[LINK] NBN, education and health

[Kim Holburn]

On 2011/Apr/07, at 1:50 PM, Robin Whittle wrote:

> Tom wrote, in part:
>> The NBN is social repatriation for thirty years of "she'll be right...
>> They wanted to live in the country".
> 
> Maybe so - but do people really want this, or would they prefer better
> 3G coverage, and more direct support for teachers, schools, GPs, nurses
> and hospitals?

3G does not replace fixed internet and never will.  In really remote places it maybe the only connection people have but it won't be much good, it will be barely enough to make phone calls.  

>> Where I think the money is being wasted is duplicating the
>> infrastructure that already exists in the cities.
> 
> On this we agree.
> 
>> We already have LTE, ADSL-2, Cable etc in the City, why does that need
>> to be replaced ?
> 
> I am opposed to the monopolistic nature of the NBN, turning off Telstra
> copper and HFC cable Internet services wherever it goes.  There's always
> 3G as an alternative to the NBN, which is good.  But it is so
> destructive and monopolistic - and especially worrying from a censorious
> government.

See you seem to think that Telstra monopoly is OK but NBN is not even though Telstra uses its monopoly wholesale to compete with retail ISPs.  NBN would give ISPs a real level playing field.

>> So I guess, I would argue, give the country an infrastructure boost if
>> only to maintain a level of minimal service in the country areas to
>> ensure that the lungs and bread basket of the city dwellers can
>> continue to function without farmers loosing their offspring to the
>> allure of iPhones in the city.
> 
> I think it is a mistake to think the NBN can do this, or that this is
> the best way of spending money to support the retention of people and
> communities in farming areas.



> Kim wrote, in part:
> 
>> You know I don't agree with most of what you wrote.  We've been over
>> all this many times.  I find it amazing that the moment there's an
>> apparent hiccup with the NBN all the naysayers start naying.
> 
> I have been naying for quite a while.

I've been wanting fibre for a very long time.

>> This is either not true or not relevant.  Most people I know who
>> understand ICT think this is a very good idea and well thought out.
> 
> I think the ISPs have been pretty positive about the NBN, because they
> are keen to get an access system to all areas, without having to deal
> with Telstra.

A commercial monopoly that competes with ISPs as well as providing their wholesale access?  How can you possibly complain about NBN being a government monopoly when you have Telstra in this position already.  This is all the worst parts of a monopoly and none of the benefits like a level playing field.  NBN has the best aspects of a monopoly: government control, all the ISPs have a level playing field which means there will be real competition at the ISP level, unlike now.

> But what exactly is the thinking of these ICT people?  Why is this
> inadequately planned project, foisted on the nation by people who don't
> know much about ICT or big projects, such a winner?  

It's not rocket science.  It really isn't.

> Sure it would be great to have fibre to every home, or 97% of them.  

So you admit it.

> But can it be done at the projected price?  It seems from the recent "hiccup" that it can't be done.

If it can't be done then it probably won't be.  I don't see why it would be terribly expensive.  It is easier than copper to put in and hugely easier to maintain and I have seen them put in copper recently.  Not a big deal.

And as I say further on - if it can't be done at the projected price then private industry could never do it and it is even more reason for the government to do it.

> Why spend all this money when a lot less could be spent in a more
> targeted manner, to achieve a range of outcomes in the bush?

Go on...  I thought they were already looking at a range of outcomes in the bush.  They have achieved a range of outcomes in the bush.  Now they're looking for real broadband.

> Is there some new zen of planning that less is more - just be bold and
> get the ear of the prime-minister, run with the ball, deny all critics
> as mere naysayers?  What's so good about planning a multibillion dollar
> project like this in a manner we might expect of a few people just fired
> up with self-confidence (regarding a field which is not their own) as if
> they had just done Werner Erhard's Forum, or whatever it is called these
> days?

You know what's with the multibillion thing all the time.  This project is going to take place over a number of years.  You can split the cost into those years and the many years after when it will keep returning but cost little in maintenance. 

