TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. MALCOLM TURNBULL MP
INTERVIEW WITH BEN FORDHAM
RADIO 2GB SYDNEY

Subjects: National Broadband Network; Australia Council Arts Grant; ……………………………………………………………………………

BEN FORDHAM:

Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Communications Minister, is on the line.   Malcolm good afternoon.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good afternoon.

BEN FORDHAM:

I thought this was a joke.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well you would think so.   But I checked the calendar and it’s not April Fools Day.   It’s for real.

BEN FORDHAM:

It sounds like propaganda.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It does, it sounds like it – and it is propaganda.   Look I noticed in the story that the Tele and the Herald Sun ran today, one of the comments was very good.   It said: A good representative image of the NBN would be a white elephant chewing up money.  

BEN FORDHAM:

Who’s going to be judging the art prize?  Stephen Conroy?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I guess Stephen Conroy or the Australia Council.   This is just a reminder of how pathetic and misguided this whole project is.   Instead of getting it right and doing the proper analysis first and being able to say ‘we’ve done the homework, we’re going to deliver better broadband for all Australians.   This is the proper way to do it and here is the technology that does it and this is the research and study that tells you this is the best way to go’.   Instead of doing all that, they throw all of that caution – all that prudence and responsibility – into the wind and they have decided to go for the single most expensive and slowest way to deliver this.  Which is this huge fibre-to-the-home rollout.   And of course, now Australians are waking up to how much this is going to cost them – not just as taxpayers but also it’s going to be more expensive as a consumer.   You see this is the penny that hasn’t quite dropped.   I think most people recognise that this is a very, very expensive project.   But what they haven’t quite – the penny has quite fully dropped that this is going to be expensive in terms of the usage charges.  And this is the point that Telstra….

BEN FORDHAM:

How expensive?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well that’s a very good question.  It will be no cheaper than it is today, that’s the first point.  And yet we have seen over the past decade because of better technology and competition, particularly competition, prices coming down.  Broadband internet costs are a fraction of what they were years ago, as indeed are telephone charges.  Now what’s going to happen here is because there is no competition, because this is a government monopoly and because they are spending so much money so they’re overcapitalising it, inevitably prices are going to be high.  If you think about it in a different sort of business, imagine if we set up a restaurant and we go bonkers and spend ten million dollars fitting it out.  And you’ve then got to get a return on your investment, well you’d be wanting to charge very high prices for your meals.  Why can’t you do that? Well because there are all these other restaurants in the area…

BEN FORDHAM:

(interjects) Who will knock you off. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

…who will knock you off.  So you just have to say, I’ve made a mistake…

BEN FORDHAM:

(interjects) I’ve blown the dough.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

…I’ve blown the dough.  But if you’re a monopoly then you can use that monopoly power to overcharge.  That is why you see the bizarre situation where every other country in the world, and we used to do it in Australia when we had a responsible government, was promoting competition in the telecommunications area.  Here in Australia we’re creating another big government monopoly.  So we’ve got to the point now where they’re going to have to get the artists in to draw paintings and write poetry about the NBN. 

BEN FORDHAM:

Just help me out here.  Help me out here because we all understand that there’s the blue team and the read team.  We understand that they’ve got their massive plan, what is it $35+ billion, and you’ve got your plan which is, what is it $6 billion or something like that?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It will be much more cost-effective.

BEN FORDHAM:

OK, so you’ve both got your plans and you say you’re right and they say they’re right but who steps in somewhere along the way and say you know what, why don’t we throw $300,000 at artists, hey look we all respect the value of the arts, but let’s throw $300,000 at artists to somehow promote our National Broadband Network? I just don’t know where an idea like that comes from. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It is literally propaganda.  As I said it reminds me of the old days in the Soviet Union or indeed in China, in Mao’s China, when artists would do these paintings glorifying V.I. Lenin No. 3 Missile Factory’s great achievements in beating their quota for the year.  The truth is where does this end? Is the Australia Council going to give awards to artists to extol the virtues of the Julia Gillard Memorial School Halls Program?

BEN FORDHAM:

I might have a go at this thing.  I’m not very good with a paintbrush but I could always knock up a little painting and make Stephen Conroy look even more attractive than he is, and somehow say the NBN rocks and you never know, I might have a cheque in the back pocket. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well maybe you could, you know, show him in a heroic pose with a cable over one shoulder.  .  .

BEN FORDHAM:

(interjects) The Cable Guy!

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Yes.

BEN FORDHAM:

Could I ask you one thing quickly because I’ve got to run to the news but just have a listen to this.  This is Simon Crean yesterday talking about Kevin Rudd:
Simon Crean speaking: “People will not elect as leaders those they don’t perceive as team players, Neil.”
Interviewer: “And he is not perceived as a team player?”
Crean: “I’ll leave that judgement to others.”
Interviewer: “Well, do you perceive he’s a team player.”
Crean: “I think part of the reason he lost the leadership was that he wasn’t.  There’s no point having a band of prima donnas unless they operate as a team.”
Interviewer: “He would cut off his arm to be Prime Minister again, and you know that.”
Crean: “Okay but he can’t be Prime Minister again so the question for him is that he’s got to accept that”.

BEN FORDHAM:

Okay, there’s Simon Crean — a decent slap for Kevin Rudd, wasn’t it?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well it just shows you how dysfunctional and ragged this government is, you know.  I thought that was an extraordinary attack on Rudd, right.  It just shows how bitter and divided they are.  The fact that Crean would go out there and attack the Foreign Minister of Australia in that way — in such a personal way —just shows you the animosities in this crew are just so deep that there’s no hope.  I do think they will put Rudd back in.  That’s my view, I might be wrong, but it’s not going to solve their problem because how can they possibly unity behind him? You see, Crean is clearly so bitter and so hostile towards Rudd that he’s prepared to go out on the radio and attack him in that very personal way.

BEN FORDHAM:

It’s like a flame-thrower.  I’ve got to ask you—it would be wrong for me to say goodbye without asking you —the obvious question there is, we know that flame is still burning inside Kevin Rudd for leadership, does it still burn inside you?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well look, I honestly don’t talk about leadership other than to say we’ve got a very effective leader of the Liberal Party—Leader of the Opposition— in Tony Abbott.  He’ll lead us to the election and I think, judging by current indications, we’ll win it.  Although we’re very far from being complacent about that so,

BEN FORDHAM:

Can I take that as a yes?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

(Laughs) You can talk it any way you like.  The bottom line is that you’ve got to stick together and sometimes that’s harder than at other times but a personal attack like that, by Crean, what’s Rudd done? He hasn’t done anything?

BEN FORDHAM:

Nope.  That’s way over the top.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Rudd’s been overseas for the last few weeks.

BEN FORDHAM:

Surprise, surprise.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well he is the Foreign Minister, and I have to give him points, as he said once, ‘most foreigners live abroad’.

BEN FORDHAM:

Yeah.  .  .

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

And that’s a fair point.

BEN FORDHAM:

That is a fair point.  Listen, Malcolm, I’ve got to run.  I’d love to talk longer but thank you for coming on, we’ll talk to you soon.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Righto, mate.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. MALCOLM TURNBULL MP
INTERVIEW WITH PAUL MURRAY
RADIO 2UE

Subjects: National Broadband Network; Australia Council Arts Grant;
……………………………………………………………………………

PAUL MURRAY:

Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull joins me now, Malcolm good afternoon.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good afternoon.

PAUL MURRAY:

Now, I love this, Simon Benson in the News Ltd papers today hit this one out of the park. Artists are apparently being offered up to $100,000 each in a sinking fund of $300,000 to make visionary works to promote the NBN. Artists are going to be asked to celebrate the NBN Malcolm.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well indeed, they are going to do patriotic drawings showing bountiful joy and happiness coming to the grateful people of Australia from the glorious NBN. There are probably some old artists from the Soviet era in Russia who could come out of retirement and you’d just have perhaps heroic cable layers with the cables over their shoulders and red flags in the left hand striving forward. It’s going to be beautiful Paul.

PAUL MURRAY:

See I would like to see the image that is created here – and personally I think they should be hung on all government buildings – is an image of Julia personally laying the cable or maybe you’ve got Stephen Conroy with the spade digging himself. I think we need to cast our leaders as the heroic ones, not just the simple workers. After all, we work for them.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I think that’s right. One person on the Tele’s website suggested that a useful artwork could be a very large white elephant, gobbling up piles of taxpayers’ money. This is the problem, if there wasn’t $50 billion at stake it would be funny. It’s actually terribly sad. Again, they didn’t do their homework, if they wanted to convince people this is a great idea and a good use of taxpayers’ funds and it was going to result in cheaper internet access, then why didn’t they do their homework first. All we do know is that it’s going to cost taxpayers a bomb and it’s not going to make broadband access any cheaper, it’s going to make it more expensive.

PAUL MURRAY:

It’s all that. But also to me, the way to convince people the NBN’s a great idea is you have to hook it up to the houses and it just has to be working. You have to show people, you can’t talk about the potential of a technology until you can actually demonstrate it. And admittedly yes it’s in Armidale, and yes it’s in Kiama, and it’s in these other areas. Until it starts mainlining into suburban Western Sydney, people are going to view this as the white elephant we joke about.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well of course they will. And the real problem is so many people, and the Labor Party members are starting to get scratchy about this, Ed Husic has been complaining about this, the real problem is there are many people who do have inadequate broadband and are being told by the NBN don’t worry we’ll get to you within 10 years. Now what I’m saying is we should use a mix of technologies, use whatever is most cost-effective and quickest to deliver people the broadband upgrades they need. Now that approach, which is what any rational businesslike person would take, it’s not ideological, there’s no politics in that, it’s just common sense, that will get the job done at a much lower cost and much quicker.

PAUL MURRAY:

Now there’s a lot of cable that already exists and we’ve talked about this. It’s the Foxtel cable yet they refuse to use that cable at all and that cable is already laid to hundreds of thousands of homes right around, millions of homes, right here in Sydney, yet they will not use it and it is effectively the same cable they are about to lay the blue one next to.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

The Foxtel cable, what they call the HFC cable that was built for Pay TV, that is capable and is delivering broadband access at a 100Mbps in Melbourne, Telstra is upgrading it to do 100Mbps everywhere else it is in Australia. That’s the top speed being proposed for the NBN at present at any rate and it is vastly in excess of what people need or can use in a residential environment. Now that’s all being done at very low cost. Now you’d think that that infrastructure would be used as part of this, but no there’s more, or less in this case, because they’re paying Telstra and Optus in respect of their cable billions of dollars to shut it down. So it will not be allowed to be used for broadband in competition with the NBN. Now this is where when you tell people overseas in the telecom sector about this, this is when their eyes really start to roll, they can’t believe it. Because everywhere else in the world governments are trying to promote competition and get the best use out of every bit of existing infrastructure. It’s there, it’s got many years of life in it and it may not be the answer in 20 years time, if that’s the case build something else in 20 years time.

PAUL MURRAY:

Yeah let’s get to this slowly over the years, exactly. And finally on all this too. It’s pretty obvious that what the Federal Government is trying to do is literally build an asset they can sell – I presume they think after all the Stalinist propaganda that they’ll be able to stick around for another 20 or 30 years – but they think they’ll be able to build the network, blue cable everywhere and the whole point is so you can sell something that accesses every single house at some point in time.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well they’ve said they want to sell it but the truth is they’ll never be able to sell this at a price that will get their money back. I suppose if you wait long enough inflation will look after things, but the reality is that everywhere in the world telcos are taking the approach I’m talking about, I’m not proposing anything particularly clever or original, I’m just saying that everywhere else in the world they are working out ways to use the copper infrastructure, use HFC, use wireless, use fibre-to-the-home where it makes sense, use a mix of technologies. Because at the end of the day Paul the customer does not care what colour cable the broadband service is being delivered through, they just want something that works. They don’t even care what the speed in Mbps is as long as it delivers them the applications and the services and the movies and the games and the information that they want. There is no country in the world, and you’ve got to get back to this fundamental question, do you really think Stephen Conroy is the only telecoms Minister in the world who knows what he’s doing and everyone else is a mug? Because nobody else is doing this, everybody else is taking the approach I’m talking about.

PAUL MURRAY:

It’s definitely what he thinks. Anyway you’ve got plenty of people in your electorate you might be able to suggest if they want to put their hand up for these special artworks then they will go forward with your blessing.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I think they should commission some poems. Perhaps some of your listeners can write some poetry that can be submitted. There’s one hundred grand in it.

PAUL MURRAY:

Geez, I like it. Well applications start now. If you’ve got a poem about the NBN why not. 13 30 32, the dirtier the lyric the better I presume. See you Malcolm.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

See you mate.

Given its market power and monopoly status, the onus should be on NBN Co to be transparent, fair and consistent in its dealings with carriers. Before obtaining ACCC approval for its Special Access Undertaking, NBN Co must be required to finalise its Wholesale Broadband Agreement and make all terms, conditions and other commercial arrangements available for scrutiny by the public, the industry and the regulators.

How can the ACCC be asked to give the green light to the SAU until all of these details are settled and transparent? Frankly, the recent drive by NBN Co to gain the whip hand in its dealings with retail service providers and avoid ACCC oversight of its pricing and investment plans raises a red flag.

What does the NBN Co know about the eventual cost of its network (and the prices needed to meet its target return on capital) that everyone else doesn’t? We know the rollout targets contained in the NBN Co 2011-2013 Corporate Plan released in December 2010 have already been missed, and the financial projections were obsolete the day they were released.

It is imperative that Parliament and Australian taxpayers urgently be provided with updated financial and operational projections that accurately portray NBN Co’s current business plan, and the current expectations of NBN Co’s executives, directors and shareholders.

This Australia Day I was able to welcome new citizens at both Woollahra and Waverley Councils’ ceremonies.

The Woollahra ceremony was on the evening of January 25 and Waverley was on Australia Day itself.

As always I felt honoured that so many people had chosen to become Australian citizens. After all, like most of us I came into the world as an Australian citizen, but the people who became Aussies on Australia Day had all made a conscious decision to choose to join the Australian family. There was no need for them to do so; all of them no doubt could continue living here all their lives without becoming a citizen. So in making choice they honoured all of us and Australia. Thank you!

The list of countries from which our new citizens came was a very long one – collectively more than a dozen nations.

This diversity of course is one of our greatest strength; we have created the most diverse settler society in the world and have done so with a remarkable degree of harmony. With a few exceptions Australians welcome immigrants and welcome the multicultural richness that has brought to our nation.

All of the new citizens looked very fit this Australia Day and at Waverley it was so striking that I wondered whether a multinational sporting team had decided to become Aussies all at once. Most of them seemed to be living in Bondi which explains it I guess!

We have every reason to be optimistic about our nation – there are great challenges ahead of us to be sure, but overall we have every reason to be filled with pride about our nation, its future and the men and women who chose to join our family this Australia Day.

And the future of our party is important, because in the contemporary Australian political system it’s the Liberal Party (and only the Liberal Party) which remains unequivocally committed to government that encourages and embodies the values and principles that for over 30 years have made Australia so strong and prosperous.

Values such as self-reliance and enterprise.  Personal freedom and personal responsibility.  Opportunity and competition.

And at the very heart of the matter the difference between our Party and Labor is that we, Liberals, believe that Government’s job is to enable you to do your best whereas Labor, on th other hand, believes that Government knows best.

So at its core the Liberal Party is a party built on freedom and opportunity.  We value freedom because it allows each of us to choose our own course and achieve our highest potential and most deeply-held goals.  We value opportunity  because it ensures these freedoms are accessible to everyone.

Over the past generation or so the way that our party approaches economic policy, in the broadest sense, has been the most important area where these philosophical values have been expressed as practical matters of government.  During the period since the 1980s, as the Australian economy was transformed from a protected, over-regulated and inefficient laggard into an open, dynamic and prosperous leader, the Liberal Party was consistently on the correct side of economic policy debates.

When our political opponents, to their credit, introduced market reforms in the 1980s, we backed them.  Without bipartisanship and support from Liberals such as John Hyde, Jim Carlton and John Howard, Hawke-Keating reforms such as the dismantling of tariff barriers or the floating of the dolalr could never have happened.

When the Coalition regained office, John Howard and Peter Costello pushed ahead with economic reform – often initially unpopular reforms, as in the case of the GST or the spending cuts needed to restore a Budget surplus – despite the lack of such bipartisanship from a Labor Party that in opposition, and now in Government, has quickly turned away from the economic liberalism of Hawke and Keating.

And as we reflect on the great arc of reform in Australia from the start of the 1980s through to 2007, and weigh the current success and strength of our economy against the troubles of so many others, we should pause and recognise how much of that success is built on what we as Liberals know to be true about managing a modern economy:

• As Liberals, we know that the Budget cannot stay in deficit year after year, and that tough decisions across the board are necessary especially if we are in the red at a time when record terms of trade and continuing growth tell us we should be solidly in the black.

• As Liberals, we know that a relatively small and open economy such as Australia cannot control its exchange rate, and that the large movements in the value of our dollar we see from time to time are the lowest-cost way for our economy to adjust to changing circumstances – be they favourable or adverse.

• As Liberals, we know that free, open markets and vigorous competition are the most powerful tools we have to serve the interests of consumers and ultimately the national economy, and must be pursued at every opportunity.

• As Liberals, and especially with so many of our members from business, we know that picking winners is hard enough for the private sector, and well nigh impossible for the public sector. We know that when tax revenues are handed out to one firm or industry they come at the expense of all the other firms and families that  paid that tax. That is why we should always ensure that Government support for industry, be it in the form of cash payments or protection, is rigorously analysed and justified so that its economic costs are well understood by the community which ultimately will have to  bear them.

 It is important to remember that these economic principles will always be tempered by practicality, as great Liberal economic such as John Howard or Peter Costello demonstrated from time to time. Commitment to our economic principles is not justified by ideology but by a hard headed, practical analysis of what will deliver the greatest economic opportunities for our whole community.

 The truth is that developed economies today  face a double challenge – not only is technology reducing the need for labour in many sectors – manufacturing, retailing, logistics, financial services to name a few – but at the same time globalization and the Internet mean that more and more jobs and industry sectors are trade exposed than ever before so that what had traditionally been non-trade exposed occupations (accounting, law, financial analysis, retail for example) are now increasingly trade exposed – which means that their competition is not across the street or in another State, but anywhere in the world where there are many people as well educated and as hard working as Australians but prepared to work for lower wages.

All of this is putting pressure on both employment in the developed world – hence the sluggish jobs free “recovery”, such as it has been, post the GFC in North America, and on incomes – hence middle incomes have flatlined or dropped in real terms in the USA over the last twenty years.

One of the greatest challenges we face today, and you as the leaders of tomorrow, will face in public life in years to come is how to maintain all of the dynamic benefits of a free society and a market economy in a globalised world, where the two largest economies are China and very likely India and at the same time maintain full employment and high standards of living and income for all Australians.

It isn’t easy as we can see from the United States experience at present. For the time being we have benefited from the resources boom courtesy of China and other emerging Asian economies. We should not assume, however, that this boom will last forever and that is why I am firmly of the view that we must as Liberals articulate a clear strategy both for managing that boom, preserving not squandering its benefits and ensuring that Australians’ living standards are maintained in the brave new world that awaits us.  

 This brings me to the key economic policy in my portfolio area, the National Broadband Network, which is a woeful example of Labor ignoring the economic policy successes and lessons of the recent past.

Now before I say any more about the NBN, I do want to stress the Coalition is committed to ensuring all Australians have access to fast, reliable and affordable broadband, regardless of where they live or work.

But we don’t support Labor’s NBN, and we don’t believe it can achieve that objective.  Let me concisely summarize our main objections for you:

• The NBN is expensive – far more expensive than it needs to be.  Completing the network and migrating customers onto it will cost $50 billion and very likely more.  More capital employed in the network inevitably means higher prices for consumers and businesses.  It is plain that a more rational approach involving running fibre closer to end users but not all the way to every house or business in Australia could achieve largely similar performance for almost all users at perhaps a third of the cost.
• It is important never to forget that over 75% of the cost of a telecom network rollout is not in the electronics but in the civil works and that up to half of that cost is in the last mile – running fibre in this case into every house and apartment in Australia.

• The vast majority of residential users have no near-term use for the very high speeds of 100 mbps plus that a fibre to the premises (FTTP) network can deliver, and international experience tells us that even fewer will pay much of a premium for it.  So the increased cost of the network won’t be shouldered mainly by those who take advantage of its capabilities; they will be spread across all users.

• The NBN is profoundly anti-competitive, and hugely restricts economic freedom.  As it is rolled out, three existing networks – Telstra’s copper, the Optus HFC cable network, and Telstra’s HFC network – will no longer be permitted to carry voice or broadband, and the first two will be decommissioned.  This is economically wasteful and detrimental to competition.  But it no doubt will prove helpful to an over-capitalized government monopoly keen to recover its costs.

• The NBN will take years to rectify every area with substandard broadband.  Much of Australia has good communications infrastructure but not all; at least 2 million premises cannot access broadband or are constrained by limited speeds. ^[1]  Given the scale and logistical complexity of the NBN rollout, it will take a decade to reach all of them even if it rolls out on schedule.

• And the NBN puts the Government back in a conflicted position as the owner of a large player (that at some stage will likely be privatized) in a market it regulates.  It goes directly against the economic liberalism, the successful policy lessons, of the economic reform era that I spoke about earlier

Not as obvious but no less appalling in terms of poor quality public policy is the Labor Government’s desperate determination to minimize scrutiny of the NBN.

Labor refused to have the project evaluated by either Infrastructure Australia or the Productivity Commission; largely exempted it from FOI laws; has refused to release un-redacted versions of NBN Co corporate documents or forecasts; and has curtailed Parliamentary committee scrutiny.

We don’t even know if NBN Co has actually earned any revenue from selling communications services yet, after spending a billion dollars of taxpayers’ funds.

Nor do we know the timeframe for the NBN in areas where broadband is inadequate or unavailable, unless they are on its recently-released 12 month schedule, which only covers about 5 per cent of the country. 

Perhaps the most glaring recent example of excessive secrecy over NBN Co – an agency which every Australian taxpayer is supporting, and which will have no direct competitors as they have all been paid off or prohibited by the Government – was the November release of a Greenhill Caliburn review of the NBN Co 2011-2013 Corporate Plan.

Over its last 25 pages only 15 paragraphs were entirely free of redaction.  Now that is a whole new slant on open and transparent government.

One thing we do know, thanks to the last paragraph of a press release NBN surreptitiously slipped out on January 2, is that NBN co did not run its fibre optic cables to a single new premise in Australia between mid 2011 and the start of this year.  But don’t worry – apparently that’s all part of the plan.

The only rationale for an NBN in the first place was to ensure regions with substandard broadband where market forces had failed were properly served.  Yet this priority seems to have been abandoned on the way to NBN Co.

As NBN Co’s CEO Mr Michael Quigley explained to a Senate hearing on October 18, NBN Co is choosing sites for its early rollouts based on access to Telstra’s dark fibre and exchanges or the deals it has agreed with its contractors – not on how urgently households and communities need access to good quality broadband.

Mr Quigley stated, and I quote: “Overwhelmingly in these early stages the availability of Telstra infrastructure dictates where we can go in the roll out. That is one factor.  The second factor is what deals we have done with which construction contractors and how they can load, level and mobilise their workforces.” ^[2]

So six weeks ago, when NBN Co announced a three-year plan to run fibre past 485,000 premises, only a fraction of the areas chosen were broadband blackspots.  

It is simply unbelievable that after bungling its first tilt at an NBN and wasting its first term, the Government now cannot get its wholly-owned taxpayer-funded monopoly to prioritize the neediest areas.  Ed Husic, the ALP Member for Chifley in Western Sydney and a former president of the telecommunications union, was sufficiently frustrated about this to risk retribution from Senator Conroy and other factional bosses and speak out in October.

Allow me to quote him: “NBN Co is making a big deal out of rolling out broadband in new estates where people haven’t even moved in, while down the road people are tearing their hair out to get ADSL or decent wireless access.  I don’t begrudge new areas getting access – I’m happy for them.  But how do you explain NBN Co’s priorities to residents in Woodcroft and Doonside, who are struggling to get decent internet access?  It seems to me NBN Co is just reaching out for easy targets, hugging geographic areas within close proximity of exchanges.” ^[3]

One of my concerns is that as the rollout confirms the NBN to be logistically daunting and financially untenable, NBN Co and the Government will try to obscure this by focusing on the easiest areas, not those most in need.  That would be a travesty of social justice from a party that so loudly claims to believe in it.

There are still only a handful of Australians connected to the NBN – around 4000, according to the latest figures, or a thousand a year over the four years Senator Conroy has been in charge of delivering better broadband to Australians.

As I noted earlier, the policy approach taken by Labor is utterly at odds with best practice, and with the values and principles that for a quarter of a century informed successful policies in other areas, and under Australian governments from both sides of politics.

It is not too late to take stock and get the NBN right.

^[2] Michael Quigley, NBN Co (2011) Evidence to the Senate Environment & Communications Committee, Estimates hearing, 18 Oct 2011, pp.115-116:  http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s380.pdf

^[3] Ed Husic MHR (2011) “NBN Co Should Act Now for Woodcroft & Doonside Residents,’ Press Rel. 19 Oct  2011: http://www.edhusic.com/2011/10/19/nbn-co-should-act-now-for-woodcroft-and-doonside-residents/

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SCOTT

RADIO 4BC, BRISBANE

Subjects: NBN Co staff; National Broadband Network;
……………………………………………………………………………

JOHN SCOTT:

Many have been critical of the NBN rollout, including my next guest, and I think the chickens are probably coming home to roost. 27 people in PR. The revelations emerged in Senate Estimates. Also heard the government enterprise spent $152,000 in 2010-11 financial year on media monitoring services. Last year the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy paid more than $800,000 to Weber Shandwick for a six month contract to develop and implement a communication strategy. I don’t know why their PR people couldn’t do that. It’s also been revealed that 144 of the NBN staff have a corporate credit card, and on it goes; $108,000 to launch the NBN in South Australia; $90,000 to launch it in Townsville; $138,000 to launch it in the electorate of the key independent Tony Windsor. Now Malcolm Turnbull is the Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband and he joins me on the program this afternoon to discuss the NBN and what would appear to be the huge waste of money. Apparently to me Mr Turnbull, this seems to be a huge expense and a drain on the taxpayer.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

The NBN is massively overstaffed, indeed you had Simon Hackett, one of the internet entrepreneurs in Australia, a pioneer of the company Internode just saying today he said ‘In my heart of hearts I think there should only be about 50 people running the NBN at the administration level and everything else being subcontracted’ and he doesn’t know what they’re doing with the staff of 1,000. Now everyone in the industry is amazed both by the number of people that they’ve hired and of course what they’re paying them. They’re offering in some cases people double their existing salaries to move over to the NBN. This is the whole problem when the Government undertakes a project like this because they’re not subject to the disciplines of having to make a profit, which is what everyone else in the private sector has to deal with, money is not object.

JOHN SCOTT:

Now I understand out of the story today that I see in the paper, 27 PR people. Why do they need that many?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Indeed, for something that is apparently such a compelling proposition you’d think it wouldn’t need selling at all. That’s part of the problem too. This is a product that is manifestly obviously over-expensed. Yes, many Australians if not most Australians would appreciate and upgrade to their broadband services but the Government knows and people in the telecoms industry know that that upgrade can be achieved with a mix of technologies at a much lower cost. The expense of running fibre into everybody’s house is staggeringly high and that is why this project is already running behind time and over budget.

