[LINK] Internetty issues in the Federal Budget?

[Glen Turner]

On Sat, 2008-05-10 at 10:02 +1000, Stilgherrian wrote:

> Crikey.com.au has asked my to do a piece after Tuesday night's Federal
> Budget for their Wednesday edition, looking at issues which relate to my
> geeky nature.
> 
> What sort of issues should I be looking out for?
> 
> I can think of obvious ones:
> 
>   * Paying for the broadband rollout
>   * NetAlert and Internet censorship
>   * Training

Functional separation of Telstra. This is sort of related to the
broadband
rollout as the suspicion is that Telstra will offer the govt some sort
of
good looking but actually ineffective functional separation in return
for
the good looking $5B on offer.

A neglected part of functional separation is Foxtel. As the ACT has
found,
you can't run a pay TV network without offering the Fox channels.
Telstra
have them sown up.

The laptops for school students programme.  This is actually doable,
you're
looking at about $300 per student for the hardware if you play your
cards
right during the acquisition process (order 1m Eee PC direct from Asus,
running Linux or Microsoft providing Xp for $0).

NetAlert is a straightforward substance v appearance issue.  The costs
of the
'free' Internet filters programme has been huge per-client. It costs
more
per-client to provide a free Internet filter than to provide other much
more worthwhile low-touch government programmes. It would be interesting
to compare the per-client costs for literacy programmes, etc.

You should keep your eye on in the budget for any mention of Icon. This
is the government's metro dark fibre network in Canberra and a success
story. But some in Treasury have long disliked the project (believing
the
govt shouldn't own telco assets, but should by them from the 'free
market'
(ha, ha)). They might try to pull a swifty on the new govt.

Note that tracking R&D and training expenditures will be a bit trickier
this year, as agencies have been moved about in the
science-education-industry
boats. Cuts to CSIRO will come out of IT-related areas more heavily
than other areas (ie: they're not about to decrease research into ag,
climate,
astronomy, so other areas would have to give).  Similarly, cuts to
education
effect internet-related activities before more core activities (CoI:
I'm an AARNet employee).

Copyright and patents in A-Gs. I'd be looking at the papers for any new
programmes. I doubt they'd be one, but there would be a story is there
is.
The music industry has been pushing A-Gs for government-funded license
enforcement (otherwise called criminal sanctions for copyright
breaches).

I'd also look for mentions of AUSFTA.  In particular, it seems to me
that
the things we sacrificed for the potential of increased agricultural
access
to the USA may have been pointless, since I'd be surprised if there were
any growth in actual agricultural exports to the USA.

I'd also look for any rearrangement of the deckchairs. Communications
consists of
 - technical staff, who track down mistriggered EPIRBs, administer
   wiring quality, etc.
 - telco policy staff, who develop telecommunications policy.
 - media policy staff, who develop media ownership policy.

These components are often rearranged in and out of various departments.
The govt's focus is on the media -- in fact when they say
"communications"
that's often who they mean. I think that was the reason that Telstra's
privatisation was so bungled -- whenever Alston was briefed on his
department it was the media aspect that occupied his mind, and
everything
else came a far second. You can understand why -- a typical ABC Lateline
interview of that era would have tens of questions on media policy and
one
on communications policy, the answer often being cut short with "I'm
sorry Minister, we're out of time". In the end, this lack of attention
to
telco policy came back to sandbag the previous government.

Broader economic policies have an effect on comms.  It's a
capital-intensive
and a education-intensive industry, and imports almost all of its
physical
goods.

It's generally free of taxation. That's probably going to have to be
addressed at some point. We're fortunate in having the GST, as this
captures a lot of the increased economic activity in the sector.