> Over the years our government has made some incredibly bad ICT
>> decisions.  One that springs to mind is selling Telstra - selling a
>> government monopoly that made billions for the government while
>> leaving its effective monopoly in place.
> 
> I think it was fair enough to sell it.  

No, it was a stupid decision.  They should have split Telstra into the copper infrastructure and the software.  That would have made technical and business sense.  To give a private company a monopoly and allow it to compete while using its monopoly to make its own prices to competitors was a recipe for the worst kind of excesses and the reason the Australian internet connectivity is so backward.

> To the extent that there was going to be really good regulation of the industry,

By the government who had already demonstrated a monumentally stupid decision?

> and so a diminution of Telstra's monopoly,

But it didn't really diminish at all and to the extent it did it just became a duopoly.

> I think it would have been better if the
> government hadn't encouraged millions of mom-and-pop investors to buy
> the rotten shares.  People went to banks and borrowed money to buy
> Telstra stock - it was so silly, and as best I remember, the government
> did nothing to warn them that the value of Telstra as a business would

It was all a show anyone with technical understanding of the issues knew that Telstra was going to lose to the internet.  Just like today charging SMS messages at 10 thousand times the cost of the SMS data, charging phone calls at many, many times the cost of the data is going to end at some point fairly soon.  

> and should be diminished by the new regulatory regime.

If they had done it properly they wouldn't have needed such a complicated regulatory regime.

>> For whatever reason the NBN is not one of these bad decisions.
> 
> Why not?  It has all the hallmarks of a white-elephant - starting with
> the goals, timeframe and and cost being created by people who had no
> proper way of deciding these things.

I have waited years for fibre to the home.  For a long time it hasn't been viable because of termination costs.  Now the endpoints have become cheap enough I can't wait.

>>> Now a bunch of bright, hard working, people at NBNCo now have the
>>> job of achieving the outcome, according to the timetable, and within
>>> the $43B cost
>> 
>> Yes?  That's what companies do.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>>> - all of which were decided largely or entirely by the two
>>> insufficiently qualified people who devised the project.
>>> 
>>> NBNCo try to get quotes from a bunch of companies on the most
>>> difficult aspect of the project, running fibre along streets and
>>> into individual homes - and connecting the requisite equipment.  I
>>> am not sure how they can they specify the difficulties of doing
>>> this.  So how could there be a contract, unless the tenderers are
>>> supposed to take enormous risk?
>> 
>> Australia has people and companies who can do stuff and reasonably
>> efficiently.  I'm sure they can manage.
> 
> Then are the quotes realistic?  If not, then every one of these
> companies was price-gouging.  I can't imagine how they would all do
> this, since they want to get the work.
> 
> If the quotes are realistic, then the fatal flaw is in the NBN plan
> itself - with its goal, timeframe and total cost decided arbitrarily by
> people who were way out of their depth.
> 
> You may be sure it can be done.  But the companies which want to do the
> work are not sure.  I think they know more about the costs of running
> fibre down streets and into homes than you or I do.

It's not my job to worry about that.  They get paid for that.

>>> The quotes come back - the work of people who are presumably very
>>> well educated in these matters - and they are all too high for the
>>> spec, timetable and costs which have already been determined.
>>> 
>>> Part of the problem is that these potential installation contracting
>>> companies don't have - and won't be able to get - sufficient numbers
>>> of suitably educated people to do the work.
>>> 
>>> If the NBN existed today, it wouldn't help much in providing the
>>> sort of education required for doing a number of useful things, such
>>> as laying cable, installing and testing equipment etc.
>> 
>> There are already people laying cable along streets, so it's possible
>> to do and there are people with training and experience doing it
>> right now.
> 
> Apparently there aren't enough of them for any of these companies to be
> able to quote a price which fits within the limits already set by Rudd
> and Conroy for NBNCo to operate within.

You see that as a big deal, I don't.  That's what those guys get paid to sort out.  The slightest problem and you are jumping up and down saying look I told you it wasn't going to work.

