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NBN update. Let’s not compound a history of poor policy making

One day a rooster, the next day a feather duster!

By LAURIE PATTON | 18 November 2020

In years to come Malcolm Turnbull will be remembered as the communications minister who, under an instruction from then prime minister Tony Abbott, ‘demolished’ Labor’s 21st Century National Broadband Network. But another prominent politician had earlier inflicted enduring damage to any nascent aim of becoming an innovation nation and set us back in an emerging digitally enabled world. Are we heading towards a repeat of this mistake in telecommunications policy?

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The Opposition Leader is correct. We need a decentralisation plan

One day a rooster, the next day a feather duster!

By LAURIE PATTON | 11 May 2020

Australia’s Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is right. In his latest vision speech he pointed to the benefits of decentralisation. It’s time we stopped cramming more and more people into already overcrowded cities. It’s predicted that pretty soon 90 percent of all Australians will live in our sprawling capitals. But does that really make sense?

The current health crisis has seen people forced to work from home. We’ve discovered that with modern technology we don’t all need to gather in CBD offices. It’s likely home working will continue when we emerge from the threat of the coronavirus.

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How the OTIS group did Albanese a favour

One day a rooster, the next day a feather duster!

By LAURIE PATTON | 16 February 2020

The OTIS group of disgruntled federal Labor politicians has helped Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese in a number of ways they probably didn’t intend.

For starters, forewarned is forearmed. His supporters – which is a majority of the caucus and overwhelmingly the grass roots party membership – want ‘Albo’ to become our next PM and nothing else comes close to being second prize.

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Ignore driverless cars and we’re rejecting the future

By ANTHONY ALBANESE and ED HUSIC | 12 June 2018

The ever-accelerating pace of change in the 21st century demands that regulators be quick on their feet. Science and technology move so quickly that the moment we’ve settled the regulations governing the latest emerging sector, circumstances change, requiring that we revisit the regulatory framework.

For example, the Internet has developed so quickly over the past two decades that governments have failed to keep pace with emerging problems regarding privacy, bullying and cybercrime.

We should learn from this when it comes to the approach of what will be one of our biggest changes in decades: the emergence of automated vehicles. Continue reading “Ignore driverless cars and we’re rejecting the future”