JOHN SCOTT:

And not to mention the amount of money that they’re spending on launches; over $100,000 on the launch in South Australia, $90,000 in Townsville, $83,000 in Victoria, $78,000 in another area. In terms of the overall numbers I guess not much but when the average taxpayer hears that sort of money and they know how tough it is for them to earn that sort of money I think they get a bit dark on it all.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well of course they do. And what is bizarre is you’ve run through the cost of all these launches, they are still only passing 18,000 homes and they’ve only got 2,500 customers connected to the fibre service. So they’re having these very expensive launches with the Prime Minister pressing great big buttons, cameras everywhere and lots of promotional material and they’re just connecting a handful of people at every launch.

JOHN SCOTT:

Is that because of the expense of joining it? If it’s so good and so fast why isn’t there a bigger take-up in your opinion?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

The problem with it is simply that the very high speeds that fibre-to-the-home can give you, 100 Mbps and indeed higher, there is not the applications or the uses for that speed that are available at the moment or let alone that people will pay for. And so this is something they should have foreseen, this is an experience around the world and indeed this is an experience in Australia. Take Telstra, they have a cable broadband service of course in all the markets where they’ve got cable, and in Melbourne they’ve had it running at 100 Mbps, which is the speed touted by the NBN, for some time. They’ve struggled to get people to take it up to pay the premium to get it because they say what can I do at 100 Mbps that I can’t do at 15 or 20? And this is part of the problem. Bandwidth and politicians and some journalists talk about bandwidth as though 100 must be twice and good and 50 and 50 must be five times and good as 10. It’s only of value to you in so far as you can do something with it that is useful to you. And these very high speeds in a residential application, residential environment, there simply aren’t the applications for them. Now Stephen Conroy if he was on the line with us know would say, oh that just shows you have no imagination think of the applications that you cannot even imagine yet that will be available in 10 or 20 years time. Well my answer to that is, well let’s see and why don’t we make provision for the needs that we have now at a foreseeable distance in the future and then if in 20 years there is demand for very high speeds, well no doubt we can use the technology of 20 years hence to deal with that rather than trying to anticipate everything today.

JOHN SCOTT:

Mr Turnbull, on the other hand if you win government, there’s been a fair bit of work done on this broadband, how are you going handle it? What would you propose?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

We won’t waste any of the investment made. Obviously we can’t recover money that’s been lost or misspent but what we’ll do is make the best use of the infrastructure that’s been built, we will prioritise the areas that have got poor broadband service, and so the broadband upgrades will be based on need, not on politics which is how Labor is dealing with it. And we will use a mix of technologies and if the most cost-effective way is to bring the fibre further out in to the field so that the cooper loop is short enough to enable very high speeds to be delivered over it and you don’t have to go to the expense of digging up everyone’s front garden and banging your way into apartment rises to get fibre up into every apartment block, if you can avoid all of that expense we’ll avoid that. But just take a very practical cost-effective approach to this and that will result in the savings of many many billions of dollars.

JOHN SCOTT:

Mr Turnbull thank you for taking time out to chat to us this afternoon.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Great to be with you.

ENDS

Today’s announcement that only 2300 households are now connected to NBN fibre (and another 1700 to its satellite service) despite more than a billion dollars already ploughed into this vastly expensive project yet again confirms Labor’s inability to manage money or execute policy.

The Rudd and Gillard Governments have been in office for four years.

In that time they have managed to improve broadband for at most 4000 Australian households, despite their flamboyant rhetoric and extravagant promises.

It says a lot about the NBN Co’s real feelings about this policy failure that they chose the New Years public holiday, January 2, to issue the press release boasting (or was it confessing) to this policy failure.

Today’s announcement would be comical except that the joke, the bitter jest, is on the Australian taxpayer and Internet user who is reminded once again of how the NBN Co is failing to deliver very fast broadband quickly and affordably.

A Holiday Reflection

Lucy and I do hope that you have a peaceful time over the holidays and spend more time with the people you love. When I was a younger and unduly workaholic lawyer (I know you are thinking that I am now just an older and unduly workaholic politician, but bear with me) a very wise friend said to me: “Nobody ever says on his death bed ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office’.” Good advice most of us should heed more often.

And what about love? We celebrated love in our family this past week with the engagement party for our son Alex and his fiancee Yvonne Wang. Parents pour all of their love into their children and when two families see the products of that love come together, it is a sublime and blessed experience.

And love holds us together in the dark times too. As the hijacked aeroplanes were hurtling to disaster on 11 September 2001 and the doomed passengers frantically called on their cell phones what did they say but “I love you”?

When the chips are down, love is indeed all you need.

From time to time when I refer to both Christmas and Chanukah in these seasonal greetings, I get a few complaints along the lines of “This is a Christian country, why are you talking about Chanukah?”

I was discussing this with a Rabbi recently and he said:

“I’m always amused when I’m asked, ‘So Rabbi, how will the Jewish community be celebrating Christmas this year?’ – often at the end of some seasonal interfaith TV or Radio segment.”

“My answer this year was, ‘Just like Mary and Joseph, we’ll be lighting our Chanukah candles and praying for stability and peace in Jerusalem!’”

It is a characteristically droll reminder that the roots of Christianity, and indeed of Islam, lie in Judaism. Which is why they are often called the Abrahamic faiths.

In my electorate of Wentworth there are many Christians, many Jews and quite a lot of people who either adhere to other religions or to none. Yet all of us do well to take an interest in the culture and religion of others.  We may find we have more in common than we imagine.

A friend from New York, an orthodox Jewish woman, came with us to the midnight mass one Christmas at St Canice’s Church in Kings Cross. She had never been in a Christian church before. About halfway through the service, she whispered to me: “This is really very Jewish, isn’t it?”

Imagine how much less grief there would be in the world if, like her, we looked at the religions of others with eyes wide open and — while not ignoring or glossing over our differences – nonetheless rejoiced in the history and the values that we have in common.

This year we had a Christmas Party at Easts Rugby Union Club for Liberal Party members in Wentworth and many community leaders from schools, clubs, local government and of course our local churches and synagogues.

Local businesses donated some raffle prizes, including a surfing lesson from Bondi’s famous Let’s Go Surfing and as a result we were able to raise $855 for the Wairoa School which teaches kids with intellectual and multiple other disabilities.

A photo gallery of the event is on my Facebook site.

A Jacket Goes By the Wayside

I recently conducted a very interesting online exercise to find out the true value of a leather jacket –  all in the name of charity.

The jacket in question has a history of its own. I received a few compliments and also some flak after wearing it two days after the 2010 Federal election on an episode of the ABC’s Q&A. The  Independents still hadn’t decided who would form Government and I was, as I said, courting the informal vote.

Tony Jones was insistent I wear the leather jacket on the last show of this year, but having lost quite a lot of weight (deliberately I hasten to add) it no longer fit. The solution was to buy a new jacket that did fit and auction the old one on eBay. I was delighted that it raised $1800.

The money will now go to the Wayside Chapel at Kings Cross, a wonderful mission to the poor and homeless whose motto is as moving as it is ironic: “We’re not much like a church, which might suit you if you’re not much like a Christian.” The work they do with some of the most disadvantaged in our society is so true to Jesus’ own mission to the poor.

However, it is a fact of life that the Wayside needs a lot more than $1800 to carry on its work. To give to the Wayside, whether it be your time or some cash, please visit its website here.

Survey on Problem Gambling: The Results

I recently hosted a survey on my website on problem gambling, which was completed by almost 7,500 respondents.  Almost 800 people, or more than 10 per cent of the total, were from Wentworth.  A detailed breakdown of the results can be found on my website here.

In Wentworth 73 per cent of respondents supported changing federal and state laws regulating poker machines.  There was slightly higher support for specific policy proposals – there was 63.9 per cent support for mandatory pre-commitment in Wentworth compared to 57.3 per cent nationally.  Around 71 per cent of Wentworth supported limiting spins to $1 compared to 66.7 per cent nationally.  Wentworth residents were also less likely to play poker machines regularly (7.4 per cent) than respondents overall (13.2 per cent).

In praise of dogs

Mellie, our little terrier, died on Sunday. She was nearly eleven and had been very sick for the last few months. Her heart was giving out and when we went for a walk we would carry her most of the way.

We thought she might leave us on Saturday, but I think in her funny, doggy way she knew that it was an important day – an engagement party for our son Alex and his fiancee Yvonne – a celebration of love. She  loved us all too much to die that night. So she hung on until Sunday.  Read the rest of an eulogy to Mellie here.

On a happier doggy note, recently I rescued a beautiful little dog, called YoYo, who had lost its owners and was about to walk under a taxi outside my office. We were delighted to return her to her humans — which was quite appropriate given that so many of our neighbours have returned our wandering dogs over the years. Read more about YoYo’s adventures here.

Recent Speeches and Writings

I recently gave a speech at Melbourne University’s Centre for Advanced Journalism on the demise of the business model for newspapers as more and more advertising moves online and the vital importance, in a democracy, of  maintaining quality journalism into the future.

In Melbourne I delivered AsiaLink’s annual Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop Lecture, where I discussed the rise of China, the visit of President Obama and  Australia’s engagement with the region.

I have also spoken on the poor performance of the NBN to date, and the warning signs that the project will be much more costly than originally thought.

Parliamentary speeches included reflections on the appalling massacres of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians at the hands of post-Ottoman Turkey and on the importance of sustaining our diverse multicultural society in Australia.

I also addressed Parliament on the challenges of the war in Afghanistan and spoke directly to our troops on the obligations their nation had to them.

Podcasts and Video

I was recently a guest on the last ever ‘National Interest’ program on the ABC’s Radio National.  We spoke about the future of the media and what it will mean for young journalists and also on the 730 Report discussing the Government’s bungling of the Australia Network tender and gay marriage.

Senator Arthur Sinodinos spoke with me about being Greek, sovereign wealth funds and immigration. Senator Sinodinos is, among other things, a former chief of staff to Prime Minister John Howard and has considerable experience in the business world — his maiden speech is online here and is well worth a read.

Video interviews include  Financial Times editor Lionel Barber discussing the success of his newspaper and how new business models are evolving in the digital age and  the Chair of Sydney Universitys China Studies Centre, Professor Hans Hendrischke about reorienting Australias exports to China from resources to services.

To complement the recent Problem Gambling Survey, I hosted videos on my site by Clubs Australia executive director Anthony Ball and Australian Christian Churches Gambling Taskforce chairman Tim Costello.

Update Your Details

If you think our records of your details are wrong, then click on ‘Update Your Details’ at the top of the page and you can correct our records. Also, If you have some friends who would like to receive the newsletter, please direct them to my website.

And if you wish to unsubscribe from this list, then you can do that too by clicking here (but you will be missed!).

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Turnbull

This is especially true for recently graduated HSC students who will now go out into the world to pursue further education or a career.

Rose Bay Secondary College is a state high school here in Wentworth with a diverse student body from South Head to Botany Bay and right into the inner West.

Today  I was thrilled to meet with some of the very talented students from Rose Bay Secondary College, which boasted 17 students with an ATAR score above 90.

Rose Bay Secondary College, its teachers, students and parents are very proud of their results this year – the School’s release with all the details is set out below.

As I said to the students, they were right to acknowledge the dedication of their parents and teachers in achieving their results. It is always a team effort! And what an exciting time to be leaving school! I told the young men and women that the world they were now joining as adults was more dynamic and exciting than it has ever been. The rate of technological and economic change is without precedent. The old order is changing rapidly and who better to shape the new one than the HSC graduates of 2011?

Outstanding HSC Results at Rose Bay Secondary College

Rose Bay Secondary College students have achieved outstanding results in this year’s Higher School Certificate.

Harrison Nobis, Premier’s Honours List and second place in the state in Software Design and Development (98%) and an ATAR of 99.4

• Campbell Burns achieved an ATAR of 99.3 and 14th place in Ancient History (98%)
• 29 students named in the Distinguished Achievers list in 48 courses
• Martha Zwartz’s Visual Arts Body of Work chosen for exhibition in Art Express
• ATARS of 95 or more; Harrison Nobis (99.4), Campbell Burns (99.3), Frank Salmon (97.1), Sooji Hur (96.0), Nhat Hong Vu (95.4)
• Sarah-Naomi Taberner selected to perform dance in Encore
• 17 known students achieved ATARs of 90 or more

Harrison Nobis, of Rose Bay, excelled in his HSC, being named on the Premier’s Honours List for achieving the highest band in all 6 courses. He was the second place getter in NSW in Software Design and Development. Interestingly, Harrison was the sole student who studied the course at the College. The College was able to provide Harrison with the opportunity to excel in Software as his teacher ran parallel classes within the Information Processes and Technology course.

Software Design and Development teacher, George Stamell said, “Harrison always proved himself to be an exceptionally bright student, whose interests were very much oriented towards computing and programming. I am extremely proud of Harry and his achievements.”

Harry was a very self-motivated student whose determination to succeed saw him adhere to a strict study time table, as well as utilising the College’s Homework Centre and accessing its tutors each Thursday.

Campbell Burns, of Paddington, also performed brilliantly with an ATAR of 99.3. In Ancient History, Campbell ranked 14^th in the State from a candidature of more than 10,000 students. Campbell has easily qualified for his preferred course in Public Relations.

Like Harry, Campbell was very self-motivated. He set high goals for himself and took on an intensive regime of study and preparation for all tasks throughout the year. Mr Paul Mansell, Year 12 Adviser said, “Campbell was one of the most talented history student I have ever taught in 17 years of teaching.”

The 29 students named on the Board of Studies Distinguished Achievers list were in  the top band for a total of 48 courses between them.

“We are delighted with the performance of our students this year” Relieving Principal Diane Fetherston said. “Harrison and Campbell’s outstanding ATAR result, together with the 15 other students who achieved ATARS over 90, has capped off a very pleasing academic year at Rose Bay.”

The College has also enjoyed fine achievements in the Creative and Performing Arts. Martha Zwartz has achieved the honour of selection in Art Express. Her work will be exhibited at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre in Gymea and also at the Moree Plains Gallery.

Martha’s Body of Work, created for her HSC assessment, has been selected from a limited number of pieces by both HSC markers and the curators of The Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Martha’s artwork, entitled “Secret Selves”, examines how social networking sites have affected the projection of identity. Martha’s collection of work included three diaries which depicted the inner workings and secrets of three different characters, and was supported by a stop motion animated film. Martha produced and performed the original music to accompany the film and starred in it, depicting each of the three characters in the diaries.

Martha has been preselected to study a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the prestigious Sydney College of the Arts.

Visual Arts and Photography teacher, Maria Alonzo said: “Martha is a very creative and hardworking student and we are very proud of her achievements. She was a pleasure to teach and we wish her well in her next creative endeavour.”

Art Express will be held at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre from February 11 and at the Moree Plains Gallery from October 12, 2012.

For further information regarding student performances in the HSC, please contact Diane Fetherston on 9301 0300.

We thought she might leave us on Saturday, but I think in her funny, doggy way she knew that it was an important day – an engagement party for our son Alex and his fiancée Yvonne - a celebration of love. She  loved us all too much to die that night. So she hung on until Sunday.

Mellie and her sister JoJo joined our family early in 2001. They were Maltese/Sydney Silky crosses, Mellie looked very Maltese and JoJo very much the Sydney silky.

Mellie explores the bush.  A full gallery is available online here.

She was called Imelda because, as a tiny puppy, she liked to climb into shoes but it quickly became Mellie.

When JoJo and Mellie came to live with us we had an old beloved red cattle dog, Rusty, who was ten and had started to become pretty sleepy – a nasty experience with a tick hadn’t helped. The arrival of the little dogs brightened him up and for next five or six years he was almost as lively as them.

Dogs are pack animals and they regard their humans as part of their pack. In our family Mellie was always most concerned that the pack stay together. If we were going for a walk and one of us was a little slow in getting out the door, Mellie would rush back in and round you up. If one of us fell behind on a walk –anything more than five or six metres – she would stop until you caught up or rush back to get you.  There was not the slightest biological evidence for this, but I often wondered whether she had been a border collie in a previous life.

Mellie was also very talkative. Lots of dogs bark, others are fairly taciturn (like JoJo) but Mellie conversed. When we came home at night she was waiting at the front door and then proceeded to give us what sounded like a lecture – a series of squeaks and wimpers and low growls that went on for a few minutes. We just assumed it was something like “How can you be out so late? Do you know what time it is? It has been very boring here? You could have left Inspector Rex on for me…” and so on.

I have never been entirely convinced that she saw much of a distinction between humans and dogs. Until a few years ago we used to let them sleep on our bed and when Lucy was away Mellie would always sleep on Lucy’s pillow. It was rather a relief when we decided that our bed was to be henceforth a dog free zone. So they slept underneath it instead.

Mellie was a very good political campaigner. She was always nice to children and especially to other dogs. JoJo on the  other hand still has a lot to learn about politics – she invariably tries to pick fights with huge dogs (which often retreat out of shock I think) and from time to time when a little child, encouraged by its fond mother, bends down to pat her, JoJo often rewards the infant with a snarl and bared teeth.  But at least she doesn’t bite.

Of course this child friendly demeanour of Mellie was helped by her being little and fluffy and looking a bit like a teddy bear. She used to walk like a teddy bear too, barely bending her knees.

Mellie loved swimming and whether it was a dam or trough in the country or a beach in Sydney she always rushed into the water for a swim. Her sister was quite the opposite. I used to ask Lucy why they were so different. “They’re sisters.” She said. As thought it was perfectly obvious. Which it wasn’t to an only child like me.

Mellie was something of a medical miracle to have lived this long and her survival is a great tribute to the many Vets who patched her up over the years. We used to call her the Maltese Patient.

And she was also an occasional escapist. Sometimes she would wander off on little adventures of her own, dropping into one of the clubs not far from us, entertaining the drinkers until the bar closed and they called for us to come and pick her up.

Most of the time she just went for a walk around the neighbourhood and generally one of the local kids would bring her back.

So a big thank you to the vets who kept her alive and the many neighbours who returned her to us when she went for a wander.

Despite her generally peaceful and affectionate nature, she was a stalwart in the eternal war between dogs and cats. This was a mistake and she lost an eye in an encounter with one of the local tabbies. A few years ago she developed cancer in her left hind leg which was amputated. For nearly three years she managed quite well on three legs and whenever she got tired one  of us would pick her up and tuck her under our arm like a white furry valise.

Dogs know a lot more than they let on, Mellie could always sense if we were a bit down or worried and she would make sure to hang around. She could tell when she was needed and her calm was always reassuring. Are dogs wise? Or do we just imagine it, transferring to them virtues and qualities we would wish for ourselves?

Yesterday we went for a walk with JoJo, carrying Mellie all the way. But even at the beach at Rose Bay Mellie didn’t want to go in. That was a first. And when we came  home she sat with us on the couch as we read books, staying very close all the time.

And then she slipped out the dog door. When she hadn’t come back after a little while I looked out for her. Often when I did that I would see her snuffling around in the garden, looking under bushes, rustling around in the undergrowth having little doggy adventures of her own. But this time, the last time, I could see her lying there, in one of her favourite places, quite still. Mellie was dead.

Together, Lucy, Alex, Daisy and I laid her to rest under a tree. Her exploring days are over, but she is part of the garden she loved forever.

Why do we love dogs so much? Is it because they are loyal and loving? Is it because they love us for what we are, without judgement?  How can it be that in a world of so much human tragedy, so much momentous and terrible change,  we shed tears over the death of a little white dog?

Is it because, as Byron said, our dogs have all the virtues of man, without his vices?

Dear little Mellie, you were such a brave, fond and loyal friend. All your pack will miss you and never be quite the same without you.

Malcolm

The event always reminds me how truly blessed we are in the Eastern Suburbs to have a community that’s open, diverse and big-hearted. 

This year, Brenda Miley from Bondi’s famous Let’s Go Surfing kindly donated a surfing lesson as we raised money for Wairoa School.  The generosity of the community was again on display as we raised $855 to hand over to Wairoa’s Principal, Ian Gallan.

A photo gallery of the event is on my Facebook site.  And to those who couldn’t make it this year, best wishes for the holiday season!

While it must be noted that this survey is not statistically representative of the Australian public, like a Newspoll or Nielsen Poll, it does match the Australian public in this one important respect: the respondents to the survey aren’t all wowsers.

Around 13.2 per cent of the total respondents said they play poker machines regularly although the definition of ‘regularly’ varies.  Only 4.3 per cent of total respondents said they play at least as often as once a week – which is a fair match of the general public.  The Productivity Commission notes that around 600,000 Australians or four per cent of the adult population play at least weekly[1].  Of those respondents who said the play poker machines regularly, 75.5 per cent were male.  Around 0.3 per cent of respondents said they play poker machines every day.

 Click to see full size images

In terms of how much money is lost, a very small percentage of poker machine players (1.6 per cent) lose more than $500 a week, while the vast majority (64.3 per cent) said they lose less than $20 a week.  A significant number of them said they lose more money on poker machines than they can afford – 1.6 per cent of total respondents or 12.7 per cent of those who say they play poker machines regularly.

This does not mean these respondents can be classed as problem gamblers.  To get an adequate definition of a problem gambler would take an entire survey in itself[2].  But there is a correlation with statistics cited by the Productivity Commission:

“While survey results vary, around 15 per cent of these regular players (95 000) are ‘problem gamblers’. And their share of total spending on machines is estimated to range around 40 per cent.”[3]

In terms of age and sex, the sample was older and more male than the general population.  The median age was 52, compared to the Australian median age of 36.9[4], while 66.4 per cent of respondents were male, compared to 49.7 per cent of the population in general. Although questions of age and sex were optional, the vast majority of people answered in good faith.  And if nothing else, it was a great way of excluding some respondents – such as alert.but.not.alarmed.of.st.kilda@gmail.com, who has lived to the enviable age of 190.

Importantly, 70.6 per cent of people said they are not satisfied with Federal and State Governments’ regulation of poker machines and 66.1 per cent of people said they support changing the laws on how poker machines can be used in pubs and clubs. Women were slightly more likely to favour changing federal laws than the general response sample, with 68.9 per cent of woman supporting changes. 

However, when responses are broken down by people who regularly play poker machines, the ratio of people who said they favoured the Federal Government changing regulation of machines was virtually reversed: only 35.2 per cent of regular poker machine players want Federal law changed. 

Results: Policy Positions

Mandatory Pre Commitment

Support for policy changes ranges from a very lukewarm 43.8 per cent (voluntary pre-commitment) to an overwhelming 66.7 per cent ($1 bet limits).  Below are the breakdowns for support for the various policy positions along with comments submitted on how people feel about them.

Some of the strongest opposition to mandatory pre-commitment came from people who described themselves as regular poker machine players.  While just under 35 per cent of the general population either disagree or strongly disagree with mandatory pre-commitment, almost 67 per cent of regular poker machine players either disagree or strongly disagree with the policy.

  “As someone who has occasionally placed a bet, in hindsight I often wished such technology was in place after loosing more than I could afford.”

-          William Stoltz, 19, Glen Iris

“It may not solve the problem, but for many it will limit it. It may also allow the problem to be seen rather than hidden within families.”

-          Doug Mullett, 61, Werribee 

“Let’s regulate effectively in a way that will (eventually) apply to all pokie players – there may not be another opportunity for decades.  And let’s take back some power from wealthy greedy lobby groups.”

-          Geoffrey Bradshaw, 59, Paddington

 “Education and counselling may help- but problem gamblers are often not aware that they have a problem. Pre commitment may be part of a solution.”

-          Frances Moore, 71, Bangara

“Mandatory pre-commitment is only one tool to minimise the harm created by problem gambling. Like smoking, problem gambling has a ‘passive’ effect (on families, children etc.). This means society has a right and a responsibility to do all that is possible to reduce the harm.  Pubs and clubs are not casinos and their business models should not rely on them being that. Even if some pubs and clubs become unviable (which, given the nature of the proposal, I don’t believe), I can’t imagine that Australians want to artificially prop up these businesses at the expensive of innocent victims.”

-          Chris Johnson, 44, Lilyfield

 “Problem gambler would probably make a pre-committment of say $1000 so law is non effective.”

-          Patricia Rogers, 79, Wattle Hill

“The technology will impose an inconvenience on people, inhibiting their right to entertain themselves as they see fit. The law cannot be justified on liberal principles. Rather, it is a patronising intervention.”

-          Tony Casey, 41, Sancrox

“The policy does not deal with the problem, and creates a new problem of economic loss to the sector that hangs off such venues, which are largely community focused.  I live in city where one of the big beneficaries of pokies is the Labor Party via its Labor Club and pokies.  I find the underlying moralism of the crusade worrying and verging on fanatical. Despite all of this effort I don’t expect much change in problem gambling at all.”

-          Martin Gordon, 53, Flynn

“An expensive ineffectual bureaucratic intrusion into private lives. The research quoted above may be accurate in so far as it maps the problem, but is not persuasive as justifying legislative interference, especially by the Commonwealth.”

-          Geoffrey Luck, 80, Killara

“Education is the key to any addictions.  Those who have a predisposition to an addictive personality need help to overcome their issues – not have Society change to suit a narrow band of people.”

-          Helen Barnett, 62, Varsity Lakes

“How people choose to spend their money and live their lives (for example, pokies) should be of no concern of the government. People must be free to do what as they wish!

-          Will Duncan, 17, Albert Park

“I am a social gambler and do not wish to be forced to have a licence for a casual punt every now and then. There are self exclusion options already available. Is this not taking the Governments control a little to far? how much do you wish to invade the ‘average joe’s’ daily life? If I wish to put, then I will. If not pokies then ill find another way.”

-          Jack Wiley, 22, Crows Nest

Voluntary Pre Commitment

If people know they have a problem they should be helped as much as possible. above this anyone that signs up for it should be offered advice/psychological help to see if there is anything else wrong and teach methods to help them.

-          Ben Bartlett, 27, Surry Hills

Voluntary pre-commitment should be coupled with strong education on why and how it is helpful, as well as making the rules clear on what the boundaries and criteria are for voluntary vs mandatory.

-          Stuart Glass, 40, Bradfield

Hopefully, problem gamblers will have some insight into their own problem and they should be encouraged to take some responsibilty for their own problems. Counselling should reinforce this.

-         Charles Beelaerts, 61, Double Bay

The advantage of voluntary commitment is that the person involved is likely to be aware they have a problem, and are looking for ways to help limit their behaviours, unlike some addicts who lack the insight, and will turn to other more easily accessible sources of addiction behaviour.

-          Michael Kerrigan, 52, Meningie

It seems much more research & publicity to the community is needed before we can be reasonably be sure what will help those afflicted by problem gambling.  To set loss limits would seem of some help, but review yearly and change of tactics as needed seems very necessary.

-          Alex Wood, 84, Higgins

Voluntary precommitment presumes that the gambler is aware of the risks of gambling. It does nothing to change behaviours in desperate or already addicted players.

-          Dermot Daley, 60, Carnegie

From experience with employees, I do not believe that those with a serious problem will subscribe to voluntary pre commitment.

-          Graeme Wheeler, 74, Albury

My mother was 92 years old when she died earlier this year, when she was 91 she still loved what she called her “flutter on the pokies” she couldn’t see well enough to sign or read a pre-commitment statement, but she loved to sit in front of a machine and play the game and watch the lights. Labour’s proposal would have taken one of her few joys away from her.