>> This is kind of a bleak view of Australian society: that we can't
>> even organise the laying a bunch of cable.
> 
> Oh - so the reason these companies quoted prices which are too high for
> the Rudd-Conroy framework is because people like me say its all too hard??
> 
> 
>> If it's true we should just give up now.
> 
> I think we should pull the plug on it and decide on a much more
> judicious method of improving communications in the bush, as one of the
> things which needs improving, along with education and health services.
> 
> I am not at all convinced that we need to be ripping out copper and
> putting fibre into city homes - at least not if it requires massive
> taxpayer investment and therefore risk and/or costs.
> 
> 
>> Maybe we should get a bunch of Chinese companies to do it.  They have
>> laid fibre to most of rural China (probably a decade ago) and that's
>> a way bigger job than we have.  China is one of the most ruralised
>> societies in the world.
> 
> I haven't researched it, but AFAIK, there's not a lot of fibre to the
> home in China, especially in the rural areas.

No, not to the home, to the villages but even that is a far, far bigger project than ours.

>>> It is arguably a result of insufficient education that:
>>> 
>>> 1 - The whole NBN proposal was conceived, with its goals and costs
>>>     already decided - never mind alternative approaches to using
>>>     the money for health and education - and then taken seriously
>>>     within the government.
>> 
>> There are lots of things the government could do with its $26B share
>> of the money.  We could equip and send more people to invade other
>> countries and, you know, die and stuff.  We could fix our rail system
>> so it worked.  Governments of all persuasions have been cutting
>> funding for education and health.  Suddenly you want to change this?
> 
> Yes - forget wars and improve infrastructure in a judicious manner.
> 
> Many supporters of the NBN seem to believe it will all be worth it
> because of the nirvana-like benefits it will bring.  I don't believe the
> benefits will be that big, compared to what will naturally occur in its
> absence with DSL and 3G.  

That has already happened with DSL and 3G.  If they are so great they will have already been rolled out.

> A fraction of the funding would improve 3G to
> the point where people in rural areas could use it for Internet access.
> They wouldn't be able to stream whole movies etc.  

Why should we need to fund this?  If it was viable it would have been done.  It wasn't, it's not and it will never be.

> But I don't think
> taxpayers should be funding the communications infrastructure just so
> people can stream movies.  

Is that your real beef with this?  People will be able to stream movies?  We should stay at DSL speeds forever?  Because that's effectively what you're saying.  There just isn't much more we can squeeze out of DSL and nowhere near the speeds that fibre is capable of.

> I think a well provisioned 3G service is fine
> for web-browsing, email and MP3 music purchases and for all educational
> uses apart from streaming video.

So she'll be right mate, we just will quit any future increases?

>>> 2 - That anyone outside government took it seriously.  Even quite
>>>     well planned IT projects are highly prone to going over-time and
>>>     over budget and/or being obsolete or in some other way
>>>     inappropriate by the time they are completed.  Yet this is a
>>>     project far bigger than any other IT project, with far less in
>>>     the way of suitably informed planning.
>> 
>> I'm not sure I agree with any of that.  Except the part about
>> projects, but IT doesn't have a patent on projects going wrong.  Look
>> at the Sydney Opera house as a case in point.  This project is not
>> much bigger than the copper telephone system in its day.
> 
> I wasn't suggesting that only IT projects go wrong.  The telephone
> system grew organically over decades - which is quite different from a
> taxpayer funded mad rush.

It was a taxpayer funded project.  A monopoly.  Was a monopoly when it was built and still is now.

