Transcript P Burgess speech American Chamber of Commerce in Australia 5 Aug 08

It's time to "call the question" on the NBN

Philip M. Burgess


American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham)
5 August 2008
Melbourne, Australia

Edited transcript

Thank you very much.

Let me say that it's really a pleasure to be here today. Sitting beside me
today is
another American who I've come to know since I've been in Australia, Lori
Levin, who is an immigration lawyer here.

I came to know her because I had some immigration problems myself but
today
she came in all bubbly because she just became an Australian citizen, so
congratulations.

[Applause]

Just today. Why don't you stand up so everyone can see you. Yeah, there we
go.

[Applause]

We were talking about what the exam was like at lunch and she was talking
about some of the questions they were asked. One of them was a question
about
the national anthem.

As many of you may know, I love Australian movies. and in fact just this
weekend I saw Rats in the Ring. Is that what it's called? The Rings and the
Rats
or something about -the political movie.

One of my favourite Australian movies is Kenny - I can tell some people
have
seen it.

[Laughter]

Luckily, I was sitting beside an Aussie at the movie because I had to hit
him like
three or four times because I didn't even know what a 'loo' was when I saw
Kenny. It was in that movie that I learnt some of Kenny's words for Advance
Australia Fair. In the movie he said he was 16 years old before he realised
that
the first stanza to Advance Australia Fair was not: "Australians let us all
ring
Joyce, for she is young and free."

[Laughter]

So Lori I hope you got that part right.

It is a pleasure to be here today. Actually it's the first time in 37
months, 16 days
and 14 hours that I've been here that I've been to the AmCham here in
Melbourne. I guess that means the AmCham is cautious about - or reckless
maybe - in who they invite. When I started thinking about my talk today, I
thought my son who called me up about four months ago.

He was a senior at the University of West Virginia and he said, "Dad, this
is my
last Spring break." And I thought "Oh my God, he's going to want to go to
Puerto
Rico or some place and he's calling for money" - because that's usually the
reason why he calls.

And then he said, "You know, this is my last Spring break and I'd like to
spend it
with you."
Well, after I picked myself up off the floor, I said that I would be there
for sure.

So I cleared everything out of my calendar. I mean, I haven't felt so
high. well, I
haven't been that high for a long time.

[Laughter]

Let's just say that I was feeling real good to hear that from my son. I
did think of
that song, "The Cats in the Cradle", and I was so happy that I had my son
call
me and ask me to spend Spring break with him. And what did he want to do? He
wanted to take a Harley trip.

So I met him in Miami, Florida and we headed off on our Harleys and rode
around
Florida for 10 days. We went over a thousand miles and we had a fantastic
time.

We started in Miami and went to the West Coast to see my mother who lives
on
the West Coast. my famous mother. the one who wouldn't buy shares.

[Laughter]

She's straightened that out now. She's very happy with T3 actually
[laughs].
We then went through the central part of Florida, through several other
places
and then went back down to Homestead to a NASCAR race.
So, there we were on our motorcycles heading down to the NASCAR racing. It
was a beautiful ride. Quay West is at the end of 156 mile archipelago and
there's
bridges after bridge where you travel over the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of
Mexico.

It's one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen, one of the best
experiences
I've ever had. One of the bridges is seven miles long and to be out there on
motorcycles is fantastic.

But anyway - we were driving to the Homestead race track for the NASCAR
race.
I should point out; NASCAR fans are a certain kind of breed. I mean. think
of
NRL and.

[Laughter]

Excuse me if anyone here is a NRL fan. anyway we were going down the road
one day and we pulled up to a stop light.

This car then pulls up beside us and I'm sitting there going 'broom,
broom,
broom' on the Harley, and my son's beside me going 'broom, broom, broom.' We
both had our black Harley shirts, black pants, black hat, and black gloves
on. we
looked a bit like the All Blacks. And so this car pulls up beside us on the
left hand
side and there was a woman sitting on the passenger side of the car. They
had
their air-conditioning on so the windows were up.

But this woman just glared over at me. I looked at her. And she glared
back at
me. Then she started talking to her husband [sound effects] like that.

Next she looked back over at me and then she wound down her window. She
said
to me, "Why don't you get a job?" Then she wound that window back up real
fast.

[Laughter]

I should have gone over and growled in her window but I was too shocked by
what she did.

[Laughter]

Well, today let me talk about fibre to the node. Everybody has heard about
fibre
to the node and how we need to get broadband to everybody in Australia.

We've been trying to do it for 37 months now and everybody seems to want
it
except the Government and the regulator. But let me talk about the need for
broadband from a different point of view.

There are two phrases that are widely used here in public policy circles.
These
aren't the circles that the ordinary punter lives in, or that the ordinary
person
lives in, or even the ordinary lawyer, or the ordinary economist.

It's just kind of something that floats around in Canberra and in the
higher
reaches of the ACCC and places like that. But there are two phrases that the
public policy crowd in this country like that have always floored me. I've
never
heard them anyplace else before.

One is called 'future proof'. People say 'we're going to future proof this'.
Now, let
me ask you, what does 'future proof' mean? I don't know about you, but when
I
think about life I want to be bullet proof, I want to be fire proof, I was
to be fool
proof, I want to be water proof.