-          Charles Ryman, 65, Helensvale

I think the voluntary pre-commitment misses most of the serious social costs of genunie problem gamblers rather than occassional overspends of social users

-          David Owens, 44, Burnie

There are so many major issues that should be taken up by governments. Future planning, financial stability and positioning Australia for the challenges that lie ahead should take priority. The world is moving forward and while this nation focusses on minor issues we run the real risk of being left behind. Gambling is a problem for some people and they should be assisted but really is that the greatest challenge we face, I think not.

-          Greg Miles, 57, Barden Ridge

 Limiting Spins to $1

Unlike mandatory pre-commitment, where a clear majority of poker machine players are opposed to the policy, regular players are more likely to support limiting spins to support limiting spins to $1.  Only a very slim majority of regular players – 50.1 per cent – are opposed or strongly opposed to limiting spins while 39.9 per cent of regular players either support or strongly support limiting spins to $1.

Rather than mandatory pre-commitment, simply make the maximum bet a nominal amount.(It takes a lot longer to blow your fortnightly social security or wages if you can only bet 50c or $1 at a time.)

-          Derek Robinson, 38, Millthorpe

I also support the $1 changes which have been suggested and any other changes that reform poker machine use.

-          Kay Rook, 50, Randwick

There are far too many poker machines in clubs and after watching “Insight” I believe that only having $1 bets would help cut down problem gambling.

-          Pat Zinn, 81, Bondi Junction

I’m inclined to the view that rather than the complexity of mandatory precommitment, better to use the european (?) model of $1 limits – ban the high-intensity machines and save the legislation and paperwork of precommitment.

-          Michael Asten, 60, Hawthorn

Reducing the maximum bet to $1 won’t change much – addicts will still lose the lot. Get rid of incentive to keep using the machine.

-          Michael Harrison, 69, Parkdale

Poor people and addicts are propping up sleazy clubs, good cheap meals at clubs could be subsidised by $1 machine idea, outlaw the high roller pokies that are almost unique to Australia and cause 95% of the problem

-          Caroline Graham, 73, Douglas Park

This is tricky. We need to protect “problem gamblers” from themselves whilst allowing the rest of us to play the pokie when we want to.  I don’t know if $1 max bet will do the job because I usually play on 1c machines with a max bet of about 20c.

-          Lex Marshall, Jellat Jellat

More Counselling

Increasing counselling and treatment for problem gamblers is the only policy proposal where the view of regular poker machine players almost identically matched the general response sample.  In both cases there were resounding majorities for more counselling (76.8 per cent of all respondents support or strongly support it compared to 74.6 per cent of regular players).

Promotion of Live Odds

Geographical Analysis

Given the relatively strong interest in the survey from my own electorate, the sample of the respondents was dominated by New South Wales, although that may also be explained by the fact pokies are apparently a bigger issue than in other States.

Below is a breakdown of 26 electorates to give an indication of where respondents came from and how their answers varied.  My own electorate of Wentworth is  accounts for 10.6 per cent of total respondents.  However, the views of Wentworth are not markedly different from the whole sample.  If you exclude all Wentworth-ites from the survey sample, support for changing Federal laws on poker machines only falls from 66.1 per cent to 65.3 per cent.

Not every respondent nominated an electorate as it was not a required field – only 5570 respondents did, or roughly three-quarters of the total.  As you can see, there were more responses from the inner city electorates compared to outer-metro, regional and remote electorates.

[2] The most commonly used measure is the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, which can be found in Appendix D of the Productivity Commission’s 2010 report.

[3] Productivity Commission, (2010), “Inquiry Report into Gambling”, p.2

[4] ABS, (2010), “Population by Age and Sex”, available online here.

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS SMITH

RADIO 2GB SYDNEY

Subjects: National Broadband Network; Conroy speech at National Press Club

……………………………………………………………………………

 CHRIS SMITH:

The Opposition’s Malcolm Turnbull copped it as well and so did the Opposition’s much more affordable broadband plan.  He launched into a tirade, Stephen Conroy, and it ended up in not much, in terms of evidence or figures.  But certainly the Opposition doesn’t know how to supply broadband into the future, is basically the summary.  I thought I would catch up with Malcolm Turnbull to talk to him about those events yesterday.  Good morning Mr Turnbull.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good morning Chris how are you?

CHRIS SMITH:

Well good.  What did you firstly think about his slip of the tongue? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I think it’s probably very much in character but you’re right.  Look I think most – perhaps not most but many – Australians, myself included, use the ‘f-word’ much too often.   And it’s something — I think Conroy’s slip, which of course is completely inappropriate for the communications minister.  Bear in mind, this is a guy who wants to filter the internet to keep us from nasty things on the internet and is always bagging the media, the communications industry.  So he can’t even control himself when he’s on television in the middle of the day.  But I think it’s a reminder that we should all be a little bit more creative and use that classic all-purpose Anglo-Saxon adjective less often. That’s a good New Year’s resolution for all of us.

But apart from that, Chris really, what amazes me about Stephen Conroy is this:  He gets up there and he seeks to defend his NBN which is the world’s most expensive, most overcapitalised, most anti-competitive, broadband project.  Now that is a fact. That is undisputable. There is nowhere in the world a government doing anything approaching this. Now, he defends it and he criticises our approach but he then says, ‘I’m not going to have a cost-benefit analysis. I’m not prepared to accept what the Productivity Commission says’.

He produces no evidence for his assertions about the relative merits of his approach versus our approach, and yet he has a whole Department. Now if you look at my speeches, when I make an assertion about technology there’s a footnote and a reference so people can see where I’m drawing my information from. With his stuff, it’s just one assertion after another. With all of the resources available to him, he should be able to stack up his assertions but he doesn’t, and I think he doesn’t because he knows they’re baseless.

CHRIS SMITH:

Yes, can I just talk about that, the Productivity Commission is not calling for a cost-benefit analysis and I think for that reason Stephen Conroy should be thanking his lucky stars. They actually want to look at the competitiveness of the concept. That’s all they’re looking at, correct me if I’m wrong?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

 Well, you’re right and wrong. The inquiry was limited to the issue of competitive neutrality. When the government goes into business, there is a legal principle that it should endeavour to be competitively neutral, because if you think about it, given that the government’s got so many advantages being the regulator and the legislator, and obviously a big customer, and given it can borrow more cheaply than anywhere else — if governments go into business they can flatten the private sector, because they’ve got so many advantages. You would end up with no private sector eventually if you were to take that approach. Not even the Labor Party agrees with that although they’ve turned the dial back to the 1950s and 60s in a large measure with the NBN. And so the Productivity Commission was critical of — and raised concerns about the way in which the NBN was operating on a, if you like, a playing field, in terms of competition with other broadband-fibre providers and that it had enormous advantages which was disadvantaging them. That’s where it asked the Government to do a proper analysis and make the elements for this subsidy transparent, and if the subsidy is justified, to state that justification and cost it. However, in terms of the overall project Chris, the Productivity Commission has said on several occasions, including in testimony to the NBN Committee in the Parliament, that it believes a cost-benefit analysis is appropriate.

CHRIS SMITH:

But they know they’re not going to get one?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

This is the most bizarre thing about this bizarre government and this bizarre project. Never forget this; in 2007, Kevin Rudd came into Government and he said there will be no major infrastructure project funded by the Federal Government without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Everyone said, yeah that makes a lot of sense, it’s about time we did that. Just about everybody gave him a tick for that. He then set up a body called Infrastructure Australia to oversee that process. And he said well people may have some arguments about the design of it and the nature of it and we criticised aspects of it, but in principle the business community at least very much welcomed it. But here is the biggest infrastructure project in our history and there is no cost-benefit analysis. Everybody has been screaming for one, not just the opposition, the media, the Business Council of Australia, all the economists, and the reason he won’t do it is because he knows it doesn’t stack up.

CHRIS SMITH:

Yeah I know. We talk frequently about the lie that Julia Gillard told us about a carbon tax under the government she leads. But that one is a classic one when you look at what Kevin Rudd said would happen to any policy under the government he led. Now he doesn’t lead the Government, but at the same time it is the same government and it makes you wonder. One quick thing before we go. Your plan, a seventeen billion dollar plan, it is fibre-to-the-node, it’s a different concept which of course Kevin Rudd wanted in the beginning. Is it up to the speed for the future?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well Chris absolutely. And the simple point is this; we would use a mix of technologies, use whatever technologies are most cost-effective in a particular location. So in some areas, particularly green field sites, you’d continue doing fibre-to-the-home. But in built up areas where you can avoid all of the cost, digging up peoples’ front gardens, all of the cost of banging your way through the rises and through walls of home units and so forth, if you can avoid those costs and still deliver very very high speeds, well in excess of people either need or are prepared to pay for then of course that is the approach you take. So the point that is missing here, and that is the reality check, you’ve got to ask yourself, look at other developed countries and they are taking the approach that we are recommending. And you can go right through Europe, sure there’s plenty of fibre-to-the-home there, well not plenty there’s some, but by and large what telcos are doing is acting in an economically rational fashion. Now why is economic rationality and common sense dispended in Australia? It’s dispended because the Government does not care about the value it gets for taxpayers dollars 

CHRIS SMITH:

But it’s f-ing fantastic at the same time. Thank you very much for you time Malcolm Turnbull, the Opposition Communications Spokesperson.

ENDS

It may have been the first time a Communications Minister has used such crude language on television during children’s viewing hours, but it is not the first time this Minister has delivered unsourced and unjustified assertions about technology.

The lack of hard evidence in Senator Conroy’s address speaks volumes.  He has a whole Department to provide him with the facts, but his speech is reference free.  My speeches on broadband provide references for  technological claims.[1]

In his speech the Minister dismisses the technologies being used to deliver next-generation broadband in every other major economy in the world.  These technologies are satisfactory for broadband users, telecommunications companies and governments in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, South Korea, Japan and China.  But they are not good enough for Senator Conroy.

The lack of intellectual rigour or consistency in Senator Conroy’s approach to policy is underlined by the way in which he dismisses any alternative to his Fibre to the Home (FTTH) network as being utterly inadequate – even though telecommunications companies around the world are building and using upgraded broadband networks with a mix of technologies.

It is common ground that there will continue to be more demand for broadband services, driven in large part by the exponential growth in wireless broadband enabled smart phones. So there is no dispute that there will need to be more investment in the backbone of the network.

The policy dispute over the NBN from a technology point of view is simply whether, in order to upgrade Australians’ broadband services, it is necessary to overbuild and decommission the entire existing fixed line customer access networks (both copper and HFC) and replace them with a vastly expensive new FTTH network.

Senator Conroy dismisses Fibre to the Node (FTTN) as a viable broadband technology despite having promoted it to the Australian people as the correct and affordable solution until April 2009, and despite it being widely deployed in almost every other comparable developed economy.

The proposition that it won’t work in Australia is an assertion made not only without evidence, but in defiance of the evidence.

The speeds that are available on FTTN do indeed depend on the length of the copper loop between the end of the fibre and the customer’s premises.   Costs differ from place to place but as a general rule, FTTH costs between 3 and 4 times as much as FTTN. [2]

This was confirmed when I met with BT on 5 October.  The UK’s largest carrier advised  that the cost of FTTH was around 3 times more than FTTN and that their FTTN/VDSL rollout would deliver 80 mbps download and 20 mbps upload in 2012.

Further as to speeds, in contrast to the unsourced, reference-free assertions made by Stephen Conroy this is what I said at the National Press Club on August 3 this year.

 “While all-fibre connections are becoming more common especially in greenfields sites, copper is far from dead as NBN’s admirers sometimes claim – high speeds up 40 to 50  megabits per second and shortly 80 mbps together with continued economic value are being mined from existing infrastructure in many places.”

The references for these claims are here:

Rob Gallagher “Questioning the Unquestionable: Is FTTH really the future of broadband?”http://www.telecoms.com/30002/questioning-the-unquestionable-is-fibre-to-the-home-really-the-future-of-broadband/  See BT’s announcement regarding 80 mbps over FTTC http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=E6EF2C39-EDDB-47E3-9346-82E065D3686B (Note have substituted a more recent announcement for the one footnoted in August speech as the link cited then appears corrupted now)

By contrast there are numerous unsourced and unsubstantiated  claims throughout  Senator Conroy’s speech. For example he dismisses HFC as a broadband technology, even though  in every other market where there are HFC networks they are being used to deliver high speed broadband.  Indeed in Australia Telstra is upgrading its HFC network to run at 100 megabits per second..

And how can Senator Conroy   claim the New Zealand experience (where 75 per cent of the country will be connected to fibre at a cost to the government of $NZ600 million) as something that confirms his  reckless $50 billion investment?  The New Zealand experience is an indictment of the wastefulness of the Gillard Government’s NBN as I described in my August 3 speech to the Press Club.[3]

Senator Conroy’s complaint that the Coalition’s complaint would use a mix of technologies misses the whole point.  Every network is a mix of technologies – even the NBN will use separate FTTH, fixed wireless and satellite networks to reach households. A rational approach to network upgrade is to use the most cost-effective technologies in each location, and that is what is being done in almost every other comparable market.

Having misrepresented most of the technologies being used by other countries to deliver broadband, Senator Conroy concludes the only conceivable option is apparently Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises National Broadband Network – and hang the cost. 

But his spurious claims and lapse into crude swearing  failed to answer any single one of the real questions about the NBN:

• NBN Co’s Corporate Plan said it would pass 58,000 Australian premises with fibre by June 2011 (not counting 4,000 at trial sites in Tasmania).  Why did it only pass 14,256 (not including 3,987 at trial sites in Tasmania)?
• NBN Co’s Corporate Plan said it would have 35,000 active customers by June 2011.  Why did it only have 622?
• NBN Co’s Corporate Plan claimed it would earn revenues of $3 million in 2010-11 and $42 million 2011-12.  Why did it earn no revenues from selling services in 2010-11, and what will be its revenues from selling services in 2011-12?
• NBN Co’s Corporate Plan forecast it would pay $15 billion to Telstra between 2010 and 2021.  In reality NBN Co’s payments to Telstra and Optus are likely to be at least $21 billion in those years unless the NBN fails to roll out on schedule.  Is there therefore a $6 billion black hole in the NBN Co’s forecasts and when does Senator Conroy plan to be honest with the Australian people about it?
• NBN Co’s Corporate Plan in December 2010 claimed ‘peak capital’ required from taxpayers was $41 billion.  What is the ‘peak capital’ now required?
• The Government’s financial advisors, Greenhill Caliburn, recommended the Government release financial data for the NBN every quarter.  Why did Senator Conroy decide to hide this information from taxpayers?
• NBN Co claimed to shareholder ministers in October it had ‘passed’ 75,000 greenfield homes with fibre.  In November NBN Co’s website claimed 8,000 greenfield estates under contract (neither passed or connected but scheduled for work in coming months).  Why has NBN Co made false claims to its shareholder ministers?
• NBN Co’s contracts with Telstra and Optus are still secret – and the information they contain, such as the terms and conditions of future payments and rollout obligations, is a critical input to any alternative policy.  On what date does Senator Conroy plan to release them to the public?
• The Productivity Commission has stated the NBN Co will not earn a commercial rate of return on its capital, and even NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley has admitted the project is not commercial.  When will the Labor Government include the cost of the NBN on its Budget measure of outlays and what will this do to Labor’s projected surpluses for the next three financial years?

So far, Australian taxpayers have poured $1.7 billion into NBN.  In return, there is little to show for it other than a new government-funded monopolist throwing its weight around and imposing prices on retail service providers.  After four years in power, Labor has improved broadband for approximately 2,000 Australian households.  There are 2 million more that have been left waiting since November 2007.

When will Senator Conroy stop the personal abuse, engage with the facts, observe that his policy is out of step with that of every other advanced country in the world, and admit Labor’s NBN is unaffordable and an utter failure?

And if his approach to the NBN is such an economic and technological triumph why does he continue to reject the growing demands for a rigorous and independent cost-benefit analysis?

[2] See Analysys Mason “FTTx roll-out and capex in developed countries: forecasts 2011-2016” by Rupert Wood, April 2011 estimates FTTH costs 3.4 times to roll out and connect than FTTN

[3] http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/speeches/address-to-the-national-press-club-australia/

He was born in 1919 and so had a long life which was filled with great accomplishment and many honours.

Sir Zelman was one of our greatest legal scholars with an expertise in many fields – evidence, private international law, public international law and of course constitutional law. But while a specialist in many fields, he was a gifted legal intellect with a keen appreciation of the principles of the common law and his writings and speeches ranged widely across the legal universe.

Many scholars of Sir Zelman’s rank find teaching a little beneath them, or at least a little dull. But throughout his life Sir Zelman was an enthusiastic teacher and mentor of young people. Many Australians, including a number of my good friends, were inspired and guided by his friendship and quiet wisdom.

He held many University positions at Oxford including being the Provost of Oriel College, after he retired as Governor General. in the years before he became Governor Genreal he was  Vice Chancellor of the University of New England and later Vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland. His range of interests and responsibilities was very wide – he was even Chairman of the Fairfax Group for a period.

Sir Zelman will always be best remembered, and most appreciated, for his time as Governor General. Appointed by Malcolm Fraser in 1977 he succeeded Sir John Kerr whose sacking of Gough Whitlam in 1975 had in the eyes of many Australians (rightly or wrongly) politicised the office of Governor General.

He recognised the great honour and responsibility of the office of Governor General but it was an office for which he was especially well prepared having written the biography of another great Jewish Australian, Sir Isaac Isaacs, who had also served as Governor General more than forty years earlier. In an other parallel both Sir Zelman and Sir Isaac  died at the age of 92.

Sir Zelman and his wife Anna brought an elegant eloquence to the office of Governor General. Calm and thoughtful he brought what he later rightly described as a touch of healing.

He remained an active participant in Australian public life, and public issues, until in relatively recently the cruel onset of Parkinson’s disease made that very difficult.

 I greatly appreciated the help and guidance he offered me during the republic debate. He made an especially important intervention in the republic debate in 1999 where he supported a Yes vote in the constitutional referendum saying in the second Hawke Lecture in June 1999

“I therefore support the Constitutional Convention’s proposal that the President be elected by two-thirds of a joint sitting of the two Houses of federal Parliament. This is the proposal which will be put to the people in November this year, and I believe it can be safely recommended to our fellow citizens as giving us an Australian head of state without radical change to our parliamentary system.”

We mourn the passing of this great patriarch and our condolences go to his widow, Lady Cowen, his four children and many grandchildren and great grandchildren.

The PC said NBN Co was using access to capital provided by taxpayers to tilt the playing field against private competitors, and warned projected returns on the project were so low they are in breach of ‘competitive neutrality’.

Competitive neutrality is the principle that Government-owned businesses should not be allowed to use advantages such as access to capital raised at the Commonwealth bond rate to unfairly compete with private sector rivals.

The NBN’s business practices were referred to Australian Government Competitive Neutrality Complaints Office (AGCNCO), an autonomous unit within the PC, after a switch in NBN Co policy on rolling out the NBN at ‘greenfields’ (new) housing developments effectively knocked a number of private firms which previously built such infrastructure out of the market.

The Government has claimed its huge investment in the NBN and sub-commercial returns (expected to match the bond rate at best) are justified by community service obligations placed on the NBN and other intangible returns expected to flow from the network.

But Productivity Commission concluded any community service obligation costs carried by the NBN Co should be transparent and quantified so that their true impact on the corporate plan and commercial returns can be assessed. The Commission separately found Labor’s funding of the NBN is “not subject to the debt neutrality provisions” required under competitive neutrality policy.

Plainly the NBN Co is not going to deliver a commercial return, as required under competitive neutrality. The network builder conceded as much when it released its Corporate Plan showing returns would be less than its weighted cost of capital.

In the words of the Commission: “NBN Co’s own estimates of risk also suggest it views itself as operating in at least a medium risk environment for the foreseeable future.”

No one should have ever been in any doubt about this. In fact, depending on the audience he is talking to, NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley boasts that the project is not commercial – neglecting to mention the hard-working and entrepreneurial small businesses his ill-conceived project has killed. In August he told the Daily Telegraph:

“You’re not in it (private enterprise) for the public good … The job you have in private enterprise is to maximise the return to shareholders. You have to obey the law of the land, but it’s not your job to be interested in the public good.”

“This isn’t about generating large commercial returns. This is about how do you build an underlying platform, not just for the next five years, but for the next 30 or 40 or 50 years.”

Good governance is something learnt over successive generations in Australia; the more policy-makers learned, the more they erected a legal scaffolding to protect the economic principles that have ensured our continuing prosperity. And yet, the NBN Co has secured extraordinary concessions from competition law, freedom-of-information law and Government oversight.

Now the Productivity Commission has revealed it breaches competitive neutrality policy as well. It is little wonder Senator Conroy was so eager not to have the Commission conduct a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

Speech to the Advanced Centre of Journalism,

Melbourne University 7 December 2011

by Malcolm Turnbull

Thirty three years ago, when I joined the news room of the London Sunday Times, its editor, Harry Evans, gave me “Editing and Design” a five volume manual of English typography and layout.

 He inscribed them “To Malcolm, with a warm welcome to the grubby ranks of the hot-metal men. Harry”

 Re-reading those volumes today, it is remarkable how much is as relevant today as it was in the 1970s. Good design, clear expression, accurate and engaging reporting – the objectives are the same, only the context has changed.

And that perhaps should be the theme of my remarks tonight. We lament the death of many newspapers and the loss of thousands of journalists’ jobs.

But just as the craft of the journalist is as enduring and important regardless of the medium by which it is practised – print, radio, television and now the whole converging digital domain – so too is the importance of journalism, honest and ethical, fearless and independent, responsible and accurate journalism; for without it we will struggle to remain a free society, struggle indeed to remain a democracy.

I had come to London in 1978 with a bit of a reputation as a journalist and debater  to study at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.

During my time at Sydney University I had managed to fit in a busy life as a reporter while completing my Law degree and I thought I might do the same in England.

I had first met Harry Evans a year or so before in the course of a debate at the Cambridge Union in which he was one of the paper speakers. A visiting Australian debater, I spoke lower down the batting order. After my speech a note was passed to me. It had the letterhead of the Sunday Times and on it Harry Evans had written “Good speech. Come and see me in the Grays Inn Road tomorrow.”

Harry Evans was a hero to every young journalist of my generation. At the Sunday Times he had championed investigative journalism, exposed the horrors of thalidomide. He personified the ideals of independent journalism.

The next day Harry offered me a job, and when I said I had to go back to Australia to finish my law degree said “Don’t do that. Think of what awaits you. Law will certainly make you more money than journalism – but where does it end? Chief Justice? Or much worse.” He shivered slightly “You could end up a politician.”

I did go back to Australia and I did finish my law degree and continued working as a reporter and stayed in touch with Harry Evans and by the time I returned to London, no doubt because I was young and cheap, I had an offer to work at the Sunday Times – for my hero – and also at the Observer, edited by Donald Trelford.

At that time the Thomsons, owner of the Sunday Times and Times newspapers, were in trench warfare with the printing unions as they tried to reform the extraordinarily inefficient workpractices which were threatening the financial viability of what should have been a very, very profitable newspaper group.

My head told me I should go to The Observer – there was no pending stoppage there – but my heart allowed me to be persuaded by Harry that everything would be sorted out by next Thursday week (or thereabouts) and so I started at the Greys Inn Road.

It was a weird period – the journalists did a deal with management and stayed on the payroll. The printing unions did not and were locked out. For over a year we wrote stories and prepared papers which were ready to go out when the breakthrough came, as it nearly did every week or so we were told..

Finally, after nearly year a  settlement was reached and the papers were back on the street in November 1979 but two years later Murdoch bought Times Newspapers and then proceeded to break the power of print unions through his 1986 move to Wapping and more rational work practices.

The rest of Fleet Street followed and survived to prosper.

As another Australian footnote to that story, while still employed by the Sunday Times and frustrated by the intractable dispute, Kerry Packer and I met with Harry Evans to propose a strategy that was not very different from Wapping.

Kerry would buy the newspapers from the Thomsons on the basis he would then print them in the Grays Inn Road with non-union labor and distribute them by independent truck drivers as in Australia – as opposed to using the union controlled railways. We had worked out strategies to get paper into the country in the face of black ban and had sought legal advice on how to deal with pickets attempting to physically block access in and out of the plant.

The Thomsons were not ready to deal at that time, but it is interesting to speculate on the alternative history if they had been.

Having got off to a good start as a journalist of course my career has been in decline ever since – lawyer, banker, entrepreneur,colourful Sydney business identity and now, as Harry Evans had feared, a politician. What’s next? Too terrible to contemplate.

But along the way I have had a lot to do with the newspaper and media business generally. Working for Kerry Packer including selling and buying back the Nine Network, restructuring and later helping take over John Fairfax, helping restructure the Ten Network from being the third rating and least profitable network to being the third rating and most profitable network. And of course with Sean Howard and my old Bulletin editor Trevor Kennedy founding OzEmail the first big Internet company in Australia.

And naturally as a politician I have an especially keen interest in the media – after all as Lucy has often observed in Canberra the politicians are the foxes and the press gallery the hounds.

There is a media inquiry going on at the moment which was, as we know, set up by the Government with the aim of taking a swipe at News Corporation in the wake of the shocking crimes and misconduct at the News of the World.

The Leveson Inquiry which is the UK’s judicial inquiry into the whole affair is exposing a cynical corruption in the British press that will surprise and shock even those like myself who were brought up on the old ditty:

“Thank God one cannot bribe nor twist

The Honest British Journalist

For seeing what he does unbribed

There is no need to do so.”

But mercifully there does not appear to be any evidence of phone hacking or similar crimes in Australia. I would not be complacent about that – but on the face of it our media seem relatively responsible by comparison.

Which rather begs the question of whether the inquiry, headed by Ray Finkelstein QC, needs to be happening at all. I imagine it will do little harm if not much good.

But while it seems it is spending a lot of time discussing whether the Press Council has sufficient teeth or should be buttressed with Government regulation of the kind that applies to broadcast media – and those who listen to the Sydney shock jocks can attest what a salutary and therapeutic influence the ACMA has on their commitment to accuracy and balance.

It also seems to be considering the iniquities of the concentration of metropolitan daily newspaper ownership in the hands of News Corporation. Whatever the merits of that dispensation, it has been in place since 1986 and the slice of the overall news media pie occupied by daily newspapers is shrinking.

However the big issue, the whale in the bay, which we should be analysing and discussing is the future, the viability of journalism itself. Rather than spending too much time on how many newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch, we should be asking whether there will be any newspapers left for him,or anyone else, to own at all.

What sort of democracy, what sort of society will we have if there is no Age, no Herald Sun, no Sydney Morning Herald and no Australian – can the great newspapers which have formed the foundation of newsgathering, reporting and analysis be replaced by a sea of blogs and tweets?

Around the developed world newspaper revenues and profits have plunged. Hundreds have been closed, many more are struggling to survive.

There are so many examples. But consider two of the greatest newspaper groups in the world – Fairfax Group here in Australia and the New York Times Company in the United States. As of last Friday their shares had each lost about 85% of their value from their height about ten years ago.[1]

I don’t need to labour the statistics with you but in a nutshell the picture is like this.

Newspaper circulations have declined  in most developed countries. In Australia, with a stronger economy, they have declined by 3% between 2007-2009, in New Zealand the decline is 13%, in the UK 21% and in the USA 30%. And that was of course before the closure of the News of the World.

However the circulation story is rather misleading – most newspapers have more readers now than they have ever had. Their print circulation and readership has declined, markedly in some cases, but their online readership has exploded. The Sydney Morning Herald claims one million readers on the weekend,  Neilsen Online records it as having about 3 million monthly unique users as of October.

