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".
He's been bad enough in the UK, but it seems like he has even more control in Australia.
He started out here, no surprise that his stuff dominates.
(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).
Young People * Housing Affordability * Uni Fees * Centrelink * Employment * Climate change
Middle Aged People * Super * Eduction * Health * Taxation * Infrastructure
Old People * Pension * Health
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing can be done until Australians demand Constitution reform. This is the crux of the problems with Australian politics - its Constitution is absolutely atrocious.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
https://independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display...
The UK, Canada, NZ etc. and otger countries (to a weaker extent) have similar laws. It is ridiculous in my view.
I hate Abbott as much as anyone but Turnbull seems like the real problem.
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.