I want to be all those things but I don't want to be 'future proof'
because 'future
proof' means that all the surprises in life end. To me, there's no such
thing as
'future proof' as then we wouldn't have inventions, we wouldn't have
revolutions,
we wouldn't have bosses.

We wouldn't have politics and we sure wouldn't have marriage if we were
'future
proof'. Can you imagine a marriage that's 'future proofed' notwithstanding
the
commitments and the vows that people make?

From the very beginning, it's been a phrase that really bothered me. First
of all,
I'd never heard it before arriving in Australia. Second of all, when you sit
down
and think about it, it's really a strange way to think. I don't think
ordinary people
think about future proofing.

Ordinary people think about coping. That's the way most of us live every
day. So
why do policymakers think about 'future proofing'?

But they do think about 'future proofing' and I've come to conclude that
they do
this for a second reason. It took me about 30 months to come to this second
point so you're one of the first to hear this.

There's another phrase here that fits in with 'future proofing'. It's
called 'we've
got to get it right'. How many times do you hear people say, 'we've got to
get it
right'?

The new head of NAB says, I think it's NAB, whoever the new one is -
they're
shifting so fast in that sector.

[Laughter]

The new head of NAB says 'we've got to get it right'. Stephen Conroy says
the
same thing about FTTN, 'we've got to get it right'. And the number one price
fixer. I mean setter in the country, Graeme Samuel, he also says that with
FTTN
'we've got to get it right'.

Now what does that mean? Number one, who's 'we'? Nine times out of ten,
'we'
is the Government. 'The Government has to get it right'. Most of these
things
don't really have anything to do with the Government unless they put their
nose
under the tent and then just walk in - and then say, 'we've got to get it
right'.

That's the really disturbing part because whoever got anything right ever?
Nobody gets things right. That's not what life is all about. Anybody who's
married
knows you don't get it right. What you do is accommodate. What you do is
deal
with the realities of everyday life. That's why I'm going home tonight to do
the
dishes. no, no, this is Tuesday - the laundry.

[Laughter]

The whole point is that there's a big 'we' someplace. Usually it's the
Government
but it may be the board, or it may be the senior leadership team, or it
maybe the
CEO. But it's a very top down, authoritarian hierarchical notion about the
way we
live our life.

Then the second is 'get' it right. Now, just think of all the decision
making
literature those of you that have been to business school or public policy
school
or anywhere else. What's the central notion in modern ideas of decision
making?
It is incrementalism.

We make decisions by incrementally improving things. As Saint Augustine
said,
we come to know by doing.

You don't just have a big bang and then find the knowledge. No, you come to
know by trying this and trying that. Some other decision making theorists
call
'disjointed incrementalism' is like a dog chasing a rabbit. The dog knows
where
he wants to end up. The dog wants to end up with the rabbit in his mouth -
or in
his stomach eventually.

He wants to eat the rabbit, but in the process of chasing the rabbit he
doesn't
know what way he's going to go. He's going to go the way the rabbit goes.
And
then he's going to get smart and he's going to learn. He's going to learn
the
rabbit always goes this way, then it goes that way and then it goes this
way. But
he learns that when the rabbit goes that way, the dog goes this way so he
can
catch him.

That's what disjointed incrementalism is and that's the way we live our
life. We
never get it right. The dog never gets it right. He just learns as he goes
along.

I mean this seriously because we are being held back in this country in a
major
way because government has assumed enormous powers in this country. I don't
know any other democracy where government has as much power as it has here
and where regulators have as much power as they have here.

I mean that seriously. I've lived and worked in the US, in Germany, in
Great
Britain, in Norway and in Colombia, in South America. I've never lived any
place
where the government has as much power as it has here.

But the notion of 'get it right' means that we're going to sit back, we're
going to
think about it, and we're going to make sure we get it right. In the
meantime
investors are hung out to dry. In the meantime shareholders are hung out to
dry.
In the meantime technologies pass us by. What is the end game here?

That's why it's time to 'call the question' in my view. It's time to say;
let's get
down to building, not talking about building, not having enquiries about
building,
not having studies about building, not having commitments to build. I love
that
one - a commitment to build. That's like 'getting ready, to think about,
the
possibility, of doing something'.

[Laughter]

What we have is analysis paralysis and we have process paralysis and
nothing's
getting done.
What's happening in the meantime? Pick up a newspaper - every day for the
last
two weeks we find the same thing. We find that our future prosperity is in
question.

It's on the front pages. It's on the business pages. It's on the lifestyle
pages. The
only pages where you find any kind of upbeat stories in the papers today are
on
the sports pages. And as I said earlier, if you're an NRL fan you don't even
find
that.
Nobody can deny that there's a real concern across all parts of the society
in
every sector about the future prosperity of the country.

What are the problems? They're inflation. There are job losses - in the
latest job
numbers there are 19,700 fewer people working. Productivity is slowing. As

Prime Minister Rudd noted in his March 27 speech - labour productivity
growth is
grinding close to zero. It started out at 3.3 per cent in 1998; it fell to
2.1 per
cent in 2003-04; and it fell further to just 1.1 per cent in 2006-07.
Productivity
growth in the market sector then fell to zero in the year to December 2007.
That's what's happening to productivity growth.