The problem therefore is not lack of readers, but lack of revenue.

Since 2002 total spending on advertising has grown by 60%. Spending on television has grown 40.5%, spending on newspapers has grown by 19% and spending online has grown a massive 13.5 times.[2]

Another measure is that between 2000 and 2010 the shares of total advertising spend in Australia (excluding search) changed dramatically:  newspapers down from 45% to 31% , magazines down from 8% to 6%, television down from 34% to 33% , Radio down from 9% to 8%, Outdoor steady at 4% and Online rose from close to zero to 18%. And if the figures included search as well, the online share would be even greater.[3]

In the United States newspaper ad revenues dropped 47% from 2005 to 2009 and over the same period cut their editorial spending by $1.6 billion a year or 25%. Staff at daily newspapers have shrunk by more than 25% since 2006, television network news staffs and newsmagazine reporting staffs have halved since the late 80s.[4] Is Australia so different, or is this a case of “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Traditionally newspapers have divided their advertising into classifieds and display and in Australia classifieds were dominated by the big metropolitan broadsheets in particular The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald which only a decade ago provided nearly 2/3 of their revenues.[5]

Newspaper classifieds have not quite vanished. One newspaper chief executive told me last week they hoped to keep about a quarter of the old classified revenue by diverting it into, albeit low yielding, display advertising. So far this was largely real estate but as the online vehicles for real estate are becoming more and more compelling, it is questionable how long newspapers can hang onto that category.

The problem of course is not simply that the online environment provides another competitive platform for the delivery of news, entertainment, information and advertising, but that online is a far more efficient and cost effective means of delivering any advertising which could be described as demand fulfilment (ie enabling you to find something you  are looking for such as a flat, a car, a job) as opposed to demand creation (ie promoting brands, products in a manner designed to attract and engage the attention of the reader).

Analytically one could say that in advertising for demand fulfilment online search simply kills any printed classifieds section or directory publication.

And so in that regard it doesn’t really matter whether newspapers’ readerships are up or down – the Internet simply offers a better mousetrap for what had been a very, very large part of newspapers’ advertising base – so large and so secure that they used to be called “the rivers of gold”.

Rupert Murdoch once observed that the Internet will destroy more profitable businesses than it will create and he was certainly right at least so far as his empire is concerned.

Closer to home, the value created for the shareholders of Seek or REA Group, for example, appears to be (especially on an earnings base) much less than the value lost to the digital world by the shareholders of Fairfax.

Newspapers created a platform for advertisers by producing sufficiently interesting content to attract a large mass of readers. That content is very costly to produce. Television and radio, in somewhat different ways, do the same thing.

So it is galling that the two current giants of the online world – Google and Facebook – create very little content of their own. Google is above all a search engine and an aggregator of other people’s content and a provider of its own applications and services. It produces very little content, and certainly no journalism, of its own. Facebook which has 800 million subscribers who use it at least once a month produces no content of its own; its users do that. Ken Doctor of Newsonomics has estimated that 63% of online digitial advertising revenue in the US goes to these aggregators and search engines – including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft.

In the US, Pew’s 2011 State of the News Media finds that  online advertising revenue has now surpassed that of printed newspapers. Search alone, dominated by Google and Yahoo, attracts 48% of all online advertising.

Does the algorithm trump journalism?

I have not been able to find any authoritative numbers for the Australian scene, but the chief executive of one of the leading online platforms told me recently that Google so dominated the Australian market its revenues were five times that of its nearest competitors including Yahoo7, Fairfax or NineMSN.

Neilsen Online’s latest unique audience numbers for Australian sites in October 2011 are dominated by Google with 14 million, Facebook and NineMSN with 11 million, at number 13 ABC Online with 3.5 million and at 20, the SMH with 3 million. In the top 20 Australian sites by that measure only the ABC and SMH have a substantial investment, and Yahoo7 and NineMSN a somewhat lesser, investment in journalism

It does all seem very unfair.

As the Pew survey concludes:

“..most in the news industry have come to accept a daunting reality: Advertising in online spaces will probably never generate the sums – or at least the profits – that advertising generated in traditional platforms like printed newspapers. To survive financially, the consensus on the business side of news operations is that news sites not only need to make their advertising smarter, but they also need to find some way to charge for content and to invent new revenue streams other than display advertising and subscriptions.”

In the United States from 2005 to 2009 newspapers’ sites traffic doubled to 3 billion page views. Online advertising revenue for those newspapers grew by $716 million, but print advertising lost $22.6 billion. Hence the bitter observation “print dollars are being replaced by digital dimes.”[6]

Newspapers are busily experimenting with different models. Traditionally, and I suspect in hindsight very mistakenly, online news was free. And once given free access readers felt it was their entitlement.

There are at least two big questions here. Will enough readers pay enough money to view online news to offset the loss of advertising revenues from the printed medium?  What is the best paywall model that will hit the sweetspot of subscription revenue and at the same time ensure there are enough readers to maintain advertising yields.

The jury is out on both, but I will venture some early observations about what seems to me to be working and what is not.

Financial newspapers, pre-eminently the FT and the Wall Street Journal, have an enormous advantage. The business community is used to paying for financial news and information and it is no surprise both papers are doing well in terms of their online only subscriptions.

In terms of general newspapers the most successful so far appears to be the New York Times which as at October had 360,000 digital subscribers. The New York Times offers a “freemium” model whereby readers can access up to (currently) 20 articles a month for free after which they have to subscribe. The FT has a similar approach.

The advantage of the freemium model is that the paper’s articles can be linked in search engines and above all social media like twitter and facebook. On the other hand the Times of London approach which is an impermeable pay wall prevents that kind of linking. The consequence is that the newspaper becomes effectively invisible in the online world other than to its handful of paid subscribers.

The freemium and other models will continue to be tweaked, but it seems that it is the better approach – at least so far.

The arrival of the tablet and smart phones offer what will become for most people their principal device for viewing digital content. Apps offer the ability to provide a very compelling and magazine-like, reading experience – the Economist app for example is eerily close to the experience of reading the magazine.

However while the tablets offer the opportunity to provide a better digital format, they also potentially provide even more competition with the printed newspaper because they enable us to read online news in settings which had been less amenable to a computer and thus had remained the preserve of print – the train, the bus, on the couch or in bed.

So what does this brave new world mean for journalism?

Not that the thousands enrolled in journalism and media courses seem to have noticed, but self evidently fewer newspaper journalists. Whichever way you look at it, newsrooms are shrinking if not closing.

The Canberra Press Gallery for example has gone from 283 journalists in 1990 to 190 today.  A decade ago the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald had an editorial staff of 500 – now it is less than 300. The Age’s newsroom has shrunk by ¼ over the last five years.

 I will spare you more grim statistics in the same vein, but the short and obvious point is that as newspapers’ profits dwindle, if not disappear, so does their capacity to employ journalists.

Now it is easy to be sentimental about the decline of newspapers, but tonight I want to reflect on the way these changes to the news business are impacting on both the quality of journalism and of our democracy.

The first point to make is that the decline in newspapers goes right to the very heart of the news industry. As those of us who have worked in the electronic media know very well, the newspapers traditionally have provided the news foundation which the rest of the media have built on and, more often than not, simply re-run.

The reason for that of course was that newspapers had both the space to cover the widest range of news and the staff to do it.

Because most broadcast news has much less capacity, a smaller news hole you could say, its journalistic resources have also been smaller and more targeted than newspapers. The emerging exception to this is the ABC of which I will speak a little later.

The consequence of this decline in journalism is that too many important matters of public interest are either not covered at all or covered superficially. At the local level, there is  less attention paid to local councils and even state parliaments.

There hasn’t been a thorough analysis of this decline in Australia, but in the United States there is a growing alarm at the loss of more than 13,000 newspaper newsroom jobs in the last four years and the dramatic declines in political reporters, at every level, as well as declines in reporters with special beats such as health, education and environment.[7]

Now this raises real risks for democracy. Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition does its best with very limited resources, but more often than not the most effective means of holding a government to account is through a vigorous and independent media. During the last, appalling, term of the NSW Labor Government the most rigorous and consistent criticism came from the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph. This is not to take anything away from Barry O’Farrell’s opposition, but any critique offered by an Opposition is always viewed with skepticism by the public – “they would say that wouldn’t they.”

The most effective check and balance on government has been an independent press which maintains its credibility by ensuring that its criticism is balanced and based on fact – based indeed on solid journalistic work. And that is the risk of excessive partisanship or bias – the less objective, the more shrill a paper or a broadcaster or a journalist appears, the less credibility they have.

Another consequence of this decline in newspapers is that journalists have less time to do the hard, time consuming slog of researching and investigating stories in the way they did before. Those newspapers like The Age here in Melbourne that remain committed to investigative journalism know it comes at a high cost and that its greatest threat is not a writ for libel but the company accountant.

 Consider the shrinking Canberra Press Gallery – the vast bulk of its coverage of federal politics is now about personalities and the game of politics.

Readers seeking a better understanding of how the carbon tax or the mining tax, for example, will operate will often struggle to find much assistance in the output of the gallery – with some very honourable exceptions -  compared to the millions of words written about Kevin Rudd vs Julia Gillard let alone Tony Abbott’s budgie smugglers.

There is a reason for this. You can knock out a piece on the personalities of politics in a few minutes – a couple of phone calls to the usual anonymous sources for some party room gossip and away you go. But in the midst of all the blasts and counterblasts from vested interests pro and con about the mining tax where is there the rigorous analysis that cuts through the inevitably exaggerated claims of both sides. I am sure someone will point me to a few examples, but they would have been hard to find.

The consequence of all of this has been that what we used to call the 24 hour news cycle has become instead an opinion cycle.

Certainly declining revenues have contributed to this. Research and reporting, especially investigative reporting is expensive. Opinion on the other hand is cheap and given most people do not go into journalism (any more than they go into politics) because they are shy and retiring, having a column of your own in which to pontificate carries far more status and weight than actually reporting the news or explaining the latest legislation or policy debate.

 But there is another and potentially more troubling factor that is leading to this substitution for opinion for news.

Over the last few decades we have seen a proliferation of mediums through which news and information can be viewed. In my youth as a reporter we were limited to the newspapers (more then than now), a few television stations, a few more radio stations and a handful of magazines.

In terms of reaching mass audiences  for news the most influential media were the big papers and the television stations. Newsmagazines (apologies to my old alma mater The Bulletin) were never a big deal in Australia.

And because their business depended on them reaching a mass audience, they had to strive to achieve some kind of breadth and balance that could accommodate a wide range of readers with a wide range of views and interests. As Arthur Miller said , a good newspaper is a “nation talking to itself”[8].

However, while newspapers and magazines have declined the various electronic media have exploded; first radio stations, then cable television and now the Internet with an almost infinite range of platforms catering for every interest or opinion.

And the consequence has been that very often the most successful media business model is no longer to be the nation talking to itself with all of the diversity that implies, but rather a narrow section of the nation talking to itself.

The proliferation of outlets that digital technology has enabled has itself contributed to the changing nature of what we regard as ‘news’ and the way in which many citizens perceive politics.  As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat Senator for New York for 24 years said “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

In the era when much of society shared the common ground of the news bulletins on three or four great broadcast networks, this was true.  But today, if we think about the US, liberals can get the ‘facts’ (as well as the opinions) they want from MSNBC, conservatives can do likewise from Fox News, and the voters in the middle can tune in to CNN.  Not only will each obtain the opinions they want to hear – the offering of which has turned out to be a vastly profitable commercial opportunity – but also, increasingly the ‘facts’ that support their preconceptions.

Little wonder that Stephen Colbert, the host of the humorous conservative TV show on Comedy Central, has satirised ‘truthiness’ a fact that someone claims to know intuitively without regard to evidence, logic or the objective facts.[9]
We are not yet to the point in Australia where those on different sides of any given issue have completely different understandings of the objective reality underling their stances – but sometimes, on some issues, we are close – climate change springs to mind.

While I would not seek to make any new law to diminish or restrain the right of any person or publisher to express the most trenchant partisan opinions we must ask ourselves this question:  is there a risk that in this proliferation of opinion, this electronic 21^st century version of a snowstorm of 18^th century pamphleteers, we lose sight of the reasonable point of view in the middle. Do we run the risk that every opinion we see or hear is an angry and indignant one?

Now we are a long way from the United States in this regard, but I think it is a fair observation to say that their politics has become more negative and more bitterly partisan and that this has been reflected in and amplified by a more partisan media – whether it is the cable news channels or the ferocity of much of the blogosphere.

Many people have argued that the Internet offers the chance for citizens journalism – whether it is small news websites, personal blogs or twitterstreams. There is no doubt that wireless broadband and smart phones have revolutionised newsgathering.  Right now several billion people around the world have the ability to take a picture, a short movie and upload to the Internet where, conceivably it could be seen by millions within minutes.

If the Assad regime finally falls, the pictures of police brutality posted from Syrians’ smart phones will have had no small part in it.

And at a rather less heroic level, I am still amazed that I can, as I did on Monday night, knock out a blog on my iPad, post it on my website, tweet it and in those few minutes draw it to the attention of more than 77,000 people.

Yet if the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and The Australian and even The New York Times were to close or shrink to shadows – do we really imagine the great task of reporting, explaining, investigating the powerful and holding them to account can be taken over by twitter and facebook?

I doubt it.

Our society, our democracy, needs journalism and we need journalists. We need a free, well resourced and independent media as much as we need our politicians and parliaments. We do not need, as Jefferson surmised,  to consider whether we would rather have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government. We need both.

So what is to be done?

We need to recognise that the whole edifice of our fifth estate, of our journalism, has been built on a foundation of newspaper journalism and that that foundation is crumbling.

The management of the media companies will deny that the end is nigh. I hope they are right.

But we should not assume, Micawber like, that something – the iPad perhaps – will turn up to set things right.

Life after newspapers is not just an issue for reporters.

We are very fortunate indeed in Australia to have the ABC and of course the SBS. The ABC’s importance in Australian news and journalism grows apace – partly because the rest of the industry which is funded by diminishing advertising dollars is in decline and partly because it has expanded its journalistic output  and its reach with a 24 hour news channel, online news coverage which is more than just transcripts and summaries and of course through podcasts and iview. The news output of the ABC has never been bigger nor its reach wider.

It is far from perfect, but it does have an obligation to be balanced which it takes seriously.  I think it helps to have the ABC run by someone who comes from the news rather than the entertainment side of the business.

There has been a lot of discussion about not for profit online news publications like ProPublica in the United States.

The idea of philanthropic tax-advantaged support for quality media is superficially enticing.  In a way it is not so distant from the world we’ve know until now, where the ownership of media assets has often been associated with a particular type of individual – usually described by the shorthand term ‘media mogul’ – whose motivations were not simply commercial.

 ProPublica in the US, an online media outlet which has won plaudits and prizes for the quality of its investigative journalism, and which has been supported in financial terms by a long list of respected charitable trusts.

ProPublica was founded and most significantly backed by the Sandler family and the critics of ProPublica have latched onto the way they made their money – by selling a home mortgage business to Wachovia Bank (which subsequently went bust) shortly before the sub-prime mortgage implosion and the GFC which followed.

The Pew Research Center looked at not-for-profits as  business model and found that 44 per cent were clearly of an ideological nature^[10].  It concluded: “The 46 national and state-level news sites examined—a group that included seven new commercial sites with similar missions—offered a wide range of styles and approaches, but roughly half, the study found, produced news coverage that was clearly ideological in nature.^[11] 

“Sites that offered a mixed or balanced political perspective, on the other hand, tended to have multiple funders, more revenue streams, more transparency and more content with a deeper bench of reporters.”

In a sense there is nothing new in this. Why should we be surprised sponsors of not-for-profit online (or indeed hardcopy) newspapers are motivated by political agendas – there is a long list of press barons, past and present, who have owned and often subsidised newspapers for no reason other than the power and influence it brought them.

Overall I think there is more to welcome than to fear in philanthropic sponsors of newspapers – some will be biased to left and right, but not all of them will be and if they wish to attract a wider range of sponsors to share the expenses, they will be wary of extremism.

This will come into focus in Australia early next year, when Graham Wood – the successful entrepreneur behind Wotif and hefty donor to the Greens – launches his Global Mail (with former ABC reporter Monica Attard at the helm and other respected journalists on the payroll). 

 Mr Wood shouldn’t be surprised if his vehicle is treated with scepticism at least at the outset – but the Packers, Murdochs and Fairfaxes have all used their papers and media to run political agendas and ultimately the calibre and balance of any newspaper is judged by its readers who have more interest in the journalism and the owner’s commitment to that journalism, no matter how controversial,  than to his or her political interests.

Many governments have provided subsidies to newspapers to keep them afloat.[12] That’s not an entirely new phenomenon. The establishment of the US Postal Service in 1775  was in large part to enable newspapers to be more widely and inexpensively distributed across the country.

 I don’t think there would be any enthusiasm either in newsrooms or in Canberra for government subsidies to go to newspapers.

There is however the precedent of the ABC, but its funding is entirely from Government, locked in over a long term and buttressed by a strong culture of independence.

However there would be some merit in considering whether some level of support could be given, in terms of deductible gift recipient status, for not for profit newspapers, online or hard copy or both, which committed to a code of conduct analogous perhaps to that subscribed to by the ABC.

I simply pose this as something to consider – at this stage the Coalition is looking for ways to cut expenditure and new tax breaks are not in the offiing, but in the interests of looking beyond the next few weeks or even the next election, we should also be looking hard at how we ensure the survival of journalism.

Now I imagine many of you here are students of journalism and no doubt worry that you are stepping into an industry which is about to expire.

Well its not that bad. You are not signing up as cabin boy on the Titanic’s last voyage.

But your journey of journalism will be, potentially, the most exciting of all. At times like this, when the establishment  is shaken to its foundations and the old order changeth yielding place to new[13], the young and the enterprising have the chance to take what is enduring – objectivity, accuracy, fearless independence – and build new platforms from which to launch their journalism.

Embrace the brave new world – we are counting on you.

[2] Figures provided by Goldman Sachs Research

[3] ibid

[4] “The Information Needs of Communities” Steven Waldman June 2011 www.fcc.gov/infoneedsreport

[5] See Fairfax submission dated 16 November 2011 to the Ray Finkelstein Media Inquiry  p. 15

[6] Waldman op cit p.17

[7] Waldman op cit p. 17

[8] As quoted in Alterman, E., (2008), “Out of Print: The Death and Life of the American Newspaper”, in The New Yorker, March 31.

[9] See the discussion of truthiness here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

^[10] As measured on a scale of 0-100, with a score of above 50 indicating a source that was ideological.  Points were accumulated by a content analysis, with single- or no-source stories, singular viewpoint editorials and number of voices in a story measured.

^[11] Pew Research Center, (2010a), “Non-Profit News: Assessing a New Landscape in Journalism”

[12] See “Life in the Clickstream – the future of Journalism” December 2010 pp54-55

[13] Apologies to Lord Alfred Tennyson

Topics: Failed Australia Network tender; Gay Marriage

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

LEIGH SALES:

We invited the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy for an interview on the program tonight. He declined. Instead I was joined a short time ago by the Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Melbourne.

Malcolm Turnbull, thankyou very much for being with us. What do you make the of the Government’s argument that the tender process for the Australia Network that was so compromised by leaks that there was no option but to abandon it?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, it’s an absurd argument. I mean, the logical thing for them to do, having made such a hash of this pretty straightforward exercise – remember, Leigh, that governments at every level – local, state and federal, businesses of every size run tenders every day. Only the Gillard Government is incapable of running a tender, apparently. But having made a hash of the first two attempts to run the tender, all they needed to do was have an open, honest and transparent process and they could have had an outcome.

LEIGH SALES:

Do you agree or disagree that as a major public diplomacy platform that the Australia Network is best run by the public broadcaster?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, look, there’s – that is – there’s a very powerful case for saying that, and that was in fact the view that John Howard took in 2006 when there wasn’t a tender for the five-year contract that was given to the ABC. But, look, as a matter of principle, I’m all in favour of competition and contestability. I didn’t object to Kevin Rudd’s decision to have the tender. I mean, clearly he wanted to award the contract to Sky; I think that’s pretty clear, and he became frustrated when he felt it wasn’t going his way. That no doubt had something to do with the leaks – who knows?

Look, it’s been a shambles, Leigh. The personal antagonism between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard has really poisoned the whole process. And it speaks to the dysfunctionality and the confusion at the very heart of the Government.

LEIGH SALES:

You say that it’s about Julia Gillard versus Kevin Rudd, but how much of it is actually about Cabinet versus News Limited?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I don’t know. I mean, News Limited – everyone talks about News Limited and Sky, but they actually have a pretty small shareholding in Sky. Their shareholding is only a function of BSkyB having a piece of Sky, and when you trace it all down, it’s not a very big stake.

LEIGH SALES:

If I can turn to the subject of gay marriage: when you were the Opposition Leader in November 2009 you said in a radio interview that, “I believe marriage is a permanent union between a man and woman. I don’t disrespect unions between – or relationships, partnerships – whatever you want to call it – between people of the same sex, but it’s not a marriage. A marriage in my view and I think the view of most Australians is a permanent union between a man and a woman.” Is that still your view?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I haven’t changed that view, but I’ve said since then that I’ve been looking at this issue anew with an open mind and consulting with my constituents and taking a measure of the way in which community attitudes are changing. Because this is very much a question of the community sentiment. I mean, one’s religious views really should be put to one side because, you know, there are many people, millions of people who are married under the Australian Marriage Act who could not be married in a Catholic church, for example. So, the issue is what unions should the state recognise? It’s a big issue. I think it’s an important one. It’s not the most important issue confronting Australia at the moment, but it is important, and I think all members of Parliament should approach it with an open mind and have regard to what is clearly a changing sentiment – and not just in Australia, Leigh. I mean, New York State has voted to allow gay marriages. The Conservative leader – Prime Minister in the United Kingdom David Cameron is supporting, and clearly it will be passed, legislation to provide for gay marriages in the UK. So there are big changes afoot and that’s something that as an MP I’ve gotta have regard to.

LEIGH SALES:

You said at the start of that answer that you hadn’t changed your view, but that you were looking at the issue with an open mind. Does that mean that you are, I guess, considering changing your view – open to changing your mind on the issue?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, I think you should always be open to changing your mind in light of different – you know, changed arguments and different circumstances. Again, a lot of people see this as something that affects a religious point of view and I profoundly disagree with that. This is a – there is a big difference between relationships that the state approves and relationships that a church or any other form of religion would approve of. And there are many marriages – not a majority, but it’d be a lot of marriages, many marriages, that would not be approved by one church or another, or one religion or another. So, you know, we’ve – there is a distinction between church and state here.

LEIGH SALES:

Do you believe that a conscience vote should reflect a member of Parliament’s individual conviction and what he or she believes to be the right thing to do, or should it reflect the view of the majority of people in their electorate?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Ah, well, that’s Edmund Burke’s speech to the electors of Bristol. That’s going back several hundred years. Look, I think an MP has got to have regard to the views of their constituency, plainly. But they also have to be true to themselves. When you elect an MP, a person to be your representative, you’re not electing somebody just to be your cipher, just to be the agent of the view of 50 per cent plus one of the electorate. You’re electing a man or a woman to bring all of their values and their integrity and their intellect as your representative in Parliament. But nonetheless, you clearly should have regard to the views of your electorate and that should be a very, very persuasive matter in your thinking. But I would never expect an MP who had a very deep – deeply-held conscientious view on a matter to go against that simply because 50 per cent plus one of his constituents took a different opinion.

LEIGH SALES:

Generally at the moment the polls are showing that while Australians would like to see the back of Julia Gillard, they’re not particularly enthused about replacing her with Tony Abbott. What do you think that the Coalition needs to do in 2012 to make yourselves more electable?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, our job as an Opposition is the same in 2012 as it was in 2011 as it will be in 2013, unless there’s been an election which we’ve won in the interim. And that is to provide a constructive critique of the Government to be an effective counterweight, to hold the Government to account and to lay out our own alternative vision for Australia, which is a Liberal vision, a Liberal-National vision, so that people can see that we hold the Government to account, but we also present the program of an alternative government.

LEIGH SALES:

And have you been doing enough of that third point?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, I think the answer to that is yes. I know people have got different views on that, but speaking for my own portfolio, I’ve been very critical of the NBN, the – it’s anti-competitive nature, the massive expense, unnecessary expense that’s entailed, but I’ve also laid out at great length on occasions the alternative approach that we would take.

LEIGH SALES:

That may be the case, but the public’s view obviously of course is mostly focused on your leader, and is Tony Abbott doing that sufficiently?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well of course he is, Leigh, and, you know, if you want to get someone to criticise Tony Abbott, you’ve invited the wrong person onto the show. But he’s doing a great job as Opposition Leader and I’m not going to sit here and criticise him.

LEIGH SALES:

Not too negative, as people say?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, you’re free to express that view. I’ve been Opposition Leader. Every opposition leader is criticised for being too negative. There’s never been an opposition leader ever that has been – that – of whom people have not said, “You’re too negative.” So, that goes with the job.

LEIGH SALES:

Malcolm Turnbull, thankyou very much for speaking to us tonight.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Thanks, Leigh.

ENDS

I want to provide an update on the Labor Government’s National Broadband Network and the Coalition’s alternative approach to communications, which of course is a critical enabler of the digital economy and business input.

At the outset I’ll stress the Coalition is committed to ensuring all Australians have access to fast, reliable and affordable broadband, regardless of where they live or work. But we don’t support Labor’s NBN, and we don’t believe it can achieve that objective. By now I suspect our key criticisms are familiar:

• The NBN is expensive. Completing the network and moving customers onto it will cost $50 billion and very likely more. More capital inevitably means higher prices for consumers and businesses. Most users have no near-term use for the high speeds a fibre to the premises (FTTP) network can deliver, and international experience tells us the few who do will not pay much of a premium. So the increased cost of the network won’t be shouldered mainly by those who take advantage of its capabilities; they will be spread across all users.

• The NBN is anti-competitive. As it is rolled out, three existing networks – Telstra’s copper, the Optus HFC cable network, and Telstra’s HFC network – will no longer be permitted to carry voice or broadband, and the first two will be decommissioned. This is economically wasteful and harmful to competition. But it no doubt will prove helpful to an over-capitalized government monopoly keen to recover its costs.

• The NBN will take years to rectify every area with substandard broadband. Much of Australia has good communications infrastructure but not all; at least 2 million premises cannot access broadband or are constrained by limited speeds. Given the scale and logistical complexity of the NBN rollout, it will take a decade to reach all of them even if it rolls out on schedule.

• And the NBN puts the Government back in a conflicted position as the owner of a large player (that at some stage will likely be privatized) in a market it regulates.

Broadly these were our objections when the current version of the NBN and its startling price tag were unveiled in April 2009. In the two and a half years since, none has been adequately answered by Senator Conroy or any other devotee of Labor’s current policy.

Today, however, I want to focus on some other aspects of the NBN that have been canvassed in the public domain recently, and prompted red flags to be raised in some quarters:

• NBN Co’s accountability and transparency.
• NBN Co’s obsolete financial projections.
• Rollout priorities, black spots and take-up.

ACCOUNTABILITY & TRANSPARENCY

From the outset, the Labor Government has done its best to minimize scrutiny of the NBN: refusing to have the project evaluated by either Infrastructure Australia or the Productivity Commission; largely exempting it from FOI laws; declining to release un-redacted versions of NBN Co corporate documents and forecasts; and limiting Parliamentary committee hearings.

