Today I was lucky enough to attend a forum in Hobart run by the Australian Computing Society with the leaders of the three state parties as the panelists. The theme of the forum was the National Broadband Network (NBN), which is a rollout of fibre-to-the-node for most of Tasmania and good wireless access in other areas. This was an opportunity for the leaders of our state to say what they wanted to do with this magnificent investment.
I was a little disappointed and I had the feeling that some of the industry players in the room were too. There was a lot of feel-good fluff about how important ICT is in the Tasmanian economy and a lot of dedication to creating a new ministerial position to oversee ICT in the state. What was missing was specific detail about what they would like to see the technology actually do.
Premier David Bartlett's explanation for this was that he doesn't want to get too narrow-minded and would prefer to engage with the industry to see what they want to do. This is at the same time as today announcing $4.85M of investment in various aspects of the industry. It would be nice if he had a detailed plan for what he wants this money to achieve before he throws it at people.
Nonetheless he has some goals in mind and that is commendable: fifteen thousand jobs created within four years, wifi available at tourist towns and CBDs, investing in online delivery of health services and development of the so-called "smart grid", which is the use of distributed generators to supply and sell power efficiently. He is also putting money into tourism, agriculture and small business with the idea that they will use the money to develop cool uses for the NBN. Well, all sectors can use money. I hope they use it in a way that will give the state a return on its investment.
Will Hodgman, leader of the Liberals, managed to talk quite a lot without actually saying very much. I was amused by his statement that he is sure that health and human services and education can be assisted by the NBN in ways we haven't even contemplated yet. I may be in favour of the NBN but I at least have some definite applications in mind when I think, "Yes, this isn't such a bad way to spend a buttload of money."
About twenty minutes of his speaking can be summarised by:
- The ICT industry is important.
- A Liberal government will do everything possible to remove roadblocks for both small and big business trying to operate in Tasmania and communicate with the Government. (What those roadblocks are I still don't know.)
- They will set up an apolitical committee to choose the state's direction for technology.
- They will have an ICT minister supported by two officer underlings.
- They will invest heavily in education and health ICT services. Lots of investment.
He didn't even sound that excited about it. There's nothing more to say really; as far as I could see he didn't have anything to offer that Bartlett didn't.
Nick McKim, leader of the Greens, was fairly refreshing in that he wasn't as boring as the other two speakers. Full disclosure -- I vote Green -- but I think he approached today's forum with the most interesting information of any of the three speakers. That's orthogonal to the quality of the policy, by the way, but I learnt the most from him.
McKim spoke about having better e-commerce opportunities for business, better booking systems and making more available from our loungerooms, a point which Bartlett later seized. He would like to create a Broadband Innovation Centre in partnership with UTAS, similar to one in Melbourne, which would work with academia and other stakeholders and also work to identify the required skills for workers in the industry and ensure that suitable training is being offered. He spoke of the aging population in Tasmania as an opportunity to develop some excellent ICT technology to help elderly people live at home for longer, a theme which appears to be similar to Labor. He also recognises the importance of public access wifi, working to set it up on buses in Launceston.
More than the other two speakers I had some idea of what practical outcomes McKim wanted ordinary Tasmanians to get from the NBN. Possibly being a minority party means he doesn't get to say so much about investment, but his description was fairly limited on exactly how these things would be funded and managed.
Despite all the above I still don't think we have a clear political vision for what the NBN is going to achieve in this state. This was made abundantly clear by the first question from the floor. In far more words, it was essentially: "What are you actually going to do after the election?" As all three speakers had already wandered as close to answering that question as they were going to, it was taken as a statement and given no response.
I for one would like to know how the Minister for ICT (or whatever its title is, depending on the responsible party) will be chosen. I would also like our leaders to communicate with the industry and find out some exciting applications for the NBN before they start giving it money.
Here are a few other random ideas I have which I personally think would be valuable:
- Development of local high definition audiovisual streaming services which will be in high demand once the bandwidth is available
- Programmes to help old-school small businesses move to computerised and online accounting systems to reduce administrative overheads
- Making as much as possible from Service Tasmania and Centrelink available online
- Improving bandwidth in and out of state to make it more attractive for IT businesses to locate themselves here
- Use of the NBN unfettered by an ill-thought national ISP-level filter
I can't say I'm excited yet. At least my software updates will download really fast.