>>> 3 - That there is not a greater pool of people with general skills
>>>     of a suitable kind who could be brought up to speed in something
>>>     like cable-laying and telco installation.
>> 
>> I think there is just such a pool of people who have been laying
>> cable right up to now.  How did all the cable get laid in the great
>> Telstra-Optus cable fiasco a few decades ago?  My suburb was rewired
>> about 10 years ago in a couple of weeks by two different groups.
>> It's not a big deal really.
> 
> Then why does NBNCo find the quotes from all 14 companies so unacceptable?
> 
> 
>>> I think some of the NBN money would be better spent on boosting pay
>>> rates of teachers - from kindergarten teachers to university
>>> lecturers - and ensuring that the best people for these jobs want to
>>> do this work and are well supported with training, professional
>>> development and good facilities.  The whole public education system
>>> needs to be a matter of national pride - and the teachers should be
>>> the sort of people who are widely respected.  Then we won't have so
>>> much of this pernicious splitting of student populations into
>>> private schools, leaving the public schools to handle only those
>>> whose parent's don't have higher standards and the money to send
>>> them elsewhere.  I understand this is the typical situation in the
>>> USA.
> 
> I should add that schools in the USA depend greatly on local funding, so
> inadequate funding and low standards can persist in poorer areas.
> 
> 
>> I can't disagree with the principle of funding education as an
>> investment in society.  One of the best things the Labour government
>> did in the past couple of years was fund a building project for
>> schools.  My daughter's primary school got an excellent new library
>> out of that.  An extremely successful use of funding for education.
> 
> I would be more impressed by improving the salaries and training for
> teachers.  It should be a high-status profession, but it never will be
> as long as governments fail to support them with good pay.

State governments.

>>> I think very little of what is important in education - particularly
>>> kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and most of TAFE -
>>> can be conducted through electronic channels and/or be achieved
>>> without really good teachers.
>> 
>> Don't entirely disagree with this but I would say that electronic
>> channels of communication only open new means of people communicating
>> with each other.  There's nothing magical in the infrastructure
>> itself.
> 
> Yet NBN supporters seem to behave as if there is something magical about
> ubiquitous fibre.

It gives us the possibility of vastly increasing the speed of our communications system.  ADSL does not.

>>> Likewise, I think the contribution the NBN will make to health is
>>> minimal compared to whatever benefits are already achievable with a
>>> mix of DSL and 3G wireless.  These already exist where the great
>>> majority of Australians live.
>> 
>> And the mobile wireless is not going to go away, it will probably get
>> better as a result of the NBN.
> 
> I don't see why the NBN is going to make it much easier to power and
> connect base-stations in the bush.  Power is needed and the links can be
> via microwave over quite long distances, if the towers are high enough.

Microwave links use far more power and need far more maintenance and have quite a low bandwidth.  Microwave links will probably be converted to fibre.  Most of them have already.  Despite all you say most intercity and inter-town and inter-village and intra-cell-tower, intra-3G connections are or will be fibre. This has nothing to do with the NBN project.  

>> DSL can die AFAIC, the sooner the better.
> 
> What's so wrong with DSL?
> 
> The limitations on my Internet use are very rarely to do with speed or
> cost.  The speed limitations are almost never to do with the DSL part of
> the path.  The speeds using a browser-based Java applet with a speedtest
> at my ISP Internode are:
> 
>   4,261 kbps downstream
>     876 kbps upstream
> 
> This is on a newly installed Internode DSL with about 4 to 5km of
> twisted pair from the Heidelberg exchange.  

You're lucky.  Many people even in cities can't get this.  It's amazing after living overseas how poor the internet offerings are in Australia.  I had a 4Mb uncapped connection in Europe in 2007, it was upped to 8Mb/1Mb a year later.  A friend in Hong Kong got a 30Mb connection with 50 TV channels and an immense VOD catalog of actual watchable movies which was updated each month.  Nowadays in Hong Kong you can get Gigabit connections.  Until you've tried it you really just don't know how backwards what we have here is.

> (Telstra's recently upgraded
> DSLAM was about the same speed, or maybe a little faster.)
> 
> If I do a big file upload to a remote server, it takes a while - but it
> doesn't stop me from doing anything.  Likewise, I think, for the great
> majority of users.

Why is we have all these asymmetric plans?  Why can't we have symmetric?