Many details of this $50 billion gamble of taxpayer funds are not visible to members of Parliament – even those on multiple committees overseeing the NBN, such as myself – or to the taxpayers who are funding construction of the network and the generous salaries paid to executives.

For example we don’t know whether (having received $1.7 billion in capital from taxpayers since 2009) NBN Co actually earned any revenue from selling communications services in the September quarter. Or if it did, how much. This is because Senator Conroy rejected a proposal for quarterly reporting from the Government’s advisors.

We don’t know the timeframe for the NBN in areas where broadband is inadequate or unavailable, unless they are on a recently-released 12 month schedule. Nor is this likely to change; Labor would presumably prefer to use the NBN schedule as part of its marginal seats strategy at the next election than reveal to long-suffering citizens in under-served areas when their broadband will finally be upgraded.

We don’t even know how many customers NBN Co has at present, although NBN Co CEO Michael Quigley told a Senate estimates hearing in October there were 870 satellite users and 1500 active services over fibre at that time. (Such numbers are about 4 per cent of the 2011-2013 Corporate Plan’s implied Q3 2011 forecast.)

There does not appear to be a commercial reason for such information being withheld – rather it reflects an apparent preference for secrecy and reluctance to be accountable at NBN Co.

Likewise, an aversion to oversight or having to justify its decisions is evident in NBN Co’s year-long attempt to ‘lock down’ key variables in its Special Access Undertaking to the ACCC so they cannot be changed – a push confirmed in yesterday’s public release of the final SAU submission.

NBN Co is a monopoly building an expensive network that access seekers will have to pay to use, but as the SAU underscores, it opposes both any ACCC review of its rollout investment, and more generally, any second-guessing by the regulator of other management decisions it takes.

Unsurprisingly, access seekers are not impressed. As the CEO of Optus, Mr Paul O’Sullivan recently responded: “Well, I’m sorry, but this is an infrastructure monopoly, someone has to make sure its spending is efficient…if they spend too much, you and I will end up paying for it.”

Mr Quigley has shown a similar reluctance to provide Parliament with even the most anodyne details of commercial matters. While commercial in confidence is a legitimate protection for some data in such circumstances, it should not become a shield that allows any question, however legitimate, to be loftily brushed aside.

Not only has NBN Co preferred opacity and avoided accountability, it has also several times shown a cavalier disregard for facts – especially reporting on its own progress. For instance the second quarterly report of the Parliament’s Joint Committee on the NBN relies in part on the following NBN Co statement to shareholder ministers: “For Greenfields [new housing developments] NBN Co has exceeded its expected target with 75,000 lots passed”.

The 75,000 target reflected a time when competitive private infrastructure builders were expected to handle greenfield sites. NBN Co instead chose to manage and build its greenfield rollout directly and appoint an exclusive contractor, Fujitsu, to replace private infrastructure builders. In addition, Telstra was later added as network infrastructure provider of last resort for greenfield sites with less than 100 lots (the majority will receive copper.)

Given all this, it is difficult to determine how many (if any) of the 75,000 households NBN Co claims to have passed in 2010-11 were in fact passed by it; or were passed by fibre at all. But if we count NBN Co greenfield estates under contract – neither passed or connected but scheduled for work in coming months – the number in November 2011 was about 8000.

And however we cut the numbers it does not appear to be correct that NBN passed 75,000 greenfield lots prior to June 2011, which is what was apparently stated to shareholder ministers.

Perhaps the most glaring recent example of excessive secrecy over NBN Co (which is, after all, an agency every Australian taxpayer is supporting that will have no direct competitors as they have all been paid off or prohibited by the Government) was last week’s release of a Greenhill Caliburn review of the NBN Co 2011-2013 Corporate Plan. Over its last 25 pages only 15 full paragraphs were entirely free of redaction.

NBN CO’S FINANCIALS

Ironically one controversial item in the Greenhill Caliburn document not blacked out was its estimate that NBN Co capex between 2011 and 2028 would total $50.6 billion in nominal dollars. Since this was substantially more than the Labor Government’s claim of a $37 billion rollout, it raised questions about NBN Co’s publicly available financial projections (those published in its 2011-2013 Corporate Plan.)

“It is a fallacy to suggest replacement costs and other capex is a part of the cost of the NBN,” declared Senator Conroy after the Greenhill Caliburn document was published. I have bad news for the Senator: Capital spending on maintenance and network upgrades is part of the cost of the NBN, as it is part of the cost of any enduring piece of infrastructure.

And what Greenhill Caliburn and NBN Co’s own figures reveal is that ‘replacement capex’ after the initial network is connected amounts to over $100 per connected premise per year – roughly the same as maintenance costs on the current copper network. So much for ‘future-proof’ in terms of reducing upkeep costs.

What else can we learn from NBN Co’s financial projections?

In truth a cursory glance reveals the financial forecasts provided to the public in December 2010 must have already been obsolete when published. They assumed most early NBN users would arrive via fibre rollouts in greenfield areas – but as mentioned earlier, greenfield activity stalled throughout 2010-11 as Senator Conroy struggled with his policy, and so NBN Co utterly flunked the 2010-11 targets it had set for itself:

• The Corporate Plan forecast 58,000 premises passed (mostly at greenfield sites and not counting 4,000 premises passed at the initial trial sites in Tasmania) and 35,000 premises with active service by June 2011.

• In reality only 18,243 premises were passed and only 622 had active service.

It is early days for the NBN. But rollout, coverage and take-up delays matter greatly.

They are one of two main drivers (along with ARPU or revenue per user) of NBN Co’s revenue estimates, which many analysts see as optimistic. The Corporate Plan estimates $23.6 billion in revenue will be generated between 2010 and 2021. Over the same period ARPU in nominal dollars per month is projected to rise from $38 to $58.

Earning that much revenue may prove difficult, and any shortfall means more debt for NBN Co.

But even more unrealistic are NBN Co’s current forecasts for operating expenses, which according to the 2011-2013 Corporate Plan will total $23.1 billion between 2010 and 2021, including $15 billion for payments to Telstra.

On 23 June 2011, NBN Co agreed to make decommissioning and customer migration payments of $4 billion over 10 years and infrastructure leasing payments of $5 billion over 35 years to Telstra. Crucially, that agreed value is measured in after-tax 2010 dollars using a discount rate of 10 per cent.

NBN Co also agreed to make decommissioning payments to Optus with an after-tax present value of $800 million (calculated using an undisclosed discount rate which we can probably assume is not dissimilar to the one used in the Telstra deal).

Clearly, to meet these obligations, NBN Co must make a series of much larger nominal payments, which will be taxed in the hands of Telstra or Optus and then discounted back to 2010 dollars.

The exact nominal operating expenses for NBN Co that result from these deals depend on the precise timing and profile of payments and pace of the rollout.

But broadly they mean between 2010 and 2021 NBN Co will incur operating expenses of about $19 billion to pay Telstra and about $2 billion to pay Optus (most investment analysts covering the telecom sector project roughly these nominal costs to deliver on the two deals)). Note that any delay in the rollout will increase the nominal value of the payments due to Telstra and Optus.

It follows that if NBN Co still needs to budget a further $8 billion to cover its ‘real’ direct and indirect operating expenses (as in the existing 2011-2013 Corporate Plan) and the rollout proceeds on time, then NBN Co’s total nominal operating expenses between 2010 and 2021 will not be $23 billion. On the face of it would appear they will be more like$29 billion – but in the absence of timely and accurate financial information who would know for sure?

If a listed public company signed deals such as the NBN Co/Telstra and NBN Co/Optus deals, it would be required to immediately disclose the impact on its existing financial guidance and forecasts to the market.

Not so NBN Co, whose level of disclosure has been so inadequate that it falls far below the standards required of a publicly listed company.

There is an additional question about NBN Co’s financials. Where exactly are any inside-the-house costs associated with shifting customers and their equipment from copper to fibre and ensuring service continuity? So far the Government and NBN Co have been quite slippery about the liability for any such costs – it is unclear whether these will lie with households, retailers or the NBN itself.

The high costs and potential complexity of switching premises to fibre seems to be verified by real world data. Well-sourced industry talk is that at Telstra’s fibre rollout in South Brisbane it is taking two technicians a joint half-day per premise to get services up and running. This is in addition to the costs of missed or rescheduled appointments, letter boxing and other ads to alert the community, and other co-ordination activities.

Given NBN Co’s financial data is so opaque, it is hard to tell which costs are counted where – but the organization should respond to these questions with a sense of urgency and release more accurate, realistic and clear financial projections. To fail to do so would be to treat taxpayers with a contempt that no listed company would ever dare show towards its shareholders.

So, Senator Conroy, one simple question: what exactly is the latest estimate of the peak capital requirement for the NBN?

As it is the NBN Co projects a defensive and non-transparent approach which seems like a cross between the Kremlin and the Church of Scientology.

The irony is that notwithstanding it belongs to the public, it is less accountable and less transparent to the taxpayers who ultimately own it than any of the publicly listed telcos to which it is currently dictating terms, with all of the inevitable arrogance of a massive government owned monopoly.

THE ROLLOUT, BROADBAND BLACK SPOTS & TAKE-UP

The only rationale for an NBN in the first place was to ensure regions with substandard broadband where market forces had failed were properly served. Yet this priority seems to have been abandoned on the way to NBN Co.

As Mr Quigley explained to a Senate hearing on October 18, NBN Co is choosing sites for its early rollouts based on access to Telstra’s dark fibre and exchanges or the deals it has agreed with its contractors – not on how urgently households and communities need access to good quality broadband.

Mr Quigley stated, and I quote: “Overwhelmingly in these early stages the availability of Telstra infrastructure dictates where we can go in the roll out. That is one factor. The second factor is what deals we have done with which construction contractors and how they can load, level and mobilise their workforces.”

So six weeks ago, when NBN Co announced a three-year plan to run fibre past 485,000 premises, only a fraction of the areas chosen were broadband blackspots.

It is simply unbelievable that after bungling its first tilt at an NBN and wasting its first term, the Government now cannot get its wholly-owned taxpayer-funded monopoly to prioritize the neediest areas. Ed Husic, the ALP Member for Chifley in Western Sydney and a former president of the telecommunications union, was sufficiently frustrated about this to risk retribution from Senator Conroy and other factional bosses and speak out in October.

Allow me to quote him: “NBN Co is making a big deal out of rolling out broadband in new estates where people haven’t even moved in, while down the road people are tearing their hair out to get ADSL or decent wireless access. I don’t begrudge new areas getting access – I’m happy for them. But how do you explain NBN Co’s priorities to residents in Woodcroft and Doonside, who are struggling to get decent internet access? It seems to me NBN Co is just reaching out for easy targets, hugging geographic areas within close proximity of exchanges.”

One of my concerns is that as the rollout confirms the NBN to be logistically daunting and financially untenable, NBN Co and the Government will try to obscure this by focusing on the easiest areas, not those most in need. That would be a travesty of social justice from a party that so loudly claims to believe in it.

Meanwhile, take-up is also proving an issue across the rollout. Internal NBN data from mid-October obtained by The Australian showed only one in nine of the premises passed by the NBN’s fibre had connected to a service at that date. Take-up rates were as low as 2 per cent in Armidale, 5 per cent in Townsville, 6 per cent in Brunswick (where NBN Co was overbuilding an area with HFC pay TV cables, providing comparable broadband), 9 per cent in Kiama and a slightly healthier 19 per cent in Willunga in South Australia.

The figures show higher take-up rates ranging from 12 to 25 per cent in longer-established Tasmanian trial sites where broadband options were far less plentiful – underscoring the value of focusing the rollout on poorly-served areas.

In the long run, if it continues being rolled out, NBN has little to fear from sluggish take-up given existing or prospective rival fixed-line infrastructure will be decommissioned or legislatively deterred. If consumers or businesses want a fixed line, they will have to use the only network available. That is why the monopoly has been imposed.

CONCLUSION

The end of the year is always a good time to take stock and review the decisions of the past twelve months. The Gillard Government’s NBN has been criticized on two main grounds: it is spending far more money than is needed to achieve the objective and it is massive, anti-competitive monopoly in an industry where competition has delivered better services and lower prices and, as a consequence, consumers want more competition not less.

The evidence from the NBN, even at this early stage, is that those criticisms were on the mark.

The rest of the industry is in uproar as Michael Quigley, in a manner reminiscent of another Michael, tells them the NBN Co’s wholesale broadband agreement is an offer they can’t refuse.

There are still only a handful of Australians connected to the NBN. The approach taken by NBN Co and Senator Conroy is utterly at odds with the best practices of carriers and governments in almost every other comparable market.

It’s not too late to take stock, conduct the cost benefit analysis and get this project right.

Topics: Australia Network Tender, Gay Marriage
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

FRAN KELLY:

Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull calls the tender process a shambles. And he joins you from Adelaide this morning. Malcolm Turnbull welcome to Breakfast.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good morning Fran.

FRAN KELLY:

Are you happy that the Australia Network is now in the hands of the national broadcaster forever?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well look, I’m not unhappy that the ABC is dong it. I think the ABC is doing a good job with the Australia Network, I think it will do a good job in the future. I think Sky News would have done a good job too. They are both very qualified organisations. So no, I am not grinding my teeth that the ABC is continuing to do it. But what I am appalled by, and I think most Australians are appalled by, is the incredibly shambolic way the Government has gone about this. I mean, this is truly incredible. The Government says, ‘right, we’re going to have a tender’, so they invite the ABC to re-tender. They invite Sky, and presumably other news organisations could have tendered if they had wanted to. They each invest a lot of money in their tender. There was a whole process. Allegedly, there were recommendations that Sky should get the gig. I haven’t seen that formally confirmed but there are rumours about that. Apparently, Kevin Rudd was supporting Sky, other people in the cabinet were supporting the ABC. Then leaks come out of the Government which undermine the integrity of the tender, which is then abandoned. The auditors are called in. Them we all expect there to be a new tender. That’s common sense. But now it has been announced there’s going to be no tender and it’s going to be awarded to the ABC. These guys couldn’t run a chook raffle at this stage. It’s hopeless.

FRAN KELLY:

It’s messy to be sure, but I wonder what your particular issue is with the process because it is not unheard of for a tender process to be scrapped. Is your issue that it was scrapped or the reasons behind it, which do remain unclear.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I think there are two issues here. First of all, it is not uncommon for tenders to be scrapped and then for it to be restarted, which is what we all expected them to do. But you’ve got to bear this in mind: The Government took the view that there should be a tender and I think that was right. At least these two organisations were capable of doing the job and should be considered on their merits. They had the tender; Sky tendered in good faith, the ABC tendered in good faith. There’s no criticism of either organisation. The tender was aborted because of leaks out of the Government which were a consequence – everybody knows this – of the deep personal antagonisms which are blowing up all over the place, between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. Because Kevin Rudd was backing Sky, Julia Gillard was backing the ABC, as was Conroy. And this is just a shambolic way of running the country.

FRAN KELLY:

All of this – supposedly of what we do know and don’t know about the politics of this – is coming out via leaks. Have you, as Shadow Communications Minister, ever seen any evidence to suggest that any of those original tender processes, or the review of those, did back Sky?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

No, I’ve only read the leaks like you have. And this is the problem, as I have said consistently. This tender should have been a thoroughly transparent process. The two companies should have made their tenders public – they could have deleted out some commercially sensitive information if they had wanted to – but the fundamentals of the tender should have been made public. Then there should have been an open and transparent process. This is a really important role. This is Australia’s media face in the region. It’s public diplomacy, it’s in the national interest. Have a transparent process and then you can have a reasoned and rational decision. But we didn’t have that. We had all of this poisonous politics, which is really going to the heart — this is a Government with poison at its core. Because there is a very deep, bitter antagonism between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. Because you see one week, one is leaking against the other. The next week, the boot is on the other foot. We saw yesterday, selective leaking out of a post-election report by Steve Bracks and Bob Carr. It was leaked to embarrass Rudd. And then we had the decision about the Australia Network taken while Kevin Rudd is out of the country, for heaven’s sake.

FRAN KELLY:

Let’s go back to that policy and the decision taken. Because the criticism, and certainly the comparisons made by Sky in the past that have been made public, have stated that the ABC’s bid was not as comprehensive as Sky’s bid. Because Sky was offering up to five channels, including nation-specific channels, to countries like China and India. In your view, should the ABC be trying to match that. Is it imperative that it matches that?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I think obviously, subject to cost, more is good. More targeted programming is good — that would be my superficial observation. But you know Fran, this is my whole point about transparency. This is why the tender should be an open and transparent process. We’re each of us — I mean, you work for the ABC, I am a Member of Parliament. You would think we would actually have an idea what’s going on with this tenders but we don’t. Because it’s been done in a very closed and non-transparent way. The only inklings we have of what’s been going on have been because of leaks. Those leaks have been the result of political agendas in terms of the continuing civil war between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. So we should have a transparent process. I mean, this is not rocket science. This is an important exercise in that national interest, public diplomacy, why couldn’t you have an open tender process so that you and I could sit here and say, ‘well I’ve got the ABC tender here; I’ve got the Sky tender here — let’s have a talk about them and see what your listeners think. That’s democracy.

FRAN KELLY:

Well there’s a couple of inquiries still going on into this tender process, at least I think they’re still going on. The AFP are investigating the leaks. The Auditor-General is investigating the tender process, exactly what you’ve been discussing. Should those investigations continue?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I’m sure they will but leak inquiries very rarely come up with anything as you know. As far as the Auditor’s inquiry, I’m sure the Auditor will conclude that the tender has been shambolic and be critical but the horse has well and truly bolted now. So it will be of pretty much academic interest, I mean it will be of political interest, but I think the meat of the issue will have moved on in terms of who does the Australia Network. The big issue that will remain, and this is just one of a series of things Fran. People often say to me why is there a lack of confidence in business at the moment? One of the big factors is a very strong perception, and it’s very ingrained now, that the country is not being run in a confident fashion. That they’re not capable hands on the wheel of Australia at the moment. And this episode is just another example of that.

FRAN KELLY:

OK, it’s twelve minutes to eight on Breakfast. Our guest this morning is the Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm Turnbull on another matter, should the Coalition allow a conscience vote on gay marriage.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well my view is that we should but it is a matter for the Shadow Cabinet and the Party Room as to whether we do. But yes, my view is we should have a conscience vote on it.

FRAN KELLY:

And have you suggested that to Tony Abbott?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well look, the answer is yes. There’s not point saying discussions are confidential, they are confidential but as it happens I have raised the matter privately with Tony some time ago and my view on this became public, not because of anything I did deliberately but because of some correspondence I had with a constituent and there was no point trying ot be slippery and disingenuous about it. So my view is yes, there should be a conscience vote but again, it’s not my decision, it’s the decision of the Shadow Cabinet and the Party Room.

FRAN KELLY:

And Tony Abbott’s response, do you think he is inclined to allow one?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well what Tony has said, and I think it was a very elegant description, he said that in a sense every vote is a conscience vote for the Liberal Party because we don’t chuck people out if they cross the floor. However, I think the importance of it being seen as a conscience vote is that it would enable members of the front bench to vote one way or the other and not put their position on the front bench at risk.

FRAN KELLY:

So if that was allowed, what would your conscience tell you, how would you vote?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I will take one bridge at a time. I think everyone knows I’m very committed to ensuring that there is equality and no discrimination against same-sex couples. I haven’t historically advocated same-sex marriage. In large part Fran because the campaigns that were successful to eliminate discrimination in terms of tax and superannuation and so many other matters, would really have been derailed and I think frustrated if marriage had been part of the agenda. So I will be accountable to my constituents and I’ll speak in a considered way, if and when the issue comes up next year. But I’ll just say this, that I think we’ve seen enormous progress in this area. In terms of my own electorate, I don’t have any doubt that there’s a large majority of people that support same-sex marriage. I’ve done an online survey, which is not one of those anonymous Mickey Mouse surveys, it was one where people left their names and addresses and email addresses, and a very very large percentage in favour of same-sex marriage. Roughly 75 per cent. There was another 15 or odd per cent in favour of civil-unions, and another percentage against both civil unions and gay marriage was in the order of 10%, I think it was a little less as I recall.

FRAN KELLY:

OK, Malcolm Turnbull thank you very much for joining us.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Yes, thank you Fran.

It was a beautiful day down at the Cruising Yacht Club in Rushcutters Bay where I was joined by SWD President David Leslie, Founder, David Pescud, and many other dedicated SWD volunteers.

I joined students from Lomandra School on board SWD’s 52ft racing yacht, Kayle. Kayle is a custom built yacht that has been designed to be sensitive to the needs of disabled crew and can comfortably accommodate four wheelchairs. The yacht has sailed 13 consecutive Sydney to Hobart races and since 2003 has held the record for the fastest non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation of Australia with a time of 37 days, 1 hour. A remarkable achievement.

Lomandra, based in Campbelltown, is a special needs school catering for those with severe challenging behaviours. The students underwent a six-week structured sailing program and it was great to see them up early on a Saturday morning testing their news skills. I spoke to their teacher Keith Jackson who spoke of the benefits the program has had on the students, which has helped not only build their confidence through demonstrating what they can achieve personally, but also developed their skills for working in a team.

As with many non-for-profit organisations, the Global Financial Crisis has seen donations dry up and unfortunately this year SWD has had to withdraw from the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and will focus their efforts on continuing their activities for disabled and disadvantaged youth. SWD sees 4000 children a year through their Try Sail Program as well as offering free programs for adults and their carers.

I also had the opportunity to meet Paralympian Lisel Tesch, who after already winning Silver medals in Sydney and Athens and another Bronze in Beijing for Women’s Wheelchair Basketball, is now hoping to represent Australia in sailing. The three-time Paralympic Games medallist recently won Gold, along with Daniel Fitzgibbon, at the 2011 Rolex Miami OCR after winning Gold in the Skud 18 double-handed class.

If you would like to get involved in one of SWD’s programs or to become a sponsor, please visit their website here or phone 02 8079 5997.

Sky News and its shareholders have every reason to feel bitterly aggrieved by this decision. They were asked to tender to provide the Australia Network service. They did so in good faith. The tender was compromised, so the Government said, not by Sky, nor indeed by the ABC, but by leaks made from within the Government itself.

If the ABC is, as the Government now claims, the obvious and only choice to operate the Australia Network – why was there a tender at all? How can so many months and so many millions be wasted on a tender process that now, so we are told, was quite unnecessary and inappropriate in the first place.

At every stage, what should have been a straightforward, businesslike tender for an important national interest broadcasting task, has been poisoned by the deep personal and factional conflicts within this dysfunctional Labor Government.

Anyway, after an hour mooching around Trumper Park and seeing if there were any interesting old sandwiches or half eaten pies left near Edgecliff Station (slim pickings there, the locals are too tidy for my taste) I was getting a bit bored and wondering what to do, ducking in and out of the traffic at Edgecliff, when I saw Malcolm Turnbull, my local MP.

Here is an opportunity I thought to get some value for my humans’ taxes! So I willed him to pick me up and take me to his electorate office and call my humans. Which he did and within minutes they arrived just proving how much they were missing me - they were clearly very anxious and had been looking for me everywhere.

They even went to the Lord Dudley Hotel, which is a bit of a worry as I don’t normally start drinking at 3 pm.

Anyway it has been fun visiting Malcolm’s office and running around being chased by his staff but home is always best.

Here is a picture of me  reunited with Sophie and Georgie and Bailey who is the junior dog in our household.

And here’s me as I write this post!

Thanks Malcolm for letting me do a guest dog blog, hope JoJo and Mellie don’t get jealous.

YoYo

His contribution to Easts in the 1970s was, like the man himself, huge – winning two premierships in 1974 and 1975.  Despite taking on many causes afterwards, his ties to the club were always very strong, returning as an assistant coach in 2010. 

In that year, he was inducted into the Roosters’ Hall of Fame, alongside Brad Fittler and legendary coach Jack Gibson. 

On and off the field, Artie truly was a giant of the game. With Rugby League fans around Australia, and especially Roosters fans in Wentworth, we lament Artie’s passing and give our condolences to his family and friends.

Melbourne

28 November 2011

It is a great honour to deliver this year’s Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop Lecture – named for one of the greatest Australians, a man whose indomitable courage and humanity in the face of the cruelest adversity was only exceeded by the love for all mankind that enabled him to reach across the bitter memories of war, and build again our friendship with foes and allies alike.

And it’s a pleasure to launch the 2011 PWC / Melbourne Institute AsiaLink Index, which for four years has been in the tricky business of providing objective measurements of changes in one of the nation’s ethereal yet critically important assets: the vast web of personal, political, economic and cultural ties which join Australia and our neighbours.

Watch the Video of the Speech Here

I’ll return to the Index in a moment, but first let me acknowledge:

• The Myer family – including Baillieu Myer, Sid Myer, Lady Marigold Southey – and the  Myer Foundation, whose collective support for AsiaLink and the local arm of the Asia Society is just part of a broader commitment to philanthropy in the national interest that spans 75 years;
• Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, the Myer Foundation’s partner in AsiaLink;
• Mr Richard Woolcott, one of Australia’s most experienced diplomats, and the distinguished  members of the Diplomatic Corps here tonight;
• The Honourable John Brumby, former Premier;
• And of course the winner of the 2011 Dunlop Medal, Geraldine Cox.

The most important message from this year’s  PWC / Melbourne Institute AsiaLink Index is that during the difficult economic conditions of the past few years, the two-way engagement between Australia and Asia held up much better than our equivalent ties with the rest of the world, which of course include our traditionally most important bilateral relationships.

Much of what drives the AsiaLink index are direct economic linkages (trade, cross-border investment, and research and business development are three of the seven areas it tracks) and as we all appreciate, the economies of the Asia-Pacific showed far greater resilience than those of the North Atlantic during the GFC.  So perhaps this isn’t a surprise.

It is worth noting, however, that since the onset of the crisis some economic indicators of mutual engagement have faltered (for example investment from Asia into Australia fell sharply in 2010).

But there has been a broadly offsetting strengthening of ties in the form of education exchanges, flows of tourists and flows of migrants (where India and China are now two of our three largest source countries).  These are more individually-driven, personal activities where ties are formed or deepened by vast numbers of face-to-face encounters – and in the long run are surely just as important as trade or investment in helping people in different countries better understand each other.

So the AsiaLink Index underlines that engagement with Asia is no longer mainly a matter for business – it’s everybody’s business.

A corollary is that the far more diverse multicultural Australia that has emerged over the past two generations as we’ve drawn closer to the region is itself becoming one of our great competitive advantages – just as similarly diverse societies over history have always gained an edge from their bringing together of varied cultures and contending ideas.

The Premier, Ted Baillieu, highlights this in his contribution to this year’s report, where he explains Fortune magazine ranked Melbourne as one of the world’s 15 “best new cities for business” in part because of this very factor.  To quote:  “Connectivity is vital. One reason Fortune singled Melbourne out is our ‘diverse labour pool’, pointing out that ‘about a third of [Melbourne’s] growing population was born overseas’.  In other words, our multiculturalism gives us a head-start.”

My final comment about the PWC / Melbourne Institute AsiaLink Index is that much of its value is in the broad sweep of what it says about the two decades that it covers, rather than the ups and downs from year to year.

