As proof that Rudd’s “We either spend 40 billion or we do nothing” line is working is this letter in The Australian this morning.

THIS week I went to my local supermarket and purchased goods worth less than $50 which I paid for with my EFTPOS card. I live less than 200 kilometres from the Sydney CBD in a major tourist town. As I stood there, my EFTPOS card failed to function due to a “modem error”. To my great surprise, I was told that the local store uses dial-up modem! This is horse-and-buggy technology. What a national disgrace that, in 2009, business is still relying on dial-up modem. Australia needs the Government’s proposed broadband network and we need it now. If the critics can’t comprehend the need for high-speed broadband, then they just don’t understand technology and the massive benefits that the proposed new broadband network could deliver to the national economy. It is best that the Government ignores the Luddites and proceeds with all haste to bring our economy into the 21st century. Adrian Bishop

If your local store in the area that you describe has dial-up it is because they have made a commercial decision to do so – it’s cheaper. These same people, small businesses, will make similar decisions after Rudd has thrown 40 Billion at the problem. If you can’t comprehend that the debate is not about the need for high speed broadband but about the method of attaining same then you should keep quiet until you do some more reading on the matter. My mate Google tellls me Adrian is a serial commenter and letter write extolling the talents of the ALP and the shortcomings of the Coalition. All well and good but his letter and comments elswhere in the media suggest he is an ALP stooge who accepts everything Rudd says as gospel and when interested parties question the method he fails to see the question and thus is a long way from providing any sort of answer. I am getting jaded with Rudd’s “We intend to spend X billion on X problem, the alternative is to do nothing” No it isn’t! The alternative could be do something less grandiose which in the case of Broadband doesn’t depend on punters paying for a Rolls Royce when a Commodore solution may well do the job.   Henry Ergas touches on the subject in The Australian  

No business case has been developed, yet ministers promise both low prices and (as required by the Competition Principles Agreement) a fully commercial rate of return. However, even with high take-up rates, breaking even requires national retail prices of $160 a month; to break even with lower take-up rates would require retail prices higher than $200 a month. Given those prices, the network will struggle in metropolitan areas, where it will face strong competition, while bearing large losses in the country (where costs per line will be more than $300 a month). 

I think I’ll be sticking with the Commodore plan for a while yet. By the time Rudd’s plan undergoes full scrutiny the “spend $40 billion or do nothing” quote will have morphed into another throw away line. You just wait and see

Talking to a teacher recently, an ex barrister/solicitor type, who looked stunned when I mentioned Chinese espionage agents operating in Australia. “Says who?” he asked, intimating I had totally lost the plot or worse, was into anti ALP conspiracies.. “Why on earth would they want to spy on us?” He asked as if I couldn’t see the Chinese were an amiable lot and only wanted the best for everybody. Mmm…well let me count the ways. We are a favoured client of the US and thus have state of the art military hardware and software…we are good at software ourselves…..we trade with China and they look for any advantage…they are a communist state thus paranoid and the list goes on. Here’s a couple more articles on the Chinese spying in Australia I didn’t feel up to having a long conversation with someone that naive so didn’t pursue the matter but it is an indication of a lack of worldliness amongst our academia. In Britain intelligence chiefs have warned that China might have gained the capability to shut down the country by crippling its telecommunications and utilities.

Intelligence officials have told ministers of their fear that equipment in a new communications network installed by Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, for BT, the main British telco, could be used to halt critical services such as power, food and water supplies. Huawei was allegedly founded with significant funding from the Chinese state. Its head is Ren Zhengfei, a former director of an arm of the three-million-strong People’s Liberation Army responsible for telecommunications research.

It could be something-nothing…it could be a real threat. The point is – don’t trust them. We should deal with them by all means, sell and buy, have deep and meaningful conversations with them but keep in the back of our minds where they come from and what they have done. David Burchell opines on Rudd’s recent meeting with Australia’s new-found friend, the CPC’s chief censor, Li Changchun.

Who is this unknown Chinese bureaucrat to whom we have accorded so many of the trappings of a royal visit, and who our political and business leaders seem so eager to propitiate? Li, who formally speaking is nothing more than an ordinary politburo member, is routinely referred to as the propaganda head of the CPC. And yet this sells him short. For his helium-like ascent through the ranks of the CPC has had less to do with disseminating favourable stories than suppressing unwelcome ones. He is, in effect, the party’s chief censor. In particular his brief is to suppress what remains of the liberal-minded opposition within the CPC.

Li has talks with a number of influential Australians;

… with acting Governor-General Marie Bashir at Government House in Sydney, with Environment and Arts Minister Peter Garrett, with Seven Network owner Kerry Stokes, and with ABC chairman Maurice Newman and general manager Mark Scott, the last of whom was photographed, looking a little uneasy, conducting Li around the set of The Gruen Transfer. According to the Xinhua report, Scott agreed to “provide a full range of views” about China for the ABC’s audience, a statement Chinese citizens were doubtless expected to interpret as a reference to Tibet.

and the Australian people are told nothing about the propaganda visit Whitlam started this ALP love affair with the Chinese and went there in indecent haste as Chinese equipped North Vietnam divisions invaded the South. While the bodies of our battle dead lay in recent graves, most probably killed by bullets supplied by China, Whitlam dines with their leaders. Matched, of course by his one time deputy Cairns visiting the USSR, the other supplier of weapons designed to kill Aussie diggers, while he was President of the Australia-USSR Society. Busy boy Jim – he was also involved in organizing the Moratoriums to show his moral support for North Vietnam as well arranging collections at Australian Universities to help fund them. Is it any wonder I don’t like the Left.

First we have Rudd holding private, undisclosed talks with a Chinese Government minister as reported by Greg Sheridan;

KEVIN Rudd’s semi-secret meeting on Saturday with Li Changchun, the Chinese politburo member in charge of propaganda, media and ideology, is one of the most bizarre episodes of his prime ministership. It is almost certainly more stupid than sinister, but it does raise legitimate questions about Chinese influence in Australia.

And this;

Just as they are telling us Chinalco is not directly related to the Chinese Government, the general manager of Chinalco, Xiao Yaqing, has been appointed to the Chinese cabinet.

Is followed by reports Joel Fitzgibbon is being investigated for his association with a Chinese born Helen Liu

Reports today claim the Defence Department has been spying on the minister, using the Defence Signals Directorate spy agency to tap into computers in Mr Fitzgibbon’s office to gain information about his relationship with a wealthy Chinese-born Sydney business woman, Helen Liu. KEVIN Rudd says he’ll await the findings of a Defence investigation into claims departmental officials conducted covert inquiries into their minister.

Some observations from Christian Kerr; Alexander Downer could be coruscating to his public servants. He would tear strips off them in private – but in public they were always “my hard-working department” The Defence Minister has taken a different approach.

“Have I seen incompetence?” Fitzgibbon asked rhetorically last month as the opposition hammered home its attack on bureaucratic bungling over SAS pay. “Absolutely yes. “Have I seen attempts to nuance information to cover for mistakes? Yes. “Have I seen nuanced information in an attempt to produce outcomes that are more favourable to those who are responsible for the issue? Yes.”

And what are we to make of this;

Defence officials also allegedly found Ms Liu’s banking details on the minister’s office IT system.

Was it just her BSB and account number and if so, why report it, or was it more? If so, what is going on? I think it unlikely Defence would conduct a security check without cause and I doubt it is all simply based on the fact that Fitzgibbon has a bad habit of blaming his department and calling them incompetent. I will be interested in the developments.