> Speed limits are usually to do with TCP delays from my computers here to
> servers in the USA, Europe, Asia etc.  The round-trip time involves a
> longer session set-up and the data in transit involves slower window
> management.  For reasons of delay time, the data rate from a US server
> never gets as high as from an Australian based server.
> 
> If Internode or some Australian provider was offering movies, then the
> 4Mbps limit would be crucial to deciding on the quality of real-time
> streaming video I could watch.  

Internode peers with the ABC and you can watch ABC on iview for free.  Unmetered free.  Right now.

> Fibre would be far better.  

You said it.

> But I don't
> believe taxpayers should be funding the Universal Service Obligation to
> the point of Blu-Ray quality streaming video.

As far as you are concerned more speed is just about movies.  There really are other reasons for having more speed.  You aren't in the movie industry are you?  That seems to be the movie industry's latest answer to their lack of ability to adjust their business model to deal with the internet: get ISPs to cap connections.  It's not going to work either.

>>> Maybe putting in low-cost high-speed broadband will
>>> encourage nurses and doctors to live outside major cities, and so
>>> improve health outcomes in this manner.
>> 
>> Yes.
> 
> To some extent, this will be true.  But how much encouragement will the
> NBN provide to them above what would already happen with DSL and 3G, or
> what could happen with DSL and 3G judiciously supported with a lot less
> money?

If it were possibly to do it with ADSL and 3G it would be there.  It's not.

>>> Still, I think the money would be better spent directly on health
>>> outside the major population centres - facilities, salaries,
>>> training and professional development and whatever is needed to
>>> encourage sufficient numbers or doctors and nurses to live and work
>>> outside the big cities.
>> 
>> However the government spends our money, there will always be people
>> who disagree with their choices.
> 
> Sure, but do you argue that health and education could be better
> improved by the bazillions to be spent on the cargo-cult-like NBN, or by
> more targeted and judicious support for GPs, nurses and teachers?

Is education and healthcare improved by billions we spend on defence?  No.  How much does the government spend on roads?  Why should it spend that on roads?  Surely they should just build themselves?  

If the whole NBN is too expensive then it definitely will never be able to be done privately.  That is even more argument for the government to do it.  Because non-one else will ever be able to afford it and Australia will sit on your 4Mb if that while the rest of the world moves away from us into the future.
 
> 
>>> If there was better education and healthcare outside the major
>>> cities, more people would choose to live there and there would be a
>>> stronger demand for broadband communications - which existing
>>> providers would be able to meet via DSL, fibre or 3G / WiMax radio
>>> links.
>> 
>> Yeah if there were no roads, the demand would just magically create
>> them?  The only reason we have DSL at all is because our government
>> built the infrastructure in a giant project much like the NBN.
> 
> I disagree.  Copper was the only way to do telephony.

Yes, it was and having the government do it was the only way to get it done.

> The NBN's fibre-to-the-home is not the only way to do broadband
> communications.

No but it is the best way.  You might get 100Mb to some homes with copper.  Specialised copper - like VDSL or cable.  It is the only way to get Gigabit connections.  Here in Canberra we already have fibre to the node, fttn.  Everywhere else in Australia we have fibre to somewhere near your house, be it exchange or DSLAM.  Fibre from exchange or post to the house is really not a big deal.  Lots of people live with copper connections that will not sustain ADSL or only in a very limited way.  Fibre has no limitations like ADSL.  It goes up to terabytes and beyond.

> The phone system was built over decades, not in a single rush with a
> necessarily larger workforce, which then would have nothing to do.
> 
>> Copper has now outlived its usefulness.
> 
> I completely disagree.
> 
> Copper works just fine for all the communications people need, provided
> this doesn't include streaming high-quality video or copper which is
> more than about 4km from the DSLAM.

It's OK for you.  You're happy with what you have.  You don't have to force that on everyone else.  We want a choice of better connections.

>> Current DSL offerings are rubbish compared with what is possible and
>> being done around the world.  Have you used WiMax?  I have.  Give me
>> a decent fibre connection any day.
> 
> Australian ISP's costs depend heavily on the cost of links to the
> outside world.  Right now, I guess they get a pretty good deal from
> Telstra for using Telstra's DSLAMs, or for using their lines with their
> own DSLAMs.