This year’s publication tells us that between 1990 and 2010 Australia-Asia trade increased almost four-fold in real terms, tourist volumes rose four-fold, annual investment flows five-fold, and education movements more than six-fold.  Over those twenty years our society and economy have been transformed as a result, perhaps not as dramatically as parts of Asia, but in fundamental and largely beneficial ways.

###

Last month I offered the London School of Economics a view from Australia on the rise of Asia, entitled “Same bed different dreams” – a delightfully cynical Chinese phrase “tong chuang yi meng” which describes the awkwardness of intimacy without empathy, as unsatisfying politically as it is, no doubt, domestically.

It was a long paper more suited for a university lecture hall than a congenial dinner, but its theme was most appropriate for this occasion, for one of the great inspirations from Weary Dunlop’s life was his ability to see the common humanity of all people and to empathise with those from other nations and cultures

My contention is that we have vastly more to gain than to lose from the rise of China, India and the rest of emerging Asia. There are risks and threats to be sure, but they are greatly outweighed by the opportunities. 

And before proceeding to speak mainly about China and in passing mention India let me simply note that our varied region includes other large, dynamic emerging markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, and sophisticated industrial economies such as South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore that over the past two decades have become as productive and prosperous as the advanced nations.  Their stories (and their futures) are just as fascinating and important as those of China and India.

Our response to this extraordinary economic change, and it is the most profound in our lifetimes, must be clear eyed and founded on facts not ideology – let alone paranoia.

We must recognise that the world is changing dramatically. Consider this.

Thirty years ago China was barely open to the world at all. Since then its economy has grown eighteen fold – an annual average of 10 per cent.  India’s GDP has grown six fold in that time, an average annual rate of 6% per annum, partly reflecting the fact that its economic take off started more than a decade after Deng Xiao Ping commenced the economic reform process in China in 1979.

China is now the world’s second largest economy and will overtake the United States in 2016, according to the IMF;  some analysts argue it has already done so.  And India has this year passed Japan to become the third largest economy, measured in purchasing power terms.

In 1990 the old industrial powers, North America and Western Europe, produced about half of global GDP, but by 2030 their share will decline to a quarter.  Emerging Asia (ex Japan) produced 14 per cent of world GDP in 1990, but by 2030 its share will triple to 44 per cent , with three quarters of that generated in China and India.[1]

So the old trio of the United States, Japan and Western Europe, which used to drive the global economy, is giving way to a new one – the US, China and India.  Forecasting is always perilous, but we can reasonably anticipate these will remain the world’s three largest national economies for many decades.

The pace and the scale of this shift is unprecedented. There has never been a country as big as China that has grown so fast – it took a much smaller Britain fifty years from 1820 to increase its share of world GDP from 5 to 9 per cent and the United States more than 40 years after 1870 to increase its share from 9 to 19 per cent.[2]

But it is important to remember that from a Chinese or Indian perspective this rapid growth in wealth and power is not so much a rise, but a return to the natural order of things.

From antiquity until the middle of the nineteenth century, China and India were the two largest global economies, accounting for about half the world’s economic output.   Their current climb up the GDP rankings restores them to where history and population predicts they should be.

###

But changes in the relative economic position of large and powerful nations are seldom smooth or free from anguish.  Americans are still struggling to come to grips with the rise of China in particular, which represents an historically unique challenge to the United States.

And the post-GFC recession in the US, where recovery has been sluggish and unemployment is stuck near 9 per cent has made relative economic performance a hot issue in Washington.  Whatever else it may have signaled, President Obama’s recent speech in Canberra should have left no careful listener in doubt that US domestic politics – especially economic considerations – will be a key shaper of both the content of US policy on China and our region, and, even more so,  how it is presented.

Americans have a deep sense of their own exceptionalism, and since birth have been assured that they will always be the strongest, richest and cleverest nation on earth.

Tom Friedman’s latest book ‘That Used to Be Us’ is eloquent testimony to the growing sense of inadequacy Americans feel as they compare their country to China.  Its title was inspired by President Obama in November 2010:  “It makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth – that used to be us.”[3]

It’s not just President Obama having a Sputnik moment – Americans everywhere feel the core of their economy is being hollowed out.  Their pessimism has a basis: 42,000 factories closed in the United States between 2001 and 2010 and 5.5 million manufacturing jobs disappeared.

Median incomes have been stagnant for years, income inequality has worsened and as we now know all too well easy credit was a financial palliative, allowing households to continue spending more while their wages were flat.[4]

Michael Spence has pointed out globalisation was until recently seen as having a benign impact on the distribution of income in advanced economies, but this is changing:  “As the developing countries became larger and richer, their economic structures changed in response to the forces of comparative advantage: they moved up the value-added chain. Now, developing countries increasingly produce the kind of high-value-added components that 30 years ago were the exclusive purview of advanced economies. This climb is a permanent, irreversible change.”

Technology exacerbates this problem in two ways. Almost every technological advance reduces the demand for labor – whether in accounting and financial functions, logistics or even unmanned dump trucks and loaders at mine sites in the Pilbara.

At the same time information technology and communications are making more sectors and jobs trade exposed.  Many service jobs are becoming globally contestable.  Not just call centres but also financial and legal analysts, programmers, designers,  architects and so on.

The owner of a frock shop used to think she was competing with the boutique across the road or with Myers – now she competes with the whole world.  Online retailers can fulfill an order made in Melbourne from the other side of the world in three or four days.

So globalization and technology are economic forces that are far bigger than any one country, even countries as large and powerful as China or the US.  Yet all too often the shifts they are causing in economic power or the competitiveness of particular industries in Western nations are seen as China’s fault, the consequence of it not playing fair. 

And yet advanced economies cannot blame China or the rest of emerging Asia for our own choices.  If bridges and roads and subways in our developed country are not in good repair, that is our problem.  If our young people are leaving school, not only behind their contemporaries in China or Korea, but all too often unable to read and write, then there is another problem for us.  Too often we ask ourselves the wrong question (‘why are we declining relative to China?’) when we should be asking why are we not as good as we can be?

###

As Henry Kissinger recently reminded us, history is far from bunk in China “No other country can claim so long a continuous civilisation, or such an intimate link to its ancient past and classical principles of strategy and statesmanship.”[5]

That is why when Deng Xiao Ping opened China up to the world in 1979 he invoked the example of the 15^th century Admiral Zheng He who led great voyages across the Indian Ocean. In those days, an open and confident China was the world’s strongest nation. When later emperors closed China off to the world, Deng reminded the hardliners, China became weak and began a decline that ended with 150 years of humiliating invasion, colonisation and exploitation by stronger nations.

A humiliation that in the 20^th century included the brutality of the Japanese occupation and rape of Nanjing, and in the 19^th, the Opium Wars which were the equivalent of the Medellin Cartel sending a nuclear submarine up the Potomac and threatening, successfully, to destroy the Capitol and White House unless the US disbanded the Drug Enforcement Agency.

China drank deep and long from the well of bitterness and defeat.  And so when Mao Ze Dong announced his triumph from atop Tien An Men in 1949 his first words were Zhong Guo ren min zanqilai le – the Chinese people have stood up.

So it is no surprise that as China becomes richer it seeks to strengthen its military capacity.  Those who interpret this as necessarily meaning a stronger China is a more aggressive one should reflect on that history and recent events.

China lost in the 19th century vast tracts of land in what is now Siberian Russia – the Amurskaya region for example.  These thefts were ratified in unequal treaties in 1858 and 1860.  Recognising that depopulating yet resource rich Siberia may constitute an opportunity in the future, China could have decided to leave those treaties as illegitimate artifacts of its century of humiliation, to be redressed when times were propitious.

Instead it has chosen to renegotiate and settle the Sino-Russian borders with minor adjustments.  Hardly evidence for imminent territorial expansion.

And as Kissinger has also pointed out, unlike the USSR or even the US, China does not seek to persuade other countries to adopt its values, let alone its system of Government.

The central role of trade in China’s prosperity also argues for its rise to remain peaceful.  In 2010 China’s trade was 55 per cent of its GDP – the same as for Britain in the 1870s, the era of the Pax Britannica, and five times larger than trade in the US economy of the 1950s and 1960s when American economic dominance was greatest.  Given the importance of a stable economy in the regime’s legitimacy, China’s rulers themselves have more to lose than almost anyone from conflict that disrupts global economic flows.[6]

The best and most realistic strategic outcome for East Asia must be one in which the powers are in balance, with each side effectively able to deny the domination of the other – a scenario which Hugh White has written about  extensively in the recent past.[7]

With its energy and resource security depending on long global sea lanes, it is hardly surprising that China would seek to enhance its naval capacity. Suggestions that China’s recent launch of one aircraft carrier and plans to build another are signs of a new belligerence are wide of the mark.[8]

In that regard, I disagree with the underlying premise of the 2009 Australian White Paper that we should base our defence planning and procurement on the contingency of a naval war with China in the South China Sea.  Prejudice or wishful thinking is not a substitute for coolly rational analysis.

As I said in London, this is no time for another “long telegram” or talk of containment. [9] It makes no sense for America, or Australia, to base long-term strategic policy on the proposition that we are on an inevitable collision course with a militarily aggressive China.

Yet remarkably, while all of us galahs in the political petshop are talking about the rise of Asia, many are apparently laboring under the misapprehension that while everything can change in the economic balance in our region, nothing will change in strategic terms.

In other words, even though  China is about to become the world’s largest economy and is actually in the centre of East Asia, nonetheless the United States will remain the dominant power in the region, in the same way it has been since 1945 and even more so since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Au contraire.

 Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose is not a sound basis on which to build Australia’s foreign policy.

Rather, our strategic response to the rise of China therefore should be to continue to deepen our engagement with that nation and with our other neighbours, as friends even if not as  allies, and at the same time hedge against improbable but adverse future contingencies, as opposed to seeking to contain (futilely in all likelihood) a rising power.

Of course cool heads are required on all sides. China needs to be more transparent about its goals in the region and on the basis of that build confidence with its neighbours so that misunderstandings can be avoided.

In that light, the decision to host up to 2500 marines at an Australian army base in Darwin could hardly be regarded as a threat to China (just as Australian naval ships exercising with the PLA navy was presumably not regarded by the US as a threat).  After all there are over 60,000 American service personnel including 17,000 marines in Japan and Korea – on China’s doorstep in comparison to Darwin.

China’s prickly reaction reflected not the foreshadowed deployment itself, but the context briefed out by the White House – that that this was part of a strategy to stand up to growing Chinese economic and strategic power, a spin reflected in most media commentary despite being contrary to common sense (not to speak of geographic reality).

It suits President Obama’s domestic agenda to be seen to muscle up to China, even if the additional muscling does not bear too much analysis.  But an Australian Government needs to be careful not to allow a doe-eyed fascination with the leader of the free world to distract from the reality that our national interest requires us truly (and not just rhetorically) to maintain both an ally in Washington and a good friend in Beijing – which is, after all, our most important trading partner and a principal reason why our unemployment rate is half that of North America or Europe.

If extravagant professions of loyalty and devotion to the United States strike a somewhat awkward note for many Australian ears, how do we imagine they sound in the capitals of our neighbours?  And the same may be said in respect of equally extravagant compliments paid to Beijing.  Australian leaders should never forget that great powers regard deference as no more than their due.

###

I’ve spoken about how certain strands of Australia’s diplomatic and strategic stance (or at least the way they are presented) appear at odds with our interest in seeing the region in a fashion where there is no single hegemon – where stability is ensured by a power balance rather than a powerful enforcer.

The transformation of our economy by the rise of emerging Asia surely underlines that point.  Asia’s growth has sparked a rapid expansion of global demand for food, minerals, energy and other raw materials, in many cases outstripping supply.  And China’s current stage of urbanisation and industrialisation is resource-intensive, leading  to large rises in the price of two commodities used to make steel (iron ore and coking coal) and three burned for energy (crude oil, gas and thermal coal).

Australia is a net importer of oil, but among the world’s top exporters of the other four resources.  Hence prices for our commodity exports are more than three times higher than in the 1980s and 1990s, and the value of our yearly exports of minerals and energy have increased four-fold in the past eight years in Aussie dollars. 

At the same time global prices for manufactures have fallen, a consequence of production scale and efficiency in Asia.  These forces have interacted to push Australia’s terms of trade (the price of exports relative to imports) to their highest in history, although it now appears a long-expected easing is underway; mid-2011 may have been the peak of the boom.

So Asian growth has presented us with a huge windfall in national income.  Since 2003, when the China boom became apparent, Australia’s GDP is up 25 per cent, but national income (which adjusts GDP to account for transfers to foreign investors and changes in our terms of trade) is up 42 per cent.[10]

The boom has been widely discussed; I will make three quick points about it.

The first is that in some ways Australia has little choice but to adjust to accommodate rising demand for resources.  The return of China and India to the centre of the world economy is a powerful force far beyond the control of a small, open market economy. 

As Paul Bloxham at HSBC Australia has pointed out, all the half-trillion dollars or more of approved or anticipated coal, iron ore and gas projects that will utterly reshape our economy over the next decade only add up to about the amount of capital invested in China every three months.  So it is deluded to believe we can protect uncompetitive industries, manage the exchange rate, or somehow stand loftily aside from the current global restructuring, which in any case has been extremely beneficial to us so far.   

My second point is that governments can, however, make decisions in areas such as workplace relations that impede or smooth the movement of labour and capital from one sector to another – and policies to smooth the current structural adjustment are urgently needed.  Governments can also make policy choices that influence whether temporary income from the boom is saved or spent.  The desirability of saving much of what may turn out to be a brief windfall is why I’ve advocated Australia create a new sovereign wealth fund or commit to renewed deposits into our existing one.  Perhaps most importantly of all Governments can invest in the education, the science and the research that will enable us to remain competitive in a converged world where the developed societies can no longer assume they have an advantage in technology or knowledge.

Finally, Australians should not be complacent about the current outlook, or the tremendous 20-year run of prosperity that past economic reforms and the rise of Asia have delivered to us.  The irony of the 21st century resources boom is that it came after two decades of concerted effort to create a more flexible Australian economy capable of efficiently producing and exporting a more diverse range of goods and services, so reducing dependency on commodities.  Ross Garnaut has recently pointed out that growth in China, at least, is likely to become increasingly productivity-intensive and demand for bulk commodities may slow, while rising incomes will increase demand for more sophisticated products and services.  Perhaps India and Indonesia will step into the breach, but we should not assume that.

To conclude, the main challenges for Australian political leaders in responding to the rise of China (and in due course India) are to combat complacency.  Complacency in assuming the current resources windfall will persist forever; or that the strategic and diplomatic posture that served us in the past can and will serve us unchanged in the future; or that it doesn’t matter if our economic and strategic messages to our region are somewhat contradictory.  There are great opportunities for Australia in our ever-closer ties with Asia, and the region’s economic prosperity, but we will need thoughtful, nuanced, consistent and forward-looking policies to make the most of them.

[2] – See Angus Maddison (2006) The World Economy Volume 2 Historical Statistics OECD p 641

[3] – Tom Friedman & Michael Mandelbaum (2011) ‘That Used To Be Us,’ Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011.

[4] – Very well discussed in Raghuram G Rajan (2010) ‘Fault Lines,’ Princeton, 2010.

[5] – Henry Kissinger (2011) On China, Allen Lane, 2011.

[6] – The ratio of exports and imports of goods and services to GDP measures economic openness and integration.  At the peak of Britain’s economic dominance in 1870 this figure was 54 per cent.  British trade to GDP reached 63 per cent in 1913, but fell to half that level by the 1930s.  In the US, trade to GDP was 8 per cent in 1950 and 11 per cent in 1970.  In China trade to GDP was 45 per cent in 2000 and 55 per cent in 2010.  World Bank (2011) World Development Indicators Database; Stephen Broadberry (2001) ‘Openness & Britain’s Productivity Performance, 1870-1990.’ University of Warwick, Feb 2001, p.24.

[7] – White, H, (2010), “Power Shift: Australia’s Future Between Washington and Beijing”, in Quarterly Essay 39. 

[8] – “Energy security and trade are China’s paramount maritime concerns.  Maintaining a huge merchant marine fleet, and ensuring its freedom of access and security, will be an ongoing challenge.  Satisfying exponentially rising energy demands in parallel with other burgeoning economies such as India and Brazil will be another.” Brig-Gen. John Frewen, Australian Army (2010) ‘Harmonious Ocean – Chinese Aircraft Carriers and the Australia-US Alliance,’ JFQ 59, Q4 2010.

[9] – The US diplomat George Kennan served as deputy head of the US mission in Moscow 1944-1946. On 22 Feb 1946 Kennan responded to US Treasury questions about the erratic behaviour of the Soviet Union with a ‘long telegram’ of 5,500 words where he described the Soviet world view as ‘insecure’ and ‘neurotic’ and proposed a strategy of ‘containment’ which the Western nations subsequently adopted.

[10] – ABS 5206, June Quarter 2011.

I met with representatives of Optus and the Double Bay Primary School staff and parents last week to discuss the matter and urged Optus to consider other sites which were further from the school.

Optus engaged very constructively during these talks and their final decision to look for other sites to install the mobile phone tower is very welcome.

Mobile phone infrastructure is vital in a modern economy, however telcos should always seek to work constructively with communities to accommodate where it should be located.

Secondly, the bill seeks to amend the act to expand the scope of the statutory review to consider possible uses of the unassigned broadcasting services band spectrum available for both television broadcasting services and non-broadcasting services. The expanded scope of the review will examine any impact that the introduction of new services using the unassigned broadcasting service band spectrum will have on current broadcasting services and consumers. As the statutory review will no longer exclusively examine the commercial television broadcasting services, this bill moves section 35A to the relevant section of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to part 3, which covers the planning of broadcasting services spectrum.

Importantly, the deferred review reporting date will allow, as I noted, for the convergence review to be completed and to report. The convergence review is a very important step in re-evaluating the fundamental principles underpinning the media’s regulatory environment. It is prudent that any review into the use of the so-called sixth channel broadcasting services band spectrum take into account the convergence review’s recommendations. Given the rapid advances in technology—which will be ever thus, I fear, characteristically well ahead of the legislation and the policy and regulation—it is important that our legislation reflect insofar as it can the ever expanding possibilities for spectrum allocation. It is for this reason that the coalition is supporting this bill. It is a prudent step to provide further time for the convergence review to report.

Spectrum is a finite resource and, as such, requires careful planning and management in order to maximise both public and private benefit. There has been a great deal of debate surrounding the question of what to do with the broadcasting services band spectrum or the sixth channel spectrum since the switch-over to digital television was considered in the 1990s. There are currently seven frequency channels of broadcasting services band spectrum that are available to deliver television services. They will be reduced to six once the digital switch is complete and the seven megahertz broadcasting spectrum digital dividend that will exist as a result of the completion of the digital switch-over and spectrum restack also underway will create the opportunity for either a sixth television network or for use with new technologies.

As I mentioned, this issue of the creation of a sixth channel or a fourth commercial network has been a long-running one. While it has been possible with analog transmission to accommodate a sixth channel, successive governments have deemed the environment not appropriate for the introduction of an additional commercial network. Indeed, the commercial broadcasters have argued—and I suppose you could say that they would argue that, wouldn’t they?—that there simply were not the revenues to enable an additional commercial television network to be licensed, at least not the revenues available that would enable it to be profitable and, indeed, to enable the commercial broadcasting industry to continue to fulfil the expensive obligations it has to provide, for example, Australian content and drama and the other obligations that they bear.

To what extent these arguments are valid depends a lot on the economic circumstances and the technology. The cost of running a television station from a technical point of view is much reduced; however, the cost of content, if anything, is becoming more expensive. It is a moot point. I recall back 20 years ago when the Ten Network went into receivership and I was advising the new owners, Westpac, about how to restructure the Ten Network, which we were able to successfully do.

There are a lot of people, a lot of so-called media experts at the time, who said there was not even room for that network to survive and that there was not room in Australia for more than two commercial television networks. A lot of very credible figures made that case. Now looking back that seems absurd. So I just note in passing that, while I am not signing up to the proposition that there is not a commercial basis for an additional commercial television network, I think we have always got to review these assertions of what the economics of the industry are in the circumstances at the time and take into account that everybody has a vested interest—or everyone in the industry does. In 1997 the Howard government allocated the sixth channel spectrum for use by community free-to-air broadcasters and maintained the restriction on the establishment of a fourth television licence. In 1998 this policy was extended until December 2008 and the media reform package introduced in 2006 offered the first signs that there may be some certainty over the use of the sixth channel spectrum with the then prime minister announcing spectrum would be auctioned off to allow for two digital services. This policy was overturned in 2007 and the future of this spectrum has become much less certain.

The way Australians now consume news, entertainment and other content is rapidly changing and we have to rethink our basic assumptions about how we access and consume digital content. Regulators are constantly faced with the challenge of creating policy that keeps pace with technological change while taking into account the potential future demand for services. Australians are rapid adopters of new technology and in regard to the means of accessing content we now have more choice than ever before. With the advent of tablets, smartphones, smart TVs, IPTV and, of course, the arrival of cloud computing, the traditional media landscape is almost unrecognisable from what we have today and the environment is only becoming more competitive. We are moving into what I have described elsewhere as arguably a post-channel environment, which has very significant implications for regulation. So much of our protection of Australian content, or our promotion of Australian content, is premised on there being limited number of channels licensed by the government which enable the licensee to broadcast content into the homes of Australians. A condition of having one of those channels is to have so much Australian content, so much drama, so much children’s content and so forth.

As long as those channels are basically the only ones that were available for most Australians, that regulation had some force. But now in a thoroughly IP world we are in a position where, increasingly, the fundamental business model of free-to-air television is under question. There are people that are saying the business model of free-to-air television is doomed. I do not think there is any evidence—right at the moment anyway—to suggest that that is a realistic prophecy. Having said that, those people who predicted doom for the business model of newspapers ten years ago, and in some cases even five or six years ago, were being criticised as doomsayers. This is a rapidly developing area and we are seeing creative destruction—if that is the right term—on a very large scale. Rupert Murdoch himself famously said, as I frequently repeat, it was a very profound insight. Mr Murdoch said that the internet will destroy more profitable businesses than it will create. That has certainly been so for his company at least.

What this means is that we have a very different media environment. What is the appropriate means of regulating or promoting Australian content if the free-to-air channel becomes less and less important as the medium through which Australians view digital content, especially drama and children’s programs? One can see free to air becoming increasingly dependent on live events—a grand final or the latest news—where turning on the program a day later or even a half-hour later is of no benefit to you. What about the other types of cultural content that are so important?

It is a brave new world. This area of convergence poses huge challenges, most significantly in the area of entertainment—drama in particular. The United States internet movie download company Netflix is now the largest source of internet traffic in North America. That is something to reflect on when we talk about the benefits of the NBN, because the bulk of the bandwidth on the NBN will in fact be used for exactly the same thing: video entertainment. Netflix accounts for 30 per cent of peak downstream traffic in the United States, and similar digital content—that is to say, video entertainment, video streaming and downloads—brings the total up to over 50 per cent. That is what the internet traffic in the United States is largely made up of. Why is that? I am not suggesting that that is the most important part of internet traffic—far from it—but the reason it takes up so much of the traffic is that they are very big files compared to an email or most business data.

There are more than 45 million users of IPTV, internet protocol enabled television, worldwide today. That number is rapidly expanding. It is expected that the Asia-Pacific region, our region, will have the largest number of subscribers to IPTV. That means that every television set will become connected to the internet and that a consumer will be able to view a video on YouTube, a movie download, streaming video content, video content delivered by a newspaper website such as the Sydney Morning Herald or the Australian—any video content that can be delivered over the internet. Those channels that used to be fixed windows, the only windows through which you could see content, are now just some among an almost infinite range of windows or portholes through which consumers can see content.

In September, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy released a discussion paper on the allocation of spectrum. It said that ACMA should take five principles into account when allocating spectrum:

1. allocate spectrum to the highest value use or uses

2. enable and encourage spectrum to move to its highest value use or uses—

In other words, ideally not have the government telling people what they should do with the spectrum but allow it to be determined by the market—

3. use the least cost and least restrictive approach to achieving policy objectives

4. the extent possible, promote both certainty and flexibility

5. balance the cost of interference and the benefits of greater spectrum utilisation.

So the convergence review is being asked to report. But none of the questions it is being asked to report on are easy so that we can better understand how these priorities have shifted in the new environment. There are some very important questions, over and above the ones I have canvassed, that need to be addressed.

How do we maximise long-term revenue from allocating spectrum in an environment where the licence holders are now competing not only with each other but with other companies delivering content over the internet? The big content providers used to be the free-to-air television stations and Pay TV channels. But it is now, increasingly, what are called the over-the-top companies—Google, Amazon and many others—who are able to deliver content over the internet directly to the consumer as and where the consumer wants it.

We have to address how vital services, such as emergency services and police, and railways, who have specialised spectrum requirements, are going to be addressed. They are more dependent on the allocation of spectrum than ever in a wireless world. How do we ensure—and this is arguably one of the most challenging issues for the review—that the old objectives of regulation, such as ensuring a level of local content, are maintained when the government no longer has control over the delivery platforms, when we move into a post-channel environment? This is a gigantic issue for the Australian film and television industry and for Australian-content providers generally.

As the department’s discussion paper notes, digitisation of broadcasting means that a sixth TV channel, for example, could deliver as many as five standard definition streams, or multichannels. If it used newer coding technologies such as MPEG4, it could deliver even more, possibly up to 10, multichannels. But we have to ask ourselves whether spectrum of this kind, which could be used for so many other applications—it can be used for what we call generically mobile data—should be allocated for broadcasting at all.

High-speed broadband is now delivered on a fixed-line basis to most premises, and that will be so whether the government continues with its fibre-to-the-home rollout or whether other, more cost-effective technologies are deployed, as we have recommended, and wireless broadband continues to become more and more compelling because of the functionality of mobility. In that environment, there is a powerful argument for saying that spectrum should, as far as possible, be allocated in such a way that it represents a neutral platform that can be deployed in accordance with market demands, consumers’ demands and preferences, for whatever content they seek—whether it is video or some other form of content, and obviously different types of content and videocommunications.

All in all, this is a prudent measure, but I think we need to be very alert to the changes that we are seeing in the digital world. There are huge issues associated with this. What we have seen, for example, in the newspaper industry has very big implications for our democracy. We often talk about quality journalism. I think some people think that that means an article in the Australian, the Age, or the Sydney Morning Herald as opposed to something in the Daily Telegraph or the Herald Sun. That is not the case. When we talk about quality journalism we are talking about journalism in the traditional sense, where journalists are paid or employed to go out and make inquiries, do research, ask questions and actually do the legwork, which of course takes time and costs money. There is nothing cheap about good journalism because it takes time and journalists have to be paid.

The resources that are available to newspapers are shrinking all the time. They have traditionally been the place where most of our quality journalism has been deployed, because they have had the space.

The decline in revenues, in advertising, has been extraordinary. It was not so long ago that we used to talk about the Fairfax broadsheets, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, as having ‘rivers of gold’—classified rivers of gold. Those classifieds have moved, substantially if not entirely, onto an online environment. The owners of those assets—and they shared this error with newspaper owners everywhere else in the world—facing the classic dilemma of every incumbent who sees a challenge to their existing franchise, had the choice of whether to move onto the new technological platform themselves and cannibalise their own legacy business, or try to protect their legacy business for as long as they could. But the truth is that, if you take the latter course of action, which is what most publishers have done, you end up with your legacy business being cannibalised; it is just that it is cannibalised by somebody else.

