Conroy wants telcos to wear undies on heads Australia's Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has bragged of