market'. However this is not what i've been talking about all this time, apart from Greenspans manipulation which falls under this category too. Riding a boom is easy, it's the politicians who think it will go on forever that are the problem, because once things turn bad they turn to bad economic theories to try and make them good again. We are now going down the path of Keynes yet again (hopefully this time we will learn from this mistake). Well, there is some name-calling involved. It outlines the frustration a lot of us stackers have with Keynesian-styled policies. The frustration creeps into a lot of what we say. But generally, it looks like i'm right on the money with that underlined part. Controlling the economy indeed.
The credit crisis has nothing to do with classical economics. It was caused by deliberate legislation intervening in the US housing market under the Keynsian/left leaning US Democrats over the course of many years spanning back to Clintons' presidency. With disastrous results. The GFC started on Bush's watch, yes, but it was the Democrats in Congress voting on legislation that enabled the crisis and prevented reform that may have stopped the disastrous government interventions. The UK Labour Party is hardly a hub of classical economics practitioners.
^ Are you referring to the repeal of Glass-Steagall? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–...80.9Crepeal.E2.80.9D_and_the_financial_crisis
I am with you two on this, cannot wait for NBN, working in the industry I have a need for a fast reliable and rout-able internet connection to the public internet, which is not cheap nor easy to obtain with wireless, we have ADSL at the premises now, but I happen to be on one of those lines that gets wet when it rains, dropping the servers off the internet which is not so useful to me, and Hellstra refuse to replace the crappy 50+ year old two pair connection that runs 1KM down the street, just to cross the road, and run 1KM back down the street to the sub-exchange which is practically opposite me. Whilst I agree on most parts, I do think we need the heavy manufacturing industries to stay here, simply from a defense point of view, we need to be fully self-sufficient in defense manufacturing, so I have no real issue helping heavy manufacturing to stay here as to me it is a strategic defense move, That and its a Gotland class submarine, which yes the Collins is based on, or rather the other way round, although the Goltand class to have AIP ability this was never put into Collins class. these days the Collins class is quite capable, still needs refinement but it is our first attempt. what should be of more concern is the fact we only have enough crew (submarine service is volunteer, you join the navy, then volunteer for submarine service) to keep 3 of the boats at sea full time. Whilst yes possible, it will not be the fibre that is swamped, you want to increase the carrying capability (for the most part) you just increases the active equipment, or light up extra lines, I doubt they are going to run a single pair to a property, its just about cheaper to use 6 core these days. Thats about it, as much as I despise labor, or any politician or political party really they are right on this, this not not the cheapest way to do it, it is not the best way to do it (best way would be FTTH everywhere) but it is the best compromise way without spending truly exorbitant amounts on full FTTH as they have in Japan and Korea etc, which in their cases is similar to our model as the rural areas for the most part are not FTTH, but large swathes are, this is made possible by the fact that their population density is so high, so thereby bringing the cost per residence down Edit: just to put this into context I use Cisco (not linksys, Cisco) gear at home, 2800 series routers, 2960-24 PoE switches (that way the wireless points and security cameras are powered centrally by the switches, meaning less battery backups required) and soon to be Aerohive based wireless network. Why... Because I can, plus I get it cheap through work
You're speaking as if Keynesian theory that made the all governments who were in power immediately prior to the GFC act like raging socialists. Bush certainly wasn't a raging socialist. Neither was Tony Blair. Nor was John Howard. The decade or so before the GFC was all about free market fanboys deregulating everything they could find and removing decades worth of structures that provided stability to the economy. That's almost the exact opposite of the philosophy Keynes' proposed because Keynes' theory was that the private sector often gets things wrong (to one degree or another) and government needs to step in and provide support when that happens. There's a reason you shouldn't be giving loans to people with No Income, No Job or Assets. Removing all the rules that prevented lenders from doing that, like Bush did, certainly got rid of a lot of pesky government regulation but the regulation was there for a good reason - left to it's own devices, the free market does stupid things and the government has the choice of either trying to prevent the worst of it from happening in the first place or picking up the pieces when the whole lot comes crashing down. Intervening in the economy when the market fails, yes. Generally, the market isn't perfect but it works pretty well - this is according to Keynes - but there is no other force capable of preventing the effects of the market's excesses from inflicting long lasting damage than government.
Funny how people continually say that the US market is anything but 'free'. You can remove one regulation out of 1000, and suddenly it is deregulated? You can repeal the one regulation designed to prevent banks from speculating, and that's somehow 'classical' deregulation? It was the one good regulation they had! I know you know what 'too big too fail' is. Who do you think creates this situation, the market our the Govt? The answer is the Govt, by it's implicit guarantee to bail out financial behemoths. If the Govt refused to do such things, 'too big to fail' would not exist. I don't we're ever going to agree. The crux of this argument is still the difference between a centrally managed economy vs. the natural selection processes of the market (and its participants).
Sure it would. Those U.S. banks weren't actually "too big to fail" they were "too big for any sane person with influence to allow to fail". Letting those banks go under was always an option, but the cost to the rest of the country would be that the United States would plummet into a depression worse than the one in the 1930s and take a large part of the rest of the world down with it. That's why the (U.S.) Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created after the 1929 crash - sure you could allow banks to just fail but standing by and letting it happen means things get really messed up and way out of proportion to the actual failures themselves. Ultimately, the huge cost to the U.S. of bailing out those banks was still less than the cost of letting them fail. Sure, but remember it's not a binary option. Government can still guide the direction of an economy without actively intervening in particular aspects of it and businesses can still fail perfectly well by themselves. Without something to provide a counter-balance to the market, it's very nature means that it behaves like a manic depressive going through phases of exhilarating highs and soul crushing lows. It isn't really hard to see why individuals with bipolar often get counselling and medication to prevent the swings from being so wild.