But the critical thing is that the revenues that were available for advertising in newspapers—the classifieds, almost entirely now, and, increasingly, display advertising—while they have not moved in the sense of 100 cents in the dollar to the digital platform, have been replaced by advertising which is much, much cheaper and more cost-effective and, in most cases, has greater functionality as well. Who nowadays would imagine ploughing through pages and pages of newsprint, as we used to, to find a flat to rent or a car to buy or to see if somebody had found your lost goldfish? All of that has gone by the by.

That type of challenge is also seen as being there for free-to-air television—although, as I said earlier, I am not as gloomy about their prospects. If there is a question that the media inquiry that the government set up—in a pretty transparently cynical, even by their standards, effort to have a slap at News Ltd—should be looking into, and of course it is something that the convergence review should take into account as well, it is: what are the implications for democracy of the decline of journalism? The Americans are very alert to this. What happens, what is the quality of the democratic process—perhaps not here in the federal parliament but in a state parliament, or in a local council—if there are no longer any journalists, if there is no longer a business model that can support the journalists to do their work: to report on what is going on, to question, to probe, to be a challenge—to undertake the traditional role of the media? Who guards the guardians when there is no business model to support journalism?

This is a gigantic issue. We often talk about the anxieties and neuroses of politicians, and every three years or less we face the judgment of our electors and they may well choose, right or wrongly, to throw us out. But the most anxious people in this building are not in the chamber anymore; they are in the press gallery. There are hundreds of journalists up there—and the younger ones are the most anxious—who are asking themselves: ‘Have I signed up to an industry that really has a future? Where is the revenue, where is the business model, that is going to support my job?’ And they see the newsroom shrinking. They see their ability to do the research, do the work and actually fulfil the traditional role of journalism being diminished. So this raises big questions for the importance of public broadcasting. Many could make a case that it is now more important than ever because obviously it is not as threatened by this, being supported by the taxpayer.

So these are important, vital issues. We should, and it is appropriate to, put off this question of the allocation of the so-called sixth channel spectrum.

But the issue that we need to turn our minds to as parliamentarians—and I think all Australians need to think about this—is: what price our democracy when journalism no longer has a business model that can support it? We tend to assume that everything about the internet and the digital world is good. Most of it is good, but there are some very big implications. Until now we have had the dogged determination of hundreds of journalists working away, holding us to account, holding lots of other people to account, sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong, but nonetheless playing their role in our democracy. Do we really imagine that that can be replaced by a world of Twitterers—or tweeps, as we Twitterers are called—bloggers and Facebookers? Is that really going to cut the mustard? Is that going to be enough? We have read a lot about social media being a great adjunct and addition to news gathering, but is it a substitute for it? Can it replace it, or will we just be left in a sort of wilderness of opinion?

We support this bill, but it raises issues of great moment and issues that I trust all of us in this place will be focusing on. It gets back to what Jefferson said. He of course had plenty of disagreements with newspapers. They were even more pungent in those days than they are today. He said that, if he were given a choice between a government with no newspapers or newspapers with no government, he would choose newspapers every time. I think all of us recognise the important role of the press and of freedom of the press, but we also have to recognise that the business model that has supported it—whether it is the press in terms of newsprint or free-to-air television news—is under very, very serious threat. There are big issues for our democracy in the area of convergence.

They are assembled here, as we are, to lament what  was one of the great crimes against humanity, not  simply a crime against the Greeks, the Assyrians and  the Armenians but a crime against humanity—the  elimination, the execution, the murder of hundreds of  thousands;  of millions of people for no reason other  than that they were different. In this case it was that  they were not Turks, just as the Jews were eliminated  by the Nazis because they were not Germans. This type of crime, this sort of genocidal crime, is something that  sadly is not unique in our experience. As my friend the  member for North Sydney said, we must own up to it  and we must recognise it for what it is.

Our friends—they are also our friends—in Turkey  take offence sometimes when this matter is debated but they should not, because the Ottoman Empire’s record as a multicultural society was outstanding for hundreds and hundreds of years. The Jews and many other minorities had a much better and safer experience under the Ottoman Empire than they did in the Christian West. The Ottoman Empire tolerated—encouraged—a degree of what today we would call multiculturalism. The crimes against the Christians of the Middle East, the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Pontic Greeks and so many others were and can be seen as, in effect, an aberration, a denial, of that multicultural genius of  that very diverse empire which, for many centuries, saw the Ottoman khalif, the sultan, ruling more Christians than he did Muslims.

This should not be seen as a debate that is critical of Turks or indeed critical of Islam. The tragedy that we see today in the Middle East is in fact a denial of the best experience of Islam. For hundreds of years the Islamic world was far more tolerant of diversity than the Christian West and yet today we see now, over the last century, the extraordinary destruction of Christianity in the Middle East.

In the sixth century, the Greek monk John Moschos and his friend Sophronius travelled through the Middle East during what would seem now, with the benefit of  hindsight, almost like a phony war, before the rise of Islam in the late sixth century. They wrote a book called The Spiritual Meadow and it describes their travels through the whole of the Christian culture of the Middle East. Great monasteries, cities, countries that we now think as being Muslim countries, Islamic countries, were wholly Christian with an enormous diversity of Christian, cultural experience. There were very large Jewish communities right through that region as well. While Islam grew and grew after the Islamic invasions and the Islamic conquests, those Christian communities survived for hundreds of years under the Ottomans. But then, ironically, paradoxically, at a time when you would think that modernity had made us more tolerant and more sophisticated, we in fact became less tolerant.

The truth is that multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance are great strengths. It is one of our great strengths as a nation. Who would deny that Istanbul is a less dynamic city now because it is less cosmopolitan, that Smyrna is less dynamic now because it is less cosmopolitan, that Alexandria in Egypt is less dynamic and powerful and rich and persuasive now because it has become a monoculture? We lament today great crimes but also the loss of diversity and the loss of tolerance.

This is a profoundly difficult task because the tactical success, for example, of the American surge in killing Taliban units, in picking off their leaders and in preventing them from doing their work, will be of no long-term effect unless the host government is able to build its capacity and its credibility with the Afghan people to take over the task. If that does not happen, as the US ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry said at the time in his opposition to the surge, if the Karzai government in this case is unable to develop that capacity and confidence, then all of those tactical successes will turn out to bear little fruit and may indeed prove thoroughly counterproductive.

So we are asking our soldiers not simply to be warriors. Yes, there is plenty of fighting to do, as we have seen from the many deaths and injuries that were discussed in the House earlier today, but we are asking them also to be nation builders in the most difficult to imagine environment.

Much has been said about this very difficult war in Afghanistan, and we should debate it more often in this place. One of our omissions as a parliament has been that we have committed Australian troops to this long war for a long time but have given relatively little attention to debating why they went there in the first place, why they are staying there and what the strategy is for them to leave and finally come home. We owe our troops much more attention. Loyalty, devotion and gratitude are a given, but we owe them our responsibility, our intellect, our care and our consideration in determining whether and to what extent the mission remains warranted. It should always be a matter of constant justification to the Australian people and our serving men and women as to why they remain in harm’s way.

Today, however, I want to speak directly to the Australians serving us in Afghanistan, to the Australians who will serve us there in the future and to the families who support them when they are there fighting on our behalf. It is not only soldiers fighting for us in Afghanistan. The Australian Federal Police fight against narcotics networks and organised crime syndicates. They fight to train the police in a country that has known neither policing nor justice for many, many years. Specialists from AusAID fight to improve access to education for skills and to the basic amenities of life that all of us here take for granted. Diplomats fight to carve out a space in which democratic government can function in a country which has known neither democracy nor, in most places, government for hundreds of years.

I say to all those Australians: your task is not an easy one. It is hard for Australians at home to understand the work you do in that distant nation. We do not know what it means to mentor an Afghan soldier, to teach an Afghan carpenter, to explain the rule of law to police who have never known it. We cannot envisage the magnitude of your task in a province where travel takes days and deadly bombs are hidden under the roads, maiming children, killing you, your colleagues, the soldiers you are working with and the people whom you are seeing to help. We try to compare your work in Afghanistan with the wars we think we know about or have read about—Vietnam, World War I, perhaps, or smaller engagements such as that in East Timor. But you know that each war is different, and our task in Afghanistan—your task—is more complex than many of us realise here at home. Explaining your work is not easy, and we have often struggled both to thank you for doing it and, more importantly, cogently and persuasively justifying why we have sent you there.

But for you, as for the soldiers of many years passed and many wars passed, there will come a time when you return home. We do not get to determine that date now, for your war is being fought in a place where the tide of progress ebbs and flows daily and the enemy can still shape your environment. But you will return soon and we should envisage what that return will look like. When you return we will not declare victory. Afghanistan will look much like it does today. There will still be violence and grief, peril and passion, corruption and crime, but there will be the promise, thanks to you, of what is possible. The work you have done has shown Afghans that progress is indeed possible, that women can be educated rather than shunned and that disputes can be resolved with wisdom and justice rather than with wounds and violence.

You will leave a province where families can speak across valleys on mobile phones, where new roads lead to new markets and where Afghan soldiers know how to conduct a security operation. You know that you will not have eradicated the Taliban or corruption, but you will have made a difference. You will have lit a spark of progress in Oruzgan province that may take many years; it may even take a generation to grow beyond a flicker, but grow surely it will, and it would never have been lit without you and your sacrifice. At some point you will pack away your tools and weapons, you will say goodbye to the Afghans with whom you have worked and sweated and shivered for months and you will get on planes to return to our shores. What will returning with honour look like for you in Australia? When you return we must all learn from your experience. We must ensure that your hard-won lessons are recorded, that your knowledge of Afghanistan and her people do not go to waste. But we must also learn more about how and why we get into and out of wars—notoriously easier to get into than to get out of. We must examine our military strategy in Afghanistan and our foreign policy goals and honestly judge and examine, unclouded by patriotic sentiment and the desire to support the efforts and courage of our troops, in a hard-headed way how effective we have been in our efforts in Afghanistan, both in the conduct of operations and in our decision making to commit and ultimately to depart. We must think deeply and debate honestly about how and where we are willing to use military force in the future.

We honour our dead and we respect and care for our living in the ADF best when we are honest and open and use our keenest intellects to assess the merits of commitment, the manner of engagement and ask always whether we, in putting you into harm’s way, are doing so in a manner that serves our national interest. We honour you, we respect you, your service, by ensuring that at all times we can say, ‘Yes, we are not committed to this conflict simply because we made a decision years ago and we have not reviewed it.’ We respect and honour you by examining that commitment and justifying it anew in the light of the present circumstances.

When you return we must ensure that we protect those Afghans who protected you. As we did in Iraq, we must do all we can to protect our Afghan interpreters and their families from recrimination. We must remind the leadership in Oruzgan that we can still provide advice, even if we will no longer provide a permanent presence. When you return we must never take our eyes off Afghanistan and Pakistan again. We must maintain the ability with our allies to know if terrorist groups are developing sanctuaries and to assist our allies in striking at those sanctuaries and destroying them. When you return we must establish long-term sustainable methods of supporting the fledgling, fractured democracy of Afghanistan. Where we can help in developing democratic mechanisms and supporting the infrastructure of that nation, we should. We Australians are a nation with long experience in educating children across remote areas and vast distances and we should seek to bring that expertise to Afghanistan’s growing education system. We must help to maintain the access the Afghans are having to knowledge today, thanks to your work, so that the Taliban cannot return their country, Afghanistan, and the people of that country, to darkness. When you return we must not forget you. We must make sure that we treat your invisible wounds as well as the visible ones. We must not repeat the mistakes of past wars and forgotten soldiers.

We should be at the cutting edge of research in post traumatic stress, into mild traumatic brain injury, and into methods to reintegrate you into your families and communities. We must remember that these invisible wounds affect diplomats, police and aid workers as well as soldiers. Only recently, I was at the Randwick Barracks and met with two of your comrades who are suffering from mild traumatic brain injury—a mysterious illness that crept up on them. After an incident, one of these soldiers led his company for several weeks until finally, bit by bit, it became apparent that he was suffering from a very serious injury, an injury that he struggles to understand. Regrettably, the bureaucrats who should be caring for him struggle to understand it too. We have to lift our game there enormously. We are simply not coping. We as a nation, as a government, are not coping well enough with the challenges of the injuries you have suffered. We have to do much better. When you return we must support your families who have supported you for so long, and without whom you would not be able to do your job in the stressful and dangerous circumstances you found in Afghanistan for months on end.

Returning with honour, and you will return with the greatest honour, will not, however, be easy. Transition from war, from Afghanistan, will be hard. But we must, as a nation, prepare for it now and support you in what will be a difficult process so that you always know that you do not simply have our support in the ‘rah rah’ sense of  ’we’re with you boys’; you will have the support of our intellect, our judgment and, above all, our commitment to ensure that the values you fought for are defended in the future and that the injuries that you have suffered, no matter how new to medical science they may be today, are dealt with compassionately and comprehensively. (Time expired)

The exhibition always draws a huge crowd and is immensely popular as the annual tide of Sydneysiders begins to flow into the area with the start of summer.

This year, South Korean artist Byeong-Doo Moon received People’s Choice Prize for his ‘cosmic elk’ — a stainless steel sculpture looking out towards Bronte and beyond to the Maroubra Headland.

Sadly the exhibition only runs for around three weeks and most of the sculptures will now be packed up.  But many of the exhibits can be still be purchased - a great way to support some of our most talented young Australian artists.  Visit the Sculpture by the Sea website for more details.

Malcolm spoke with the editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, about the newspaper’s paywall and business model. They discussed inquiries into the media in both the U.K. and Australia and the viability of quality journalism as newspapers around the world shed staff.
Tweet

Malcolm spoke with the editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, about the newspaper’s paywall and business model. They discussed inquiries into the media in both the U.K. and Australia and the viability of quality journalism as newspapers around the world shed staff. Click here for Part Two of the video.

Tweet

The extension of the Rose Bay Marina will have a long and lasting effect on the local community.  The proposal has gone to the Joint Regional Planning Panel, an independent body that is part of the NSW planning process.

The JRPP is compelled to take community views into account when assessing developments, so it is important that local residents ensure their voices are heard on this important issue.  This survey is being conducted to facilitate that community consultation and the results will be presented to the JRPP.

The proposed extension of the Rose Bay Marina would see:

• The extension of the eastern arm of the marina with 49 new berths for 15-metre boats.
• Converting swing moorings for new pontoons, which enable owners to walk to boats rather than row out and allowing more berths.
• The changes would mean an additional 58 new berths in total, increasing the total from 82 to 140.
• Allow over 20 ’superboats’ — that is, boats over 20 metres in length.
• New marina arms of 4.2 metres wide, open to the public, creating an extension of Rose Bay promenade.

The proposed development has twice been rejected by Woollahra Council (the visual impact statement submitted in 2008 is available online here).  The company behind the extension has a website explaining its proposed development (visit here). 

To ensure that this survey is as accurate as possible, respondents are asked to give their names and emails, although these will remain confidential unless a respondent indicates they would like their comments to be published.

The survey become more scientific with every additional resident who completes it — so please, pass this on to a friend so they can complete it as well or Tweet this page or else recommend it on Facebook:

Koko is the star of the movie Red Dog – a new Australian movie shot in Adelaide and the Pilbara – and a panting pin-up among most of us canines.

Koko sniffed Malcolm out at a conference the Screen Producer Association of Australia in Sydney, where he was talking about throwing a bone to the Australian film industry as it recovers from the GFC.

Koko is my favourite movie pooch since Turner and Hooch – and also looks much like my old best friend, Rusty the red cattle dog who sadly died a few years ago.

I just hope Malcolm doesn’t come home with too much puppy love for Koko, who knows more than 60 commands – Koko is six and we are 11, so at our very distinguished age, we are definitely in the “can’t teach old dogs new tricks” department. On the other hand, there is always potential for humans to learn new tricks: more walks, more regular meals, allowing us to sleep on the bed…its a long list.

You see thats the point about humans and dogs. With humans there is always room for improvement.

JoJo and Mellie

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL BONGIORNO

MEET THE PRESS

Subjects: Carbon Tax, Newspoll, Media Inquiry, Problem Gambling

……………………………………………………………………………

PAUL BONGIORNO:

Good morning Malcolm Turnbull. We now have a carbon price in law. The modelling that will be released today, handed down by the CSIRO, is saying it will be less than Treasury first modelled. Does this feed into Julia Gillard’s hope that the political sting will go out to the debate now?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I’m sure it does, but we’ll know for sure in about six months when the Carbon Tax takes effect. Australian households will make up their own minds on their experience after it happens.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

How different is what we have now from the agreement that you and Kevin Rudd came to on carbon pricing?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It has similarities, but it has big differences. It is a worse scheme than the one we agreed to in 2009. The big problem with it is that it is a carbon tax. For the first three years, the price is fixed. Under the old CPRS, the old Emissions Trading Scheme, the price was fixed for one year only at a relatively low price and then it fluctuated with supply and demand. If you have a floating carbon price that’s to say the permit is fixed, but the price is allowed to float, that means that when the economy slows down and demand for energy drops, then the price will come down.

That cushions the blow of a declining economy, just as lowering interest rates does. And then ditto, when the economy takes off, energy demand increases and the price comes up. That puts a little bit of a brake on it. A floating carbon price operates as an automatic stabiliser. It is being set at a high price for three years. And they have a cap and a collar on it. It is a much less flexible system than the one which Kevin Rudd tried to implement.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

Despite the heat and fury of the carbon debate and vote. The Newspoll during the week picked up what looks like an interesting trend. Since September the gap between the parties after preferences has narrowed from 18 points to six points. Is it something of an amber light for the Coalition, do they need to change political tactics now?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Firstly, these polls come and go. The Government’s fortunes will always go up and down. The reality is they are still in a situation where if there was an election held now, they would lose and lose very very badly.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

That’s true but trends do matter this far out, don’t they? It does look like a trend is happening.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

One poll does not an electoral turnaround make –

PAUL BONGIORNO:

True, that’s why we talked about a trend. I noticed that Tony Abbott and certainly the Opposition Leader in the Senate saying that they will turn the next election into a mandate to repeal the carbon tax. But this mandate argument is overcooked, isn’t it? After all, you had a mandate, as did Kevin Rudd to introduce a carbon price. That didn’t stop Tony Abbot and the Greens from failing to agree to back that mandate.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I think Tony Abbott, having made the commitment and dedicated his political life to repealing the Carbon Tax, and swearing a blood oath to repeal it is hardly in a position to change course. If Tony Abbott is elected Prime Minister you can be assured that he will do everything he can, every possible thing to repeal the Carbon Tax.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

And you would expect Labor and the Greens to share the same respect for his mandate as he did for theirs?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

They might roll over, but I think you would have to assume they would not. If the Senate voted against it we would be back to the polls in six months of an election at a double dissolution to try to get over the Senate deadlock.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

Going to the Government’s Australia Network Asia satellite service – which is really, what do they call it, ‘soft diplomacy’ into Asia – there’s no doubt that it is a mess, but should the Government never have gotten into this mess? Why would you ask commercial news services to do what no other country on earth does, and that is to contract out its diplomacy?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

The ABC is independent of the Government so the fact that it is owned by the Government does not make the main mouthpiece of Government policy. As many Government minister have complained over the years.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

That’s true, but it is the national broadcaster?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It is the national broadcaster and I have great affection for it. But nonetheless it’s good to have a tender and you have Sky TV willing and able to do the job. I think having that tender there is perfectly sensible. The tragedy is that all of the expenses of that tender have been thrown away because of division, antagonism and bitter hatreds between ministers, particularly between Rudd and Gillard and Conroy. All of that makes the Government quite dysfunctional. A house divided cannot rule.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

Do you think the Murdoch connection could be a problem? We know for example, Mr Murdoch had to pull Sky News out of China because the Chinese didn’t like the news service.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well Sky actually has landing rights in China and they would be able to get a program into China. Although, that I think that is a testament to the connections of Kerry Stokes rather than Mr Murdoch’s.

–SEGMENT TWO–

FRAN KELLY:

Malcolm Turnbull, things are getting worse for NewsCorp as we just saw. Is this damaging for the reputation of NewsCorp?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Of course and I think they acknowledge that. They have taken a reputation hit but it is a big company – the newspaper is a pretty small part of it these days and getting smaller. The big issue in the media today is the fact that the business model of newspapers has declined to a point where newspapers are closing just about everywhere and struggling to stay open where they haven’t closed. The big question is what is the business model that is going to support quality journalism going forward.

FRAN KELLY:

We going to get to a discussion about quality journalism and the whole media enquiry, but to stay with news at the moment. Rupert Murdoch is getting directly involved in Australia as the chairman of News Limited. Do you think that’s an issue for the image and the culture of news here?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I doubt whether Rupert will be any more involved in Australia now than he was before. I suspect that bringing Kim Williams in…Kim Williams has taken over everything Hartigan was doing, I’m sure of that. The title of Chairman will be retained by Rupert Murdoch but I don’t think…He has got a huge global organisation and Australia, while important and sentimentally more important than it is financially, I can’t imagine it’s going to take up more of his time than it has in the past.

PETER HARTCHER:

Mr Turnbull, from your earlier answer – that you expect an election and a vote for Tony Abbott would be in likelihood, a vote for a second election or double dissolution shortly after – do you think that’s a good electoral strategy for a political party to be offering the public two elections within a few months if they’re voted for?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

If that is the strategy Tony Abbott has offered…You’re the commentator but the reality is if the Labor Party were defeated at the next election and the election were effectively a referendum on repealing the Carbon Tax and the Labor Party were defeated they may choose to roll over.

But you would have to assume they wouldn’t and they certainly wouldn’t say they would and of course at the election. So you have to be upfront and this is what Tony has said. If the Senate doesn’t pass the repealing legislation there will be another election as a double dissolution. You couldn’t waste any time doing that because otherwise the Carbon Tax would continue even further.

PETER HARTCHER:

Coming to the media inquiry. Do you think that there’s any avenue that the media inquiry could usefully pursue? Or do you think the whole thing is a total waste of time and money?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It was a political stunt. It was designed to have a slap at News Limited to take advantage of the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom. There’s no doubt about that. I’m not sure what it’s going to do. The big issue is the one I just canvassed. The big issue I think is the issue of what price democracy when a big chunk of quality journalism ceases to have a business model that can support it. What price democracy – who guards the guardians when journalism gets gutted by the decline of the newspapers? Can you replace the quality journalism of big, profitable newspapers that only they could afford? Can you replace that with a world of tweets and bloggers and Facebook users?

PETER HARTCHER:

I don’t think the inquiry’s even going to begin to answer that question.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

If they’re not looking at that, that is the big question.

FRAN KELLY:

Isn’t there another question about looking at what price democracy within our print and other media in terms of a watchdog? The Press Council, everyone agrees at this inquiry, has very little impact. Is their value in giving more protections to ordinary people, people that can’t afford to go to expensive courts, to have wrongs against them perpetrated by the media, corrected properly, effectively and officially.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It is worth having a look at that. I have always had a view that one of the biggest problems we face is the cumbersome nature of the libel laws and I’ve argued for many years that we should reform the libel laws so that if a newspaper, let’s say a newspaper but it could be a TV or radio station, if a newspaper publishes something that somebody believes is defamatory and that person puts in their complaint – if the newspaper publishes a prompt apology and correction – then the person who was defamed should have no action for damages unless they have suffered specific financial loss. If their pastry shop’s customers have gone away but if it is just a damage to reputation, they can’t make a claim. That balances I think, fairly three important public interests – the press’s interest in free speech, the individual’s interest in protecting their reputation and the third one, often overlooked, the public’s interest in getting accurate information on matters of public importance in a timely fashion. If you did that, editors would have a real incentive to correct things and correct them quickly.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

We are running out of time unfortunately but I notice that you have asked people to respond on your website to poker machine reform and you have had –

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Please go to my website.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

And you have had Tim Costello on your website – he of course, believes, as the Productivity Commission, that there should be mandatory pre-commitment. Is that what you’re aiming to come through to?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I am not persuaded by mandatory pre-commitment and I think the Coalition’s right not to support. Only because I don’t think it will work.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

You have had 4,000 hits, what do they say?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I’ve had more than that – nearly 5,000 people have completed quite a long survey and have put in their name and address and details.

FRAN KELLY:

What did they say?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Over 60 per cent – this is a running total and it changes – but over 60 per cent support mandatory pre-commitment. The overwhelming majority do support some change to the law. A very large percentage support having a maximum bet level of $1. That, I suspect, because it is a much simpler easy-to-understand change, is where the reform debate is going to focus on in the future. I think mandatory pre-commitment is great in theory but it’s extraordinarily complex and is easy to evade. Because what you can do is say, “I only want to lose $1 million per day.”

PAUL BONGIORNO:

But I’m sure somebody who doesn’t earn that kind of money would be shocked if they put that on their mandatory pre-commitment.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

But they do that to give themselves the option of losing as much as they like.

PAUL BONGIORNO:

Thank you very much, Malcolm Turnbull.

ENDS

The jacket in question has a history of its own. I received a few compliments – and also some flak – after wearing it two days after the 2010 Federal election on an episode of the ABC’s qanda (the independents still hadn’t decided who would form Government and I was, as I said, courting the informal vote).

I was very fond of the leather jacket but unfortunately its utility shrank with my waist – I dropped two jacket sizes this year after deciding to lose a few kilos. So I auctioned it on eBay and found the jacket was worth more online than on me – it raised an amazing $1800.

The money will now go to the Wayside Chapel, a charity which is many ways is in keeping with the spirit of the jacket. It’s not just because Wayside collects and distributes clothes but because of its unique approach to social justice – its motto is “We’re not much like a church, which might suit you if you’re not much like a Christian”.

The charity continues to do marvellous work but in the lead up to the festive season, it is a sad fact that it needs a lot more than $1800 to carry on its work. To give to the charity, please visit its website here.

All videos are welcomed — please email any new videos to malcolm.turnbull.mp@aph.gov.au.  Your opinion counts!

Clubs Australia executive director Anthony Ball sent a video outlining the effect mandatory pre-commitment will have on clubs and Clubs Australia’s preferred policies to treat problem gambling.

Australian Christian Churches Gambling Taskforce chairman Tim Costello welcolmed the launch of the Coalition’s online survey into Problem Gambling and argues the case for a maximum bet of $1.

John started his journalistic career as a copy boy at Fairfax but by 1970 had moved to the News Ltd Sydney afternoon paper “The Daily Mirror”. His career saw him work in London and New York on News Ltd papers and he has edited daily newspapers in Queensland and Sydney including for many years the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. He has been Chief Executive of News Ltd since 2000.

“The newspaper business is always a challenging one, but the digital era has presented real threats to the viability of newspapers and the journalism it has supported. John has always been deeply committed to the newspaper business and to journalism. Above all, through all the controversy and political dramas, John has been a ferocious advocate for freedom of the press.” Malcolm said.

“He was uniquely placed to take over as News Ltd CEO from Ken Cowley  because he knew the Australian media and political landscape intimately. He used the same same skills of charm and wry humour he had used with great effect at the Telegraph to get what he wanted as a chief executive.”

“He was always direct, informal and never stood on ceremony.   During his leadership, whilst newspapers came under challenge from the internet and social media, News Ltd’s papers remained successful  and its electronic interests in Foxtel and Fox Sports also thrived.”

