[LINK] Wireless Broadband for Regional Australia

[Frank O'Connor]

Yo Stephen,

You're way more optimistic than I am.

On 26 Dec 2013, at 11:30 pm, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:

> Janet writes,
> 
>> yup.. 64 here and feel the same
> 
> 
> True in major infrastructure terms, many would agree you're right Frank.
> 
> However, in terms of social organization, Australia has come a long way.

Intangibles, which, if anything has been proven, can be taken away or dismantled at the whim of a politician, or judge or rednecked bigot (more often than not also a baby boomer) with a platform.

> 
> Many might agree Australia has built a well functioning, and, reasonably
> safe, multi-layered, comparatively equitable and envied social structure.

Tell that to the refugees, the boat people, the people living on hospital waiting lists, those living in the outer suburbs with no infrastructure or even basic facilities, young people looking for a good job with a nice predictable income that would allow them to get a loan from the bank, the increasing numbers of people who live on the ever increasing impermanent fringes, the shrinking middle class and those who haven't made it in the world of our making. The tendency in Australia of late is to blame the victim, rather than a 'fair go' for all ... which is what it was in our parents generation. The equity you mention has shrunk during our watch, but envy, greed and selfishness has taken over. 

It's not enough to be envied. The rich and powerful are envied ... but that doesn't make them particularly admirable.

> 
> For eg, most Aussie capital cities often score your "World's Best Cities".

So do any number of jerkwater towns in the USA, the UK and heaps of other places around the world where the politicians find it necessary to run a meaningless distractor to keep their electorate happy. We've also added hordes of mental health professionals .... more per capita now than at any time in our history, bankruptcies and financial stress are increasing, unemployment hovers at nearly six percent (twenty percent if you're young) and we regard that as 'business as usual', we've run an ever increasing frequency of booms and busts for the last 30 years ... and that also is 'business as usual'.

We've penny ante'd our way into mediocrity and misery, or worse. Some of the attributes of modern day Australia are frankly, reprehensible ... but as long as we can get by, we don't care. We don't live for the future, we live for here and now.

> 
> We are not particularly corrupt or dishonest, we score very well in terms
> of health, hospitals, schools and universities. And generally, many think
> Australia is an excellent place to live comparatively. And they are right.

As I said in another missive, we won the lottery. Our parents handed us a functioning society that in many ways was idyllic. They handed that to us on a plate.

The day I left school, I could walk out into the work force and have a job within an hour or two. If I didn't like that job, I could resign after a couple of days and take up another one ... no problems. It was that easy. That relaxed.

When I went to uni, the government picked up the bill, and even paid me a living allowance. No HECS, no questions .... it was all covered with no need to repay anything late on. 

We had a social welfare system that was the envy of the world. A socialised medical system that on all indicators was way more efficient and equitable than any competing systems (eg. the public UK NHS, or the privatised American system) around the planet.

Power, water, phone and other utilities were provided by government owned companies, who paid dividends to the government and were constrained from excessive charges and prices simply because they were government owned and the politicial connections were obvious to anyone. Regular maintenance and improvements to these utilities were also the rule, because any disruptions sheeted the blame back to the politicians. In short, they were accountable.

Nowadays, in our wisdom we have made sure that nobody is accountable, nobody can be blamed, that these utilities and public assets can be run by 'more efficient' private industries owned largely by overseas corporations that don't pay tax or contribute in any way to our society, whose main motives are to gouge as much profit as they possibly can before the infrastructure (that in many cases they only lease ... on long term favourable leases) fails and they go elsewhere to pursue their destructive business model.

As a generation, we're in the business of busily screwing up everything we were given ... and from my perspective we're doing that job magnificently.

> 
> True, we've not lately built much lasting physical infrastructure. Rather
> we've simply added to what we already have. 

We're not even servicing what infrastructure we've got. A few years years back in Moonee Ponds (where I lived at the time), a street collapsed because the sewer that ran under it hadn't been serviced or repaired in 10 years. Power outages are now common. The electricity network is one of the major contributing causes of bush-fires. Water quality is down in many locations. We vent our waste into the surrounding sea rather than treating it. Environmental legislation has been watered down and the filth finds its way into our drains and local environment. Our communications systems are showing their age, and reportedly not being repaired or serviced ... and the replacement system, which would have taken us into the next century, has been effectively abandoned.

The number of examples of infrastructure decay are legion ...

> But recent generations surely 
> have built strong social capital. We've built fine, good people. And fine
> communities of people combining a mix of all ages, races, genders etc who
> can and do consider our country truly wonderful. Not perfect, but getting
> somewhat nearer there. And, most of us believe, it'll be better in future.
> 

As I said above ... a politician, a judge, or a rednecked bigot can dismantle that (in my view highly debatable) social capital in a second - and there are plenty of examples. Factor in that we have no constitutional or Bill of Rights protections for this 'social capital', and you can see how ephemeral it truly is. 

It exists at the whim of the rich and the powerful.

> I guess it's been the 'Age of Aquarius'. Developing human structures, not
> so much physical structures. We've indeed come a long way, in human terms.
> 

You'll forgive me if I say, we've gone up our respective arses. We've traded the attributes of a great society for the dross we now have. We've blown all the capital we once had for a dollar here, some middle class welfare there, and a new public share issue to make a profit on.

We've been users, and the rest of Australia have been the losers.

As I said, the Baby Boomer generation (anyone between 50 and 75) should simply retire and get out of the way. 

We've done enough damage.

Again, just my 2 cents worth ...