20 August 2010
Those who know me would attest that I would have been following the 2010 Federal Election very closely regardless of what was topical on the policy front. I am a political tragic and a lover of the much-criticised 24 hour news cycle - and my wife is the authority to affirm that fact.
However, regardless of the result this weekend, all of us in the internet industry have to be delighted that for five weeks, our world and our concerns were shared with the masses.
Fibre, wireless, megabits, open internet, filters, etcetera became part of the vernacular of politicians who don't even know how to turn on a computer, let alone Tweet or use Facebook.
Most also understand that this is due to fibre-optic cabling; something no commercial enterprise has decided to build in Australia due to our small population and the unlikelihood that they will ever make a buck from a $43 billion outlay.
If it did miraculously work and wasn't abused, the geek community that rules the online world will not stand for any censorship on the 'open internet'.
Here is my summation of these two topics - National Broadband Network (NBN) and the Internet Filter - which served the internet industry brilliantly by raising internet to the very top of the policy pile, ahead of Health, the Economy, Industrial Relations, Immigration and Climate change...
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), led controversially by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, has decided it will fork up to $26 billion of taxpayer money to team up with commercial enterprise for a total $43 billion national broadband network to deliver a minimum speed of 100 megabits per second (up to 1000 megabits [or 1 gigabit] per second) to 93% of Australian households.
The Liberal and National Coalition (LIB), led by Tony Abbott, say no. It says Australia is in too great a debt to afford this. It says "we shouldn't put all our eggs in the fibre basket" and "explore wireless, etc", which are more new-fashioned technologies.
The Coalition policy only guarantees speeds of 12 megabits per second (up to 100 megabis per second).
Those who leaned 'no' gave reasons such as they are not sure if it would be deliverable by this government on time and on budget. Or they said the cost is too great and other priorities, such as Health and Education, should be worked on first.
I personally feel while Australia is now more educated on the potential of speeds we could have using fibre, the debate has been a poor one.
I wish the Coalition matched the ALP policy of delivering a NBN, but found its differentiation by providing a more efficient way to deliver it to Australian households.
This would have meant both parties are offering us progress, and the debate will not have focussed on whether we needed progress, but rather on who can deliver progress better.
While former Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull has obviously towed the party line on this issue, I feel if he were their leader, we would have had the debate I wish we were having.
Abbott's claims that he is "no tech-head" in a community filled with internet users made him seem like a leader going backwards. See below video satirical of this from The Chaser of the ABC:
Then we come to the net filter. If the ALP and Gillard loses this election, I wonder how many will blame it on this monumental stuff-up.
Some in the community clearly want net filters. Why the ALP did not alter this policy when Gillard took over from Kevin Rudd is beyond me.
Along with Mining Tax and Immigration, it would have been easy for Gillard to state the net filter will come in, but it will 'opt in' - so those not wanting it did not need to have it in their homes and workplaces. This is something I called for in a previous blog.
Instead the ALP split the internet vote by continuing to send very 'hard-to-like' filter champion Stephen Conroy to keep trying to sell the unsellable.
But it was not lost on the geek community that it wasn't because the Coalition didn't want the net filter. Because they do want it. It was because they felt it couldn't be implemented.
As the title of this blog suggests, the 2010 Federal Election will be remembered as the campaign in which the internet crawled up the policy pile.
But it will also be remembered for two major parties who argued the net-related policies - NBN and NET FILTER - very poorly.