And if you don't have good productivity growth and labour productivity
growth,
you don't have, number one, a rising standard of living. Number two, you
don't
have rising productivity. If you don't have rising productivity, you don't
have
competitiveness and we live in an increasingly global world.

And in addition to that, the way you have competitiveness in the current
world is
not only by having a work-ready labour force but it's also by having
connections
to your suppliers, to your customers and having high-speed broadband
connections. That's the way more and more business is being done.

In most of the developed countries around the world, somewhere between 30
and 40 per cent of the commerce is being done online, in either business to
business commerce or business to consumer electronic commerce. And where are
we going to be when we have people running around this country saying
there's
nothing wrong with what we have.

I mean, the most prominent business reporter in this country, Alan
Kohler - if we
were going to mention names but I'm not going to do that - but Alan Kohler
has
said that it makes no sense to fibre up all of the cities immediately -
whether
Telstra or Terria does it. We also have two of the leading national
newspapers in
this country saying that broadband is only good for music, movies and porn.
But nobody looks at the economic implications of broadband. Nobody looks at
the
evidence from all of the countries around the world. The economic
implications
are huge in terms of more jobs, more growth, more economic development,
increased productivity, increased exports; all the things that broadband can
do.

What other concerns are being expressed? Things like 'will the China boom
continue'? Some say it will, some say it won't, some say it will diminish.
But if
China's gross GDP growth goes from say 10 per cent to 8 per cent, it's going
to
be a problem for Australia, it's going to be a problem for everybody who
exports
to China.

We have slowing consumer demand in this country. We have skyrocketing
petrol
prices. I was in one of our capital cities just two weeks ago and I had a
meeting
with the head of the airport on other issues but I asked, 'Do you see these
high
fuel prices being a problem?' He said, 'I don't think they'll be high
forever'. I said,
'What do you think they'll get down to?' He said, 'I think it will just be a
matter of
weeks until it's down to $100 a barrel.'

A hundred dollars a barrel? Stop and think about how much we have now been
conditioned to accept $100 a barrel oil is cheap oil when the entire
developed
world, including Australia, has all the infrastructure based on the notion
of cheap
oil. And by cheap oil, I mean oil between $2.50 and $10 a barrel. All the
infrastructure we have today was built when oil was cheap with very, very
few
exceptions anywhere in the world.

What do you do about societies when you have their entire way of life,
their
entire way of moving people, goods and information based on cheap oil and
cheap power? Those days are over.

We also have a decline in household wealth. Anybody who's picked up their
superannuation reports over the past two months knows that your own
household wealth has gone down, your own net worth has gone down. We know
that in most of the big cities in this country, the value of housing has
gone down
even though the price of rents is going up.

What that means is that people don't feel as wealthy as they used to be.
Five or
six years ago a US economist won the Nobel Prize for showing how people feel
about their wealth greatly influences how they consume their wealth, even
though they don't cash in on it.
When your net worth is up through your equities, through home ownership as
home values were going up, people feel wealthier and so they spent more.

Now, we're going to see the wealth effect operate in the other way. I
think
there's been a tipping point in the last two weeks. Before the last two
weeks a lot
of the discussion in the newspapers was that Australia was probably going to
dodge the bullet on this. They were saying that we were not really part of
the
global economy, but we're really part of the Chinese economy. But I don't
know
how anybody can come to that view.

We are very much integrated with the rest of the world in everything that
we do -
in the supplies that we buy, in the exports that we sell, in the markets
that we
sell to. And when the rest of the world sneezes, we're going to get a cold.

Just like if things go wrong in China, the US and Europe are going to have
problems. We're all integrated for better or for worse. It seems to me that
right
now we ought to be thinking about what we can do.

Now, what can we do? When I was a kid my father said 'you accept the
things
you cannot change, change the things you can, and have the wisdom to know
the
difference'. It wasn't until I was about 19 years old that I found out he
didn't
invent that saying.

[Laughter]

I read this article by Reinhold Niebuhr who was a great theologian from
Princeton, and he called it the 'Serenity Prayer', but he didn't have a
footnote to
my dad. Anyway, my dad used to say that.

So, my dad was always telling me to do what you can about something. Don't
look at what you can't do, look at what you can do. So, what can we do about
all
this?

We can't do anything about many of the things happening in our economy today
due to the global forces affecting us. But there are lots of things that we
can do
something about.

We can do something about reforming taxes in Australia. We can do
something
about cutting or increasing budget expenditures. That's something you can do
something about. You don't plan it, you don't think about it, you don't
study it.
It's something you can do. You can also build new infrastructure - you can
build
highways, railroads, ports.

Donald McGauchie, who is chairman of our company, has experience with the
agricultural sector and with the transportation sector. He argues very
persuasively and with very good numbers, that have been run by economists in
this country who I respect, that due to the congestions in the coal ports,
we are
essentially wiping out a $5 billion industry in this country every year.