“He leaves a great company for Kim Williams to take over. John says that he expects to be focussing his attention on Bondi Beach in future. While I would hesitate to suggest there is the faintest tinge of inaccuracy, even implausability, in such a distinguished journalist’s remarks,  and while as the Member for Wentworth I can hardly question the allure of Bondi, nonetheless I feel that John Hartigan’s remarkable business and media career is far from over. He is one of the fittest 64 year olds I know and I have no doubt we will be hearing a lot more from Mr Hartigan in theyears ahead. Well done John and good luck – not just at the beach either!”

INTERVIEW WITH FRAN KELLY

ABC RADIO NATIONAL

Subjects: Australia Network Tender; Carbon Price

……………………………………………………………………………

FRAN KELLY:

The Shadow Communications Minister joins us now, Malcolm Turnbull is in our breakfast studio. Malcolm Turnbull welcome.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good morning.

FRAN KELLY:

The Government says it’s acting on legal advice to abandon the tender, does the Government have any choice if that’s the legal advice coming from the Solicitor-General?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I don’t think it’s got a lot of choice really, the tender has been hopelessly compromised by the political infighting, factional infighting between Conroy, Rudd and Gillard. And there has clearly been strategic leaking from a number of office, in order to undermine the favoured candidate of each of those players. This is a government that is just so hopelessly divided and dysfunctional it’s barely able to operate. It can’t even run a tender.

FRAN KELLY:

Well the Government says it’s been compromised not by political infighting, but by the leaks, the media leaks. Do you accept that the media leaks have made it difficult for this to be a straightforward transparent process?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

But hang on, the media leaks, they’re not leaks by the media, I mean this is not the media’s fault. The leaks have been done by, and you know this as well as I do Fran, this has been done by politicians or people working for politicians in order to advance a particular point of view. It’s well known that there is enormous dissention in the Gillard cabinet about whether Sky News, which of course has got a, partly owned by News Ltd., should get the job, or whether the ABC the National Broadcaster where we are now, should continue with it.

FRAN KELLY:

The Government’s referring this to the AFP so if these are political leaks as you’re suggesting, if they’ve come from a political office, it’s sticking the Federal Police on to itself?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Yeah, and the Federal Police won’t find, those inquiries rarely come up with anything because the journalists will refuse to cooperate, so they won’t get anywhere. Governments always do that, they rarely find anything out. What they really need to do I think is to get the Auditor-General this is what we’ve called for, the Auditor-General to do a thorough investigation of this whole process because the process has been rotten. Now I think that’s one thing, that’s to deal with the past. As for the future, the process going forward should be a thoroughly transparent one. We need to have real confidence in it. Let those parties – Sky, ABC, anyone else perhaps, any other broadcaster who wants to pitch to do this job to being Australia’s public face to our region, let them put their best foot forward and let the submissions, and the pitch be transparent, and let sunlight be the betting.

FRAN KELLY:

And on that point of letting whoever wants to put their hand up to be, to compete to be the public face for this Nation to the region, The Greens, we spoke to the Greens earlier, they say that is a job for the National broadcaster, its not a job for a commercial entity. I mean should this have been put to tender in the first place in your view?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I, I can understand that point of view but I don’t agree with it.

FRAN KELLY:

Why not?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I’ve got enormous respect and indeed affection for the ABC, but it isn’t the only broadcaster in Australia.  It should become complacent in the knowledge that it’s always going to get that particular job. And I think SKY is an Australian operation, sure it’s got a number of shareholders and they’re not all Australian but it should be able to put its case forward and may the best candidate win. Indeed, one of the free-to-air networks could put their case forward to it, as well. The ABC comes with enormous credentials and enormous assets and brings that to bear but if the ABC is so good, then it should be able to stand up to competition.

FRAN KELLY:

Malcolm Turnbull, briefly on another issue, the Senate will vote and pass into law the price on carbon today. Once it comes in, do you think public opinion will turn in favour of a price on carbon — as it once was?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, I think what will happen is once it is introduced — once it becomes law — it’ll be judged on the reality. That’s the truth. You know, I think a lot of Australians are by now completely confused by the claim and counter claim and the proof of this pudding will be in the eating. You know, it’s a bit like the mining tax. I mean, Andrew Forrest has been saying that the mining tax, if it is introduced, will be such that BHP, Rio Tinto and Xstrata won’t pay any tax. Now, the government says that’s complete rubbish.

FRAN KELLY:

Well, what do you think? You’re well schooled in these issues.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, if it is passed, we’ll find out.

FRAN KELLY:

How complicated would the winding back process be? Because, the Opposition has said that if it wins government it will unwind the carbon tax. If there’s not an election until 2013, how viable is that do you think — how difficult?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, I think it’s legislatively fairly straightforward. If the Coalition is elected at the next election, and if this is our platform, to wind it back, then we’ve obviously got to do that. If the Senate doesn’t go along with that Tony Abbott has undertaken to have a double dissolution election and make that the issue. Now, assuming that he wins that election, then it would be repealed. It’s not without a lot of difficulty in that, I think there are three elements that you’ve got to nail down. Firstly, you’ve got to repeal it. Secondly, you’ve got to then deal with the benefits, and either repeal them as well or work out an alternative way of funding them. And thirdly, and this is going to be in a sense the most challenging part of it — it will be necessary to be very focussed in repealing the carbon tax, on businesses reducing their prices to recognise the lifting of the tax. Because, of course, if you remove the tax and, say, remove the benefit, but prices didn’t come down, people would be very unhappy.

FRAN KELLY:

Malcolm Turnbull, thank you very much for joining us on breakfast.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

No worries.

ENDS

Subjects: Australia Network Tender; Carbon Price
……………………………………………………………………………

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

The Federal Government has scrapped the tender process it had been using to decide which broadcaster will operate the Australia Network for the next decade. The Government says it’s received legal advice that significant leaks have compromised the process. The ABC currently operates the Australia Network but was in stiff competition with Sky News for the new contract. Malcolm Turnbull is the Opposition’s Communications Spokesman and he joins us from Sydney. Malcolm Turnbull good morning.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good morning.

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

In your view, was this process compromised?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well absolutely, it’s just another bungle, another chapter of incompetence in a long tale of bungling by this government. This process, this tender, which let’s remember is for a very important mission, it is to choose the company, the broadcaster, that is going to deliver the Australia Network which is Australia’s public face in the world and in particular in our region in Asia. So it’s a very important mission of great national significance. Now because of the infighting between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and the acrimony, hatred I suppose, between Stephen Conroy who was part of the gang that got rid of Rudd and put in Gillard and because of all of these antagonisms we’ve seen this leaking and it’s just politics has destroyed this tender and now they’ve had to draw a line under it and try and start again. And it just shows the Government’s dysfunctional because it is so divided.

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

What should the Government do now given what’s happened? Is another tender feasible at all?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well look I’m sure another tender is feasible. There’s a couple of things they should do. Firstly they should get the Australian National Audit Office, the Auditor General, to go through this whole process and produce a report that just describes exactly what has happened. It has been a debacle, a complete embarrassing debacle and the public are entitled to know what happened. Secondly they should have a tender and it should be absolutely straight, it’s recommendations of whoever the tender board is, whoever the committee is that is going to oversee the tender should be made public, it’s got to be fully transparent. See the problem is the public have got every reason to believe now that poisonous personal politics have ruined the integrity of this process and so the only antidote for that is sunlight and transparency. So I’m saying any new process has got to be very very transparent.

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

Does the Coalition have a view as to who should operate Australia Network, ABC or Sky?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I think there’s a range of factors, I mean cost is obviously one. The nature of the service, the quality of the services that can be brought to bear have got to be put on the table. I wouldn’t prejudge that. But the ABC obviously has enormous strengths, so does Sky News. Let them put their best foot forward and let’s see what their cases are.

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

Now Malcolm Turnbull another issue in your portfolio, the long awaited media inquiry gets under way in Melbourne this morning. Will it achieve much from your perspective?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well, no. We would all love it to a something because they’ve said that one of the things they’re going to look at is what’s happened to the business model of newspapers that has been pretty much trashed by the digital media and the rise of the Internet. If they can find a solution to make newspapers profitable again in a digital age, then I think all of their critics – even those in the News Limited newspapers – will be giving them laurel wreaths to wear as champions.

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

Now I would just remind viewers who have just tuned in, we will of course go back to the Los Angeles county court house once that Michael Jackson verdict comes in.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Media policy in Australia can’t compete with that.

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

No, no, and we all play second fiddle to that type of thing. We will press on, though, with some domestic issues. Malcolm Turnbull as a long-term supporter of emissions trading, are you happy that the Government’s carbon pricing scheme is about to clear its last Parliamentary hurdle today?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well we’ve said the Government should not have proceeded with this carbon tax because — for a range of reasons. But probably the best reason is that they said — they promised just before the election that there wouldn’t be a carbon tax under a Gillard Government. So this exercise is a complete breech of that promise. But you know one of the interesting points about this carbon tax is that it is in fact a tax, it’s a fixed price. That is not a form of pricing carbon I’ve ever supported. I have supported, and indeed it was Coalition policy as we all know, to have an Emissions Trading Scheme. And the virtue of an Emissions Trading Scheme is that the price goes up and down, depending on economic conditions. So if the economy is weak, demand for energy is low, the price will come off. If the economy is strong, demand for energy is strong, then the price will go up. And so there’s an element of an automatic stabiliser there.

Now you’ve seen therefore in Europe carbon pricing come down – where they do have a big Emissions Trading Scheme – carbon prices have come down because of the weak economic conditions there. Now the carbon price in Europe is now significantly lower than the fixed price that the Gillard Government has set.

MICHAEL ROWLAND:

Malcolm Turnbull we will have to leave that now. Events in Los Angeles dictate that we cross there. But I really appreciate your time this morning, thankyou very much.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

No worries, thankyou.

ENDS

Subjects: Political Debate; Climate Change; Gay Marriage
……………………………………………………………………………

ANDREW O’KEEFE:

Now, have you ever wanted to grill a politician? Not literally – have you just wanted to asked them some big, tough questions? Well this is the segment for you.

SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:

Welcome to ‘your guest’ where you can put your questions to Australia’s biggest decision makers. Malcolm Turnbull is the first to step up to the plate. Malcolm thankyou for joining us.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good to be with you.

SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:

Now we have received lots of questions for you. David Trescuri sent this one in via Facebook: ‘What do you think of the current state of Australian politics becoming little more than a sledging contest?’

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well politics is always contentious and everyone always complains about sledging in politics. They always say Oppositions are too negative – every Opposition leader has been criticised for being too negative. Every Government is criticised for not focussing on the issues at hand. I think the real problem that we have at the moment, the reason why politics is so tough, is that Parliament is very finely balanced, it’s a hung Parliament so the Government could fall at any time. And the Government isn’t doing a good job. At the end of the day, the Government is the big issue. You know, people like to talk about the Opposition, particularly in Canberra, but the real issue is the Government. Because they’re the ones running the country – or not running the country as is the case at the moment.

ANDREW O’KEEFE:

The old timers who have been around for ever and ever, do however say there is a less cordial tone in Canberra these days and that whoever is in Opposition now opposes for opposition’s sake.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well this is the – look, I’ll tell you a story about Mike Rann that he told me years ago. After he had been Opposition leader for about six or seven years, he was listening to the radio one day and he thought, ‘who is this negative, carping person on the radio and then he realised it was him’. The problem is, you see, it doesn’t matter who the leader is but the Opposition’s job is to criticise the Government so it will always be criticised for being negative.

ANDREW O’KEEFE:
Malcolm our next question, via Facebook, from Jesse Corling, asking: ‘Why don’t you make a tilt at the leadership and end the train wreck politics has become?’ We’ll leave out the second part of that question, I think we’ve covered the train wreck of politics. But when are you going to take a tilt at the leadership.

SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:

But interesting because a lot of people say to me, I would vote Liberal if Malcolm was the leader.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well that’s very flattering, and if they’re in Wentworth they can vote for me and I would encourage them to do so. Look Tony’s doing a very good job, the polls show that and it’s clear he has everyone’s personal support.

ANDREW O’KEEFE:

Well the polls aren’t showing that recently, in fact his personal approval ratings have just come down. I think there is a perception with Mr Abbott that he’s a wrecker, you know, we know what he doesn’t like. We know that he doesn’t like the NBN, we know he doesn’t like a mining tax, we know he doesn’t like limitations on how much people can gamble but we don’t know what he does like. And I think people perceive with you, Malcolm, that you actually stand for something positive.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I’ll accept the compliment but I’ll defend Tony.

ANDREW O’KEEFE:

Take that as a comment?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I’ll take that as a compliment as opposed to a comment.

SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:

Okay, we’ll leave it there. Marcus Magrath asks, still on the Tony Abbott theme: “Would you ever wear budgie smugglers?”

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well I have worn budgie smugglers but I think it’s something politicians should be careful about unless they’re incredibly fit and athletic like Mr Abbottt. He’s of course a super athlete and he looks pretty good when he’s out and about in his budgie smugglers but I prefer to be fully clad when I’m in the public eye.

ANDREW O’KEEFE:

A very good point and a great idea. Chris Ogilvie sent this question via Twitter, please explain to weekend sunrise viewers, “Is climate change happening or not?”

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Yeah, well certainly it is. There’s no question that the planet is getting warmer and overwhelming consensus of scientists say that is because we’re putting more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. I mean the physics of this is pretty straightforward. The reason the earth isn’t not a frozen lump of ice is because of the greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, and others, that atmosphere is like a blanket and that insulates the earth otherwise no life would exist here. We have been putting more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, principally by burning fossil fuels, and the planet has been warming over that period since the industrial revolution. Now every decade of the last three decades has been warmer than the one before. Interestingly, there’s been an argument put in the United States by climate sceptics that temperature record was faulty and that temperature records had been influenced by urbanisation and so forth. One of the big financiers of the anti-climate change movement is a group family called Koch, K-O-C-H, and they put a lot of money into these climate sceptic organisations and they’ve got big interests in fossil fuels. And they funded, together with others, a study at Berkley University California to really look at this temperature record and presumably they hoped that it would demonstrate that it was not reliable. In fact, the results are in and what it has demonstrated is that yes, what the scientists have been saying is right, the earth is getting warmer. Of course there are still people…

ANDREW O’KEEFE:

And that’s a study funded by sceptics themselves?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Well it is yeah. So it’s sort of the biter bit really.

ANDREW O’KEEFE:

It’s interesting, if nine out of ten electricians told you you needed to rewire your kitchen or someone would get killed, you’d do it. But if nine out of ten climate scientists say let’s rewire the earth or we’ll all die, everyone says they’re full of it.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I always say the comparison, its like people who, you know, ignore the science, they’re like the guy that gets told by his doctor to stop smoking, lose weight but decides not to do that because his mate down at the pub said his uncle Ernie lived to 95 and smoked a packet every day, you know. I mean it’s ridiculous.

SAMANTHA ARMYTAGE:

Ok really quickly on this last one, Shane Roger Wilksch says “how long before gay marriage is accepted in this country?” What do you think?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Look, I think it’s accepted by many people. I mean, in the sense that same sex couples living together and being given equal respect and recognition to couples of men and women. I think the recognition… it’s a very good question. When will the Australian public feel comfortable about gay marriage being given full recognition from a legal sense. Now, in some respects, this is just about recognition. Because in terms of all the financial, medical, superannuation, legal rights, same sex couples have the same rights as heterosexual couples. So, it’s really now that last issue of marriage. My sense is that there is still a lot of opposition to that.

Whether it’s a majority or not, it’s hard to say. I wouldn’t think it wouldn’t be – certainly not a majority in my electorate. I’ve said this before, I think that if you were to have a vote in the Parliament, I think the Parliament would support civil unions. That is to say you recognise same sex couples but it wasn’t called a marriage. to gay marriage I doubt. Whether it would go so far I don’t think the numbers are there for that at the moment, but things are changing. You cannot, you know, it doesn’t matter what your views are on this. But you can not fail to recognise the dramatic change in public opinion. I mean, for heaven’s sake, we’ve got the conservative Prime Minister of Britain saying the Conservatives are going to sponsor legislation to recognise gay marriage.

ANDREW O’KEEFE

I think people are waiting for some of our legislators to say the same thing. Malcolm Turnbull, thank you very much for being the inaugural sausage on our Your Guest Grill. Thank you to everyone who sent in your questions for Malcolm. We’ll have another guest next week and of course we’ll let you know who that is as soon as possible. Thanks, Malcolm.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Thanks for that.

ENDS

The present system for disability welfare is as inefficient as it is limited; as frayed as it is broken. It is a system where funding is directed to service providers rather than towards the people who need that care themselves or, indeed, towards their carers. If the service providers are not able to meet the requirements of the person suffering from disabilities, that is too bad; if they are, then join the queue. These challenges are multiplied when moving across local boundaries, let alone to a different state.

The concept of a national system, as the Productivity Commission has recommended, would see all Australians contributing to and, should they need it, having access to a well-funded, individualised scheme for their own care where individuals needing support would receive vouchers which they would then be able to spend on service providers who over time would start to provide competitively the services that individuals need.

This scheme will be ambitious and far reaching—indeed, as far reaching as compulsory superannuation, expecting to cover over 360,000 Australians. Most importantly and challengingly, it will seek to double funding from $6 billion to $12 billion towards disability services. After all, we have to recognise that the biggest problem with disability services in Australia has been the lack of funding. The opposition, as the House knows, it committed to working with the government to achieve this outcome, and it has been encouraging, too, to see this concept of a national disability insurance scheme endorsed at COAG. Many of my constituents have raised this matter with me directly, whether it is Principal Ian Gallan from the Wairoa School in Bondi or Dr Chris Blackwell, a local clinician. Many other parents with stories as tragic as they are profound have supported this important initiative.

When I asked him if he had been asked whether there were any other technologies that could deliver 100 megabits per second, he said he had not been asked. I then queried if he had been asked whether 100 megabits per second was the appropriate bandwidth requirement for households, and he said that he had not been asked about that either – it was part of his brief.

In these answer, Mr Quigley has emphatically confirmed the Labor Government made no effort to determine the most cost-effective way of delivering a national broadband network, did not consider any alternative technologies to fibre (or re-using current networks) and did not investigate whether 100 megabits per second was an appropriate speed to target.

As a consequence of this recklessness, driven entirely by the political desire for big headlines, the Government is building Australia’s future communications network in the most expensive and anti-competitive manner conceivable.

Had the Government reflected on the fact that consumers have shown no inclination, here or overseas, to pay for 100 megabits per second because there are no common applications that require that speed it might have elected to do as other developed nations have done and target somewhat lower speeds. How about 80 megabits per second, which is BT’s target to be delivered over Fibre to the Cabinet in the UK?   Or the 40 and 50 megabits per second speeds delivered over FTTN in Germany?

(I note that I was recently informed by government officials in Germany that of the 40 per cent of the country with current access to at least 40 mbps, only 3 per cent elect to buy the top speed tier service, with most consumers preferring to save 10 euros per month by choosing the slowest 16 megabits per second speed.)

Even if 100 megabits per second had to be the target in Australia, Labor did not even consider whether other technologies such as HFC – the Optus and Telstra hybrid fibre-coaxial cables which carry pay TV and pass almost a third of households – could be used.  This notwithstanding that HFC networks in Australia and other countries  today can deliver broadband at 80 to 100 megabits per second, and much higher speeds are achievable (and already being achieved in some countries) over HFC – as  the NBN’s own corporate plan acknowledges.

Around the world, more rational governments and telcos are seeking to weigh up the costs and benefits of increasing broadband speeds in the most cost-effective way.  In Australia the Labor Government made a decision to roll out fibre to the home to more than 90 per cent of the population and, after hiring a very experienced telecommunications industry executive to run the NBN, did not even bother asking his opinion whether this approach was the most cost effective policy, or whether the decreed bandwidth target was appropriate.

The Europeans certainly envy the prosperity we have enjoyed from the rise of Asia and China in particular. They also recognise that during the boom the previous Howard Government paid down debt and put money aside for the future – this stands in marked contrast to the conduct of many European governments (including the Labour Governments of the United Kingdom) which ran deficits right through the good times and now have to cut back at a time when they can least afford to do so, at least not without a great deal of pain.

But there is also real concern about the Gillard Government’s complacency in the face of this good fortune. Several people asked me why we were not establishing a savings fund, as the Norwegians have, as it seemed obvious that the mining boom would not last forever. Others were genuinely amazed at the extravagance of the National Broadband Network. One senior official described the Australian NBN policy as being “from our point of view, completely crazy.”

And no wonder – Germany is well on its way to having universally available very fast broadband. The private sector is doing the job in a competitive market and Government sees its role as being limited to encouraging competiton and providing some modest subsidies to support services in rural areas which would otherwise not be economic.

The British are taking a similar approach. Indeed in the UK, British Telecom is delivering 80 mbps services over fibre to the node – a technology approach which costs a third or less of the fibre to the home approach favoured by the NBN.

In a speech delivered to the London School of Economics “Same bed different dreams: the rise of Asia: a view from Australia”  I argued that this complacency risks undermining the prosperity of future generations. 

The rise of China - the biggest economic transformation in our times – means that our children and grandchildren will be part of a much bigger more competitive global economy where developing markets are challenging us not just for low skill low wage jobs, but highly skilled jobs as well. A key part of our response must be constantly to improve our skills, research and education.

“Our schools and universities should be turning out the world’s top students – not settling for middle of the pack, which is where one measure, the OECD’s PISA study of comparative performance in secondary schooling, suggests many advanced countries find themselves.”  (Full speech in PDF form here or listen to it here.)

**Get Updates in 140 Characters or Less: Follow Malcolm on Twitter **

Meanwhile in Paris, I addressed an international broadband conference outlining the Coalition’s plans for delivering very fast broadband sooner and at much less cost than Labor’s NBN. Other telco operators present at the conference confirmed our approach is much more in line with the approaches they are undertaking in their own countries. 

A study by the Economist showed how extraordinary is Labor’s NBN  – we’re spending the equivalent of 249% of annual fixed line revenues on its construction.  That is more than two and a half times more than the next most lavish spender, Greece and, devoted philhellene though I am – when you make the Greek Government look thrifty, you know something’s very wrong!

Everyone agrees that all Australians should have very fast broadband.  However, the Coalition is achieve this in the way other rational Governments and telcos around the world are doing: upgrade networks in the most cost effective way using a mix of technologies and existing infrastructure where it is economic to do so and at the same time, rather than building a big new government monopoly, promote and encourage private sector facilities based competiton as that is the surest way to ensure access is affordable. 

Wentworth Forums

The Wentworth Federal Electoral Conference has recently hosted two very interesting forums on the future of Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan and reviving our economy’s productivity.

The talks are designed to encourage participation in the conference and allow members to be more proactive in the formation of party policy.  They are open to all members of the public — there is a small door charge for those who are not already members of the Liberal Party Conference.

Both talks featured some very influential speakers – including SBS’s Karen Middleton, former Defence Minister the Hon. Robert Hill, the Lowy Institute’s  James Brown, UNSW Vice Chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer and the Brain & Mind Research Institute’s Dr Ian Hickie.

But the real value of the events is the question-and-answer sessions which have provoked thoughtful discussion and debate from the audience. 

Keep an eye out on my website for future events and other updates.  And please bring a friend!

Woollahra Festival

This year the Woollahra Festival will have a very exciting program when it kicks off from November 10 to 13.  It has confirmed talks from over 165 speakers, including Kate Grenville, Stuart Littlemore and the ABC’s Mark Colvin and Sarah Ferguson.  Lucy and myself will both also talk at various events.

Festival director Carmel Dwyer has also announced that Queen Street will be transformed on November 13, when turf is rolled out for a festival fun day and a final night of dining under the stars on the ‘village green’.  The dinner will feature a menu designed by Bistro Moncur chef Damien Pignolet.

To see the full program or book tickets, visit the festival’s website.

Our Newest Australian Citizens

I recently had the honour of welcoming 14 new Australian citizens at JewishCare’s Citizenship Ceremony in Woollahra. 

I have attended many citizenship ceremonies but this was the first where two Rabbis became citizens – Rabbi Levi Wolff and his wife Chana and children Menachem and Mushka and Rabbi Paul Jacobson.

The ceremony was held outside in the beautiful grounds of Fischl House, and I was joined by Woollahra Councillor Toni Zelzter and JewishCare Patron, Eva Fischl.

The Chairman of JewishCare, Allan Vidor, spoke movingly of the way his parents, Ervin and Charlotte, had been helped by JewishCare when they came to Australia having survived the Holocaust and how much they, and their whole family, owed to Australia for providing them with a beautiful free country in which to make a new home.

Kincoppal Spring Fair

Kincoppal Rose Bay bought the country to the town on Sunday with their Spring Fair which I had the pleasure of opening, along with Principal Mrs Hilary Johnston-Croke.

Lucy and I have a long association with Kincoppal Rose Bay with Lucy and our daughter Daisy both being alumni of the school and, of course, many members of the Hughes family having attended, supported and taught at the school since its establishment.

The Maureen Tudehope Centre was filled with wonderful market stalls and the Fernon Field was bustling with rides, gourmet food and a classic car show.  You can read more about the fair on my website.

Wentworth Indigenous Students Visit Parliament

Parliament recently hosted a group of talented young high school students chosen in the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation (AIEF) scholarship program.

The program is modelled on a scheme started by the St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill under which young indigenous students received education boarding scholarships.

Our office hosted a young student, Nahdia Noter, who is studying at St Vincent’s College in Potts Point under a scholarship.

AIEF CEO Andrew Penfold said the program has taken off in recent years with some very encouraging results.

Of the students who have taken part in the program, the retention and Year 12 attainment rate is 84 per cent – this compares to a national rate of 47 per cent for indigenous students and a rate of 76 per cent for non-Indigenous students.

Speeches and Podcasts

Earlier this month, I addressed the London School of Economics on the rise of China and its impact on Australia.  In Paris, I addressed the Broadband World Forum on upgrading how to fix the mess that Labor has created with its NBN.  It followed a talk I gave to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce on the NBN last month.

In Parliament, I delivered a speech on the 10 year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks and gave a condolence speech on the passing of great Australian artist Margaret Olley.  I outlined the results of the Wentworth same sex marriage survey and reminded the Parliament of Labor’s history when it comes to newspapers, in light of Senator Stephen Conroy’s announcement of an inquiry into the media.

I wrote an opinion piece on the importance of maintaining a free and fearless press and reviewed James Boyce’s book on the founding of Melbourne for the Monthly.

I spoke to ABC’s Radio National about the level of political debate in Australia and addressed the Property Council with Lucy on Australian politics and the future of the internet.  Meanwhile, there are many new podcasts on my website including a conversation with former Age editor Andrew Jaspan on the future of journalism and a talk with American author William Powers on how technology is changing our lives — and not always for the better.

This is a win for consumers and vindicates the Opposition’s criticism of this as a formula for lack of broadband affordability.

The proposal flatly contradicted claims made by Prime Minister Julia Gillard that the NBN will result in lower prices – a proposition that defied economic common sense. Who ever heard of an over capitalised monopoly resulting in lower prices?

Around the world, other governments seek to ensure affordability by promoting competition in broadband fixed line services. But in Australia, uniquely in the world, we have a government that is determined to ensure there is no competition with the NBN.

However while we can welcome the abandonment of the 5% plus CPI formula for higher prices, we are yet to see what the NBN will put in its place, let alone any indication of what this change will mean for the NBN’s bottom line.

It is time the NBN issues a new corporate plan to keep its shareholders – the taxpayers of Australia – informed of how much money they stand to lose and to keep its customers – Australia’s broadband users – informed about what broadband is really going to cost in the years ahead.