Australian ISPs depend heavily on Telstra's almost universal monopoly on their copper.  Why are you happy with a commercial monopoly and one that has shown it is quite happy to leverage its monopoly to gouge competitors.

> "Pretty good" doesn't mean its perfect, but I reckon it is cheaper now
> than what it will be under the NBN, where the ISP's fees for using the
> NBN need to pay back all that fibre investment, much of which was simply
> replacing perfectly good, already paid for, copper.

See fibre lasts for a very long time without maintenance, copper needs quite a lot of help to stay viable.  We have a long time to pay the fibre off.

>> On top of that there are people in the country still without a
>> phone.
> 
> Only those people who choose to live somewhere outside Telstra's very
> wide-reaching NextG system.  That's their choice.  Only in remote areas
> of Victoria would this be true, such as in unpopulated areas, or in
> certain valleys I can think of, such as Walhalla, which is a town
> without cellphone communications.  (My friend who lives there tells me
> he can get 3G - I forget what company - from one road at the far south
> of town, Little Joe Hill, beyond where anyone lives.)

You sound like a city Telstra salesman.  I think there are a lot of bits of Australia left out of that coverage and a lot where you might just be able to make a phone call but forget any internet.

There is a lot of yellow here:
http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/coverage/broadband.html
it also doesn't show where the performance degrades to dialup speeds.  I bet that would cut out a lot of orange.

>> There's a reason why the government created the Universal Service
>> Obligation after it sold Telstra.
> 
> I recall it existed before Telstra was privatised and before Optus
> existed.  Its just that then, there was only one carrier - Telstra - and
> Telstra was the company selected to do the USO work.
> 
>> It knew that once Telstra was a private company it would have walked
>> away from country people without the government sitting on it and
>> twisting its arm.
> 
> Probably before, as well.  When I was writing about telecommunications
> for the Australian Communications magazine in the 1990s, my impression
> of Telstra engineers was that they were generally very aware of the
> social importance of their services.
> 
> The government used Telstra and now the multifaceted telephone industry
> to pay for a totally socialistic cost-levelling arrangement in the bush.
> So people who wanted a phone (at least in the 1980s) could get one for
> about the same price as anyone in the city.  Never mind that a team of
> men worked for a few weeks with a ditch-witch laying cable out their
> way, with multiple pairs for any future inhabitants.

Oh behave ... they use a D9 with a cable plough.  Or a directional drill.  And all of that means they will never have ADSL because they're too far away.

> That was all fine, I think.   I support extending this in some way to
> broadband access suitable for web-browsing, file uploading and MP3
> purchase.  I do not support extending the USO to cover 100Mbps access,
> because I think it is overkill, and because the cost and other speed
> limits of Internet access in Australia are not imposed, generally, by
> the speed limits inherent in DSL . . . unless you want to use it for
> real-time streaming of high-quality video from Australian servers.

You seem to have this fixation - music is OK but video is just too rich?  100Mbps?  I want 1Gbps.  100Mbps is just barely keeping pace with our pacific rim neighbours.

>>> So directly funding health and education would arguably improve
>>> broadband in the bush, without the government needing to support any
>>> such IT project, or worry about exactly which technologies would be
>>> used.  Also, without the need to suddenly create or import a massive
>>> workforce of cable layers and the like for a once-off project.
>> 
>> So ... why hasn't it happened so far?  Because it won't happen
>> without government support.  Not in a country the size of ours.
> 
> I am arguing for more direct support of education and health - to
> whatever degree taxpayers want to improve this in regional cities and
> smaller towns etc.

Yeah but that's not a federal issue and not currently a responsibility of the federal government.

> I don't accept that the benefits of the NBN for health and education are
> so great that this should be a part of the justification for investing
> so heavily in fibre.