Before I came here I was heavily involved in the coal sector. I wrote a
book on
coal exports in the Pacific Rim in 1982. One of the places I wrote about was
Newcastle. While I'd never been there, I used the data available. In 1982,
Newcastle had 25 ships lined up in the channel. When I visited Australia in
1995
for a lecture tour around the nine Australian cities, one of the first
things I did
was go to Newcastle. I wanted to see this port that I'd done a case study on
in
the 1982. On that weekend in 1995 there were 35 coal colliers lined up in
the
channel at Newcastle.

When I moved to Australia in 2005, I went up to Newcastle the second weekend
I
was here. There were 47 ships lined up in Newcastle. On April 11 last year,
and I
remember this date as The Australian had a picture and I use it sometimes
when
I use PowerPoint. By the way, I don't usually use slides as I like to
operate in a
PowerPoint free zone most of the time, but I do have some slides that I use
once
in a while.

But when I do use slides, I have one with the April 11 date and at that
time there
were 70 ships lined up in the channel at Newcastle. They were waiting in
line to
be filled with coal and shipped off to China or India or Japan or wherever
they
were going as we're the largest exporter of coal in the world. And yet, the
demurrage fees for those ships that are lined up are a million dollars a
day.

With the exception of that article in The Australian, which was really
pretty good,
how much have you seen written about that? We've got people asleep at the
wheel and they're doing damage to the economy. They're undermining jobs,
they're undermining exports. These are people who are supposed to be serving
the public interest.

So it seems to me at some point we have to find a way to speak up on these
things. And it's not something I am prone to do.

[Laughter]

But I do think that if the business interests are concerned about these
things that
they ought to stand up and speak about them.

Donald McGauchie, because he and I have a common interest in natural
resource
industries, we started talking about this one day and that's when I started
getting
more deeply involved in looking at the coal industry which I knew something
about before I came here.

I've visited a lot of the coal mines across Australia, and it's not just
telecommunications that's an issue here, it's a whole bunch of issues.
Because
the Government and the regulator - sometimes more regulator, sometimes more
government - have to 'get things right', they control things to such an
extent.
And guess what happens? There's no investment. That's what happens when a
government starts controlling everything. Whether it's God or the great
chemist
in the sky that Garnaut sees, or any of these other things, whatever it may
be,
when those people have to 'get it right' before anything can happen, what
happens is no investment and where you don't have investment you don't have
progress.

Let me just say a few words about the national broadband network. We're
not
allowed to talk about it because of the gag order. I mean I can't talk about
the
<buzz>, and I can't talk about the <buzz>, and I can't talk about Senator
<buzz>, but I can talk generally about the national broadband network. So
let
me just say a couple of words.

The national broadband network that we envisage is one with national
coverage.
It would be the world's largest fibre to the node network connecting more
than
10 million premises in this country. That's households, government agencies,
non-profit organisations, businesses, both big and small. The interesting
thing is
most big businesses take care of themselves. They don't need a public switch
network, but it is the small and mid-sized businesses and government
agencies
that need broadband. That's where the wealth is created in our society.
This would be the largest national broadband network in the world. This
network
that we're talking about is the largest public infrastructure project in the
history
of this country. It will be larger than the Snowy Mountains Scheme by far.
And
not only that, the Snowy Mountains Scheme was concentrated in one relatively
small area - this project is all over the country.

Let me give you another fact - because I don't think people really fully
understand these facts. We're going to build a fibre to the node network
were we
have to put nodes out into neighbourhoods. There are 50,000 nodes that have
to
be deployed. Now let me tell you what a node is - a node is the size of a
refrigerator. They weigh 600 kilograms - or around 1300 pounds - however you
think about those things. They are going to be produced in the US and in
Europe.
Then they're going to be brought here on ships.

They're going to have to be offloaded so they can go to Western Australia,
the
Northern Territory, Tiwi Island, Tasmania -every place around this country,
there
will be a node within 800 metres of 98 per cent of the premises in this
country -
within 800 metres of 98 per cent of the premises in this country. Now can
anybody do that? Can anybody do that? I don't think so and yet we have a
Government that is pretending that anybody can do that.

The Government finally agreed to put a $5 million bond - which I think you
get
back - just to bid but it means you had to be able to raise the $5 million
bond to
do a bid. But this will be a multi-billion project. Can you imagine any
government
who takes a bid on a submarine or an aircraft carrier or an aeroplane or a
bridge
or a highway, that they would take one-half of one per cent as a bond for
it? No.

Nobody has been realistic from the very beginning. They haven't been
realistic
about what it takes to build the national broadband network. This national
broadband network is going to involve thousands of skilled staff. Anybody
who
reads the papers today knows that the one thing we have a big shortage of is
skilled people. But, Telstra can do it. Let me tell you why we can do it. We
have
about 4000 people that we can shift to the national broadband network
project
because two years ago we invested $200 million in a learning academy for our
technicians. We can take in people who are less skilled and run them through
the
learning academy. We've already run 18,000 people through it and have
prepared them to back fill our people who will move to the more highly
demanding task of building the national broadband network.

That's the kind of planning and investment we have done to position
ourselves to
do this. Has anybody else done that? Has Optus done it, or Floptus, or
Boptus or
any of the others? If they have, show us the money, show us the centre, show
us
where you're human resources plans are, show the public, show Senator Conroy
so that we can all know that you are prepared to build the national
broadband
network.

It will involve laying over 100,000 kilometres of new fibre during the
peaks - the
years in the middle if it's a five year program, we'll be laying 90
kilometres of
cable every day, every single day. It will be moving as we move - we're
going to
open up - if we do it we'll open up each exchange as it's wired and as we
start
moving well into this, we'll be cutting over 32,000 subscribers every week
to the
new national broadband network which will run up to 50 megabytes for some
people. Now who's ever done 32,000 cutovers a week? The most we've ever
done has been a couple of thousand a day. The most Telstra's ever done. Is
Optus going to do that? I mean, did they do it in Queensland two weeks ago?

Was Optus able to perform when they were given $1 billion and asked to put
together a plan? They couldn't put together a plan in eight months. In 10
months
we went from 'let's build the Next G Network' to October 6 in 2006 when we
turned it on and, guess what, it worked. Now it's providing Australia with
the
world's largest, fastest, most advanced wireless broadband network. And
people
here don't really understand that because the newspapers don't care about
it.

The newspapers care about the guy in some valley some place who wanted to
get
coverage on his 3G but couldn't. So we went out there and found out that he
didn't get coverage on CDMA either. What we have today I think is a
situation
where there's a lot of public misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about
what's
really involved in building a broadband network.

This is not something that just anybody can do. Some people say, well, we
will
hire the same construction people you do. Yeah you do. We'll hire the same
construction people they will to dig the trenches, but not the same
construction
people to hook the fibre together. Not the same construction people to link
the
fibre to the copper. Not the same construction people that do all the
technical
things that have to be done and we've brought a group of journalists in
about six
or seven months ago and showed them exactly what has to be done.

We have the whole thing - and remember, these nodes are about the size of
a
refrigerator. They're about as big as this [demonstrates], and about this
tall
[demonstrates], and they're about twice as wide. Six hundred kilograms. And
you've got to have about a thousand trucks to deploy those 50,000 nodes
around
the country. These are the nuts and bolts.

As Ross Perot used to say, 'let's look under the hood and look at the
details on
this thing'. It's time to look under the hood on the details of the national
broadband network. It's time to look under the hood and as the question,
what
has to be done, who has the capacity to do it, who's willing to invest real
money,
who has the money ready to go? And in this environment, if you don't have
the
money ready to go, you're not going to get it or you're not going to get it
at a
price that anybody can afford to pay. This is not a liquid environment for
financing multi-billion projects.

Let me say that the choice we face is that we can have a 'cheap and
cheerful'
national broadband network where you don't have end to end visibility. Where
they dismantle the only national network in this country, which Graeme
Samuel
has already started the legal process to make possible. Or are we going to
have a
carrier grade national broadband network? That's the issue that's involved.
I
hope that the opinion leaders in this country, and especially business
leaders,
wake up to what's at stake before the politicians and the regulators start
chomping away and tearing up the only national network we have so that Optus
and other people involved in various consortiums can have their way in an
environment that requires investment not politics.

What we need is investment. Once again, I don't use PowerPoint but let me
ask
you to visualise a PowerPoint slide. Let me put up this next picture -
'click'. Now,
as you can see on the left axis up there is all the industries in the
country and
across the bottom is how much they've invested. As you can see, there are 12
sectors in the economy and where do we rank? Telecommunications ranks third
to last in that. Telecommunications ranks, if you take Telstra out of the
mix on
investment growth over the last three and a half years, we have negative
investment growth in telecommunications.

If you put Telstra in we have positive investment growth but it's down on
the list
- it's ranked down at number 12. At the top is mining. Number two is
electric
power. Now, telecommunications ought to at least be number two. It shouldn't
be number one, not in this country and not in this environment. But it
should at
least be number two, but if not it should at least be number three behind
mining
and electric power. But it isn't. It's down at number 12.

There are lots of facts out there. We don't have to do what he says or she
says.
When we talk about this, the papers then go to talk to somebody at the Optus
and they say, 'Well, we don't agree with that, and we don't agree with that'
even
though they don't know that facts. We have to remember that there is
something
out there called facts - except for post-modern thinkers. For post-modern
thinkers it is about 'what do you think'?

But the fact is there's a reality out there and we can measure it. We
ought to be
able to report it and talk about it. We're talking about a multi-billion
program but
I read in the paper this morning that our major competitor for this
multi-billion
program, Terria, just got incorporated.

And what the net worth of Terria? Terria by the way is headed by Michael
Egan,
the guy who built the Cross City Tunnel in Sydney. The guy who had to shut
off
13 roads and force people not to go on those roads so they could force them
through the tunnel. Finally the people rebelled. It's the second rebellion
after
Eureka in Australia - they rebelled and had to open up 13 roads. And their
net
worth is $8. Eight Australian dollars - which are worth only slightly more
than
American dollars the way things are going. But come on. You know how Donald
Horne wrote the book called The Lucky Country? Well, somebody may write a
book called The Serious Country.

Are we serious in this country about the most pressing infrastructure need
that
we have? Not just in coal and transportation and ports and railroads, but in
telecommunications which is arguably the most important infrastructure for
the
next 50 years and maybe longer. And yet the company that is being taken most
seriously as an alternative to Telstra has a net worth of $8.