Fine so are the benefits of us being in Afghanistan worth the billions we are paying?  Is that investing in our future?  At least the NBN is here and will enrich our lives and will be here for a long time.  It's not like paying millions of dollars for arms and ammunitions that explode into smoke, invading other countries, having our young people killed, trying to compel our beliefs on them that didn't ask for it by force of arms.    

>>> That said, no matter what governments and corporations do, living far
>>> from major population centres will never provide lots of the
>>> benefits of living near them.  People make a choice about where to
>>> live, and I don't think it is the role of most taxpayers to spend
>>> excessive sums of money to bring every benefit to them, no matter
>>> where they live.
>> 
>> Aren't we a society?  People living in the bush bring us city
>> dwellers lots of benefits, like food for one.  Why should they have
>> to live in the dark ages?
> 
> DSL and 3G are not the dark ages.

They're getting there and in a few years will be.

>>> Even with the best health and education outcomes for people living
>>> outside major cities, the major cities will continue to grow because
>>> many things are less expensive (good food,
>> 
>> Other countries have good food in the country, better than the
>> cities.  That's a peculiarly Australian problem created by our food
>> distribution system.
> 
> "Good food" is subjective, but for me it involves fresh seafood, and a
> wide variety of good vegetables, fruits and packaged food items.  It is
> tricky to do this in areas of low population density.  

It's tricky to do if all the food is trucked into the capital city first and then trucked back out to the country.  It's tricky to do if people don't grow their own food in their local area.  When the price of oil goes up enough we will have to do grow and consume food locally and we will then have better food in the country.

> So an hour and
> half's drive from here local country town's IGA supermarket (e.g.
> Trentham) is more expensive and less fruitful than the city Coles or
> Woolworths, or our own independent Leo's supermarkets in Heidelberg and
> Kew (with a sister supermarket in Castlemaine), which are better still.
> The sole supermarket in Ceduna - hundreds of km from any other
> supermarket, was good - with a great range of fresh fish, fruit and
> vegetables.
> 
> 
>>> short commute distances to jobs)
>> 
>> Short commute distances?  I hardly know where to start with that one,
>> it's just silly.  You clearly have never lived in Sydney's western
>> suburbs.   Many people in the country live right near where they work
>> - like on their farm for instance.  It's the cities where you have to
>> commute in a contested space and time.
> 
> I agree this is a very difficult thing to debate.  But if you live 30km
> from Bendigo and work there, its quite a substantial commute - although
> little in the way of traffic jams.
> 
>>> and because a greater variety of activities, jobs etc. are
>>> available.  To the extent these attractions exist, we see the price
>>> of real-estate in cities going up - until these costs roughly
>>> balance out the benefits according to how many people weigh them up.
>> 
>> Australia is one of the most urbanised societies in the world,
>> especially when you consider the size of our country and the low
>> population density of rural Australia.  This is one way we can
>> encourage people back to the land and keep the people on the land
>> feeling part of our society.
> 
> The high degree of urbanisation is perplexing.  In Germany, there seems
> to be a town or village every 2 to 4km, and many of them have a
> substantial factory, including some high-tech operation which leads the
> world.  I was searching for the source of Aaronia hand-held microwave
> spectrum analysers - Google Maps took me to a little town with about two
> dozen houses!
> 
> http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&q=Euscheid&sll=50.141057,6.317638&z=16
> 
> But Germany is less than half the size of NSW, is all fertile land, and
> has 81 million people . . .

Not to mention a climate with a lot more water.

> I recall reading that Australia's centralised wage fixing system is or
> was partly to blame for the urbanisation.  

Say what?  Pay people less and they'll be able to buy more and stimulate the economy better?

> It prevents employers from
> paying less than a certain rate in areas of lower cost of living - and
> this means that they don't in fact open up factories in rural towns and
> cities, since they can't pay people less there than they do in the
> capital cities.  So they keep their factories in the big cities, where
> the pay rates are the same and there's a bigger pool of potential
> employees.  I am sure there's more to it than this, such as the cost and
> delays of transport etc.

So that's the reason why Australia has got out of much of its manufacturing?  Even in the cities?


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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