Now, who's going to give a company with a net worth of $8 a say $10
billion
float? I mean if you know somebody who will do that, hell, I can put
together $10
or $12. I'd like to get their money. I've got some ideas to run with. It's
time to
have a little what they call in politics comparative advertising.

These are the guys whose cable went down in Queensland. Now, cables can go
down anytime. We have cables cut. The issue isn't that you have a cable cut
or
an act of God - these things happen all the time. The issue is how fast you
respond. The issue is what kind of redundancies do you have? The issue is do
you
have engineering on your network that gives people backup in case an act of
God
occurs or somebody with a backhoe cuts through your cable? Also an act of
God.

I'm not criticising that they got a cable cut. We get cable cuts. What I
am saying
is why did the 3G Network that they have go down this week for what, for
hours?
Hours, and let me tell you something else that's going to happen. We were
talking at lunch about the iPhone. Let me tell you what happens on iPhones.
iPhones require a lot of bandwidth because instead of just sending text,
instead
of sending voice, they're now starting to send images and images eat up
bandwidth. And bandwidth isn't just an issue for how fast it comes into and
out of
your device, it's also an issue for the network and what happens when you
start
getting congested network because you've got 250,000 iPhone uses who are
uploading and downloading pictures to Facebook or YouTube or to each other
in a
peer to peer situation?

We've just begun to see that the disasters that are going to happen
because
people haven't carefully engineered their networks. And are these the people
that
you want to turn the future of the country over to? Are these the people
that you
want to see Graeme Samuel dismantle the nation's only nationwide network and
give it over to a consortium dominated by foreign owned companies? If this
is
what people want to do? That's fine but they ought to be aware of what's
going
on and what the consequences will be because these acts will not be without
consequences.

Let me finish up by saying that there's a lot of things at stake here. The
most
important thing is when we build connections to a lot of people, good things
happen in productivity. When you delay, those delays cost jobs, they stunt
investment, they increase the long-term costs of the national broadband
network, they deny business and government the benefits of national
productivity growth, and the delay denies every individual in business and
community the benefits of future growth and living standards.

That's what is denied by these endless delays we've had for 37 months. By
the
delays we've had since the new government has come in where they were
supposed to have a decision by June 2008 and we still don't know when it's
going
to be. The earliest I think it can probably be is June 2009. A 12 month
slip.

So that's what's going on ladies and gentlemen, and I think if you don't
care
about it, that's fine - I'm sorry I wasted your time. If you do care about
it then
think about some way to effect it because a lot's at stake.

We're going to be coming out with some authoritative numbers on this that
will
have been widely vetted in the Australian economic community. But it's fair
to
say that if you go over all the reports on productivity over the past
several years
on broadband, a conservative estimate is that you'll add at least $1 billion
a year
to GDP. That's several hundred dollars per household. You're going to add
during
the period of the build - the five to eight year period of the build - about
another
$500 per household to benefits from building the NBN.

At a time when job losses are mounting, when inflation's going up, when
productivity is going down - when the things that should be going up are
going
down, and the things that should be going down are going up - that it is
time to allow a private company called Telstra, or anybody else to get on
with it. Telstra's willing to invest billions in the national broadband
network, as it has with the
Next Generation Network. And for a government that says it has $5 billion to
put on top of that to make that a national network, well, let's get on with
it. Let's do it. Let's call the question. Let's get down to business. Let's
quit talking about it. Let's serve the public interest and look to the
future.

Thanks very much.


Phil Burgess: Questions, comments?

Question: You seem to have a better relationship with the current
government
than the previous one.

Phil Burgess: I think the current government has given us the safeguards
that we
needed to turn on ADSL2+, which is up to 20 megabits, to more than 2.4
additional people. The other government didn't. They sat on it for six
months.
Helen Coonan lamely said, right after we turned it on, that we had a letter
for
them telling them that we could turn on ADSL2+. But I said that she forgot
to
put a stamp on it, because we never got it.

Number two, this current government has allowed us to shut down the CDMA
network - it's a wireless technology of the twentieth century - in favour of
turning
on a wireless technology of the twenty-first century. They had no skin in
the
game, no money, but Helen Coonan put in place a process that prevented us
from shutting down CDMA, which, by the way, is a wireless network is a huge
consumer of energy and a huge generator or greenhouse gasses.
So we had the government forcing us to keep two networks open. We were not
going to do that. So this government allowed us to shut down the CDMA
network.
That was a rational thing to do, a good thing to do, a right thing to do for
the
consumer.

And this government also did another very important thing that we think is
good
for the country and certainly good for us, and that is the $1 billion gift
of
taxpayers' money, $1 billion of taxpayers' money - your money and my money.
I
pay taxes here too. God, do I pay taxes. I just went through the thing with
my
accountant. And you know, I get to pay for all this stuff like all of you
do. And the
previous government gave $1 billion of taxpayers' money to Optus and Elders
to
build a wireless network that was all within the footprint of our wireless
network,
the Next G wireless network.

Now, the Next G wireless network was paid for by 1.6 million mum and dad
shareholders of Telstra. This was a gift from the taxpayers to a foreign
government to come in here and overbuild. It would be like if the government
said to Qantas, 'we're not going to let you buy Airbus 380s because we don't
think you should be deploying this new technology'. And then they go to
Singapore Airlines and say, 'we'd like to give you $1 billion so you could
buy
some Airbus 380s'.

And then they'd say, 'Oh, by the way, if you want to come in here and
compete
with Qantas, that's okay too. In fact, if you want some of their gates out
of
Sydney and Melbourne Airports, we can arrange that'.

That's essentially what the last government did. And nobody said anything.
Nobody. Not one editorial, not one BCA comment, not one comment from CEDA.
Nobody cared.

So we just went ahead and tried to get a grassroots movement against that,
which I think we succeeded in doing. The result shows that. We got people
all
around the country to understand that that wasn't in the taxpayers' interest
and
it wasn't in the national interest. And this government took that billion
dollars
away from Optus and Elders when they couldn't produce a plan after eight
months.

So we think that this new government has made some good decisions along the
way. But now the big decision they have to make is on FTTN. I think that it
would
be hard to say that they're breaking speed records. The fact is that a lot
has to
be done, but even after the decision's made it's going to take several
months to
gear up. You're going to have to get the contracts negotiated. All kinds of
things
are going to have to be done and there's no reason why this should be
delayed.
When our estimates come out, we will authoritatively show that somewhere
between $100 million and $200 million a month is being sacrificed to delay.
And
in this economic environment, that kind of behaviour has no excuse. We need
to
get on with the job. We need to dig holes, lay cable, connect people, get
moving
into the twenty-first century for everybody, not just the people who live in
the
core cities, but for people who live in the outer suburbs where most of our
small
businesses are located, and for the inner suburbs, and for regional
Australia
where there are a lot of other small businesses. Remember small businesses
account for over 50 per cent of the jobs in this country, small and
mid-sized
enterprises. They can't be left out of the next boom in infrastructure.

The last time we had an upgrade in infrastructure was in the '50s. Some say
it
was 'a black phone for every home' - that's what I think the slogan was. And
it's
time to understand that that was a long time ago. Things need to be upgraded
again. That's what we've proposed to do since August of 2005 and have been
turned down three different times and now we're in the fourth time. And it's
time
for people to get moving - or get off the pot.

Phil Burgess: Any other comments, questions, complaints?

[Laughter]

Thank you very much
[Applause]

Speaker: Phil, thanks for a fabulous and very thought provoking
presentation. On
behalf of AmCham and Hagemeyer brands we have a wonderful little cross pen
here for you to show our appreciation for your presentation today. Thanks
again.

[Applause]

ENDS

---

› See More: Transcript P Burgess speech American Chamber of Commerce in Australia 5 Aug 08

Alan Poxington <wanker@iarsethiscountry,com.au> wrote

> It's time to "call the question" on the NBN

Its time to ship the ****wit yanks back where they came from.

The ****wit mex in spades.

> Philip M. Burgess

Real name: The Hippo

> American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham)

Just more ****wit yanks. Time to piss all them off too.

> 5 August 2008
> Melbourne, Australia

> Edited transcript

Not edited enough.

> Thank you very much.

**** off, hippo.

> Let me say that it's really a pleasure to be here today.

Wota ****ing wanker...

> Sitting beside me today is another American who I've come to know since I've been in Australia,

He can go too.

> Lori Levin, who is an immigration lawyer here.

Just another ****wit yank.

> I came to know her because I had some immigration problems myself

Time we put you in Villawood.

> but today she came in all bubbly because she just became an Australian citizen,

Fark, the ****wit that allowed that should be taken out the back and shot.

> so congratulations.

> [Applause]

Wota packa wankers...

> Just today. Why don't you stand up so everyone can see you. Yeah, there we go.

Wota ****ing wanker.

None of this **** worth bothering with, here goes the chain on the lot.

"Rod Speed" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Alan Poxington <wanker@iarsethiscountry,com.au> wrote
>
>> It's time to "call the question" on the NBN
>
> Its time to ship the ****wit yanks back where they came from.
>
> The ****wit mex in spades.
>
>> Philip M. Burgess
>
> Real name: The Hippo
>
>> American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham)
>
> Just more ****wit yanks. Time to piss all them off too.
>
>> 5 August 2008
>> Melbourne, Australia
>
>> Edited transcript
>
> Not edited enough.
>
>> Thank you very much.
>
> **** off, hippo.
>
>> Let me say that it's really a pleasure to be here today.
>
> Wota ****ing wanker...
>
>> Sitting beside me today is another American who I've come to know since
>> I've been in Australia,
>
> He can go too.
>
>> Lori Levin, who is an immigration lawyer here.
>
> Just another ****wit yank.
>
>> I came to know her because I had some immigration problems myself
>
> Time we put you in Villawood.
>
>> but today she came in all bubbly because she just became an Australian
>> citizen,
>
> Fark, the ****wit that allowed that should be taken out the back and shot.
>
>> so congratulations.
>
>> [Applause]
>
> Wota packa wankers...
>
>> Just today. Why don't you stand up so everyone can see you. Yeah, there
>> we go.
>
> Wota ****ing wanker.
>
> None of this **** worth bothering with, here goes the chain on the lot.
>
>

Agreed 100% Rod. Telstra try to pretend that ACCC and the Federal Government
are restricting them from rolling out further broadband. There is nothing
stopping Telstra putting their own money forward to do this, but the
parasitic hippos much rather bludge off the poor taxpayers.


** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

"Alan Parkington" <aparkington@iheartthiscountry,com.au> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

>
>
> Phil Burgess: Questions, comments?
>
> Question: You seem to have a better relationship with the current
> government
> than the previous one.
>
> Phil Burgess: I think the current government has given us the safeguards
> that we
> needed to turn on ADSL2+, which is up to 20 megabits, to more than 2.4
> additional people. The other government didn't. They sat on it for six
> months.
> Helen Coonan lamely said, right after we turned it on, that we had a
> letter for
> them telling them that we could turn on ADSL2+. But I said that she forgot
> to
> put a stamp on it, because we never got it.
>
> Number two, this current government has allowed us to shut down the CDMA
> network - it's a wireless technology of the twentieth century - in favour
> of turning
> on a wireless technology of the twenty-first century. They had no skin in
> the
> game, no money, but Helen Coonan put in place a process that prevented us
> from shutting down CDMA, which, by the way, is a wireless network is a
> huge
> consumer of energy and a huge generator or greenhouse gasses.
> So we had the government forcing us to keep two networks open. We were not
> going to do that. So this government allowed us to shut down the CDMA
> network.
> That was a rational thing to do, a good thing to do, a right thing to do
> for the
> consumer.
>
> And this government also did another very important thing that we think is
> good
> for the country and certainly good for us, and that is the $1 billion gift
> of
> taxpayers' money, $1 billion of taxpayers' money - your money and my
> money. I
> pay taxes here too. God, do I pay taxes. I just went through the thing
> with my
> accountant. And you know, I get to pay for all this stuff like all of you
> do. And the
> previous government gave $1 billion of taxpayers' money to Optus and
> Elders to
> build a wireless network that was all within the footprint of our wireless
> network,
> the Next G wireless network.
>
> Now, the Next G wireless network was paid for by 1.6 million mum and dad
> shareholders of Telstra. This was a gift from the taxpayers to a foreign
> government to come in here and overbuild. It would be like if the
> government
> said to Qantas, 'we're not going to let you buy Airbus 380s because we
> don't
> think you should be deploying this new technology'. And then they go to
> Singapore Airlines and say, 'we'd like to give you $1 billion so you could
> buy
> some Airbus 380s'.
>
> And then they'd say, 'Oh, by the way, if you want to come in here and
> compete
> with Qantas, that's okay too. In fact, if you want some of their gates
> out of
> Sydney and Melbourne Airports, we can arrange that'.
>
> That's essentially what the last government did. And nobody said anything.
> Nobody. Not one editorial, not one BCA comment, not one comment from CEDA.
> Nobody cared.
>
> So we just went ahead and tried to get a grassroots movement against
> that,
> which I think we succeeded in doing. The result shows that. We got people
> all
> around the country to understand that that wasn't in the taxpayers'
> interest and
> it wasn't in the national interest. And this government took that billion
> dollars
> away from Optus and Elders when they couldn't produce a plan after eight
> months.
>
> So we think that this new government has made some good decisions along
> the
> way. But now the big decision they have to make is on FTTN. I think that
> it would
> be hard to say that they're breaking speed records. The fact is that a lot
> has to
> be done, but even after the decision's made it's going to take several
> months to
> gear up. You're going to have to get the contracts negotiated. All kinds
> of things
> are going to have to be done and there's no reason why this should be
> delayed.
> When our estimates come out, we will authoritatively show that somewhere
> between $100 million and $200 million a month is being sacrificed to
> delay. And
> in this economic environment, that kind of behaviour has no excuse. We
> need to
> get on with the job. We need to dig holes, lay cable, connect people, get
> moving
> into the twenty-first century for everybody, not just the people who live
> in the
> core cities, but for people who live in the outer suburbs where most of
> our small
> businesses are located, and for the inner suburbs, and for regional
> Australia
> where there are a lot of other small businesses. Remember small
> businesses
> account for over 50 per cent of the jobs in this country, small and
> mid-sized
> enterprises. They can't be left out of the next boom in infrastructure.
>
> The last time we had an upgrade in infrastructure was in the '50s. Some
> say it
> was 'a black phone for every home' - that's what I think the slogan was.
> And it's
> time to understand that that was a long time ago. Things need to be
> upgraded
> again. That's what we've proposed to do since August of 2005 and have
> been
> turned down three different times and now we're in the fourth time. And
> it's time
> for people to get moving - or get off the pot.
>
> Phil Burgess: Any other comments, questions, complaints?
>
> [Laughter]
>
> Thank you very much
> [Applause]
>
> Speaker: Phil, thanks for a fabulous and very thought provoking
> presentation. On
> behalf of AmCham and Hagemeyer brands we have a wonderful little cross pen
> here for you to show our appreciation for your presentation today. Thanks
> again.
>
> [Applause]
>
> ENDS
>
>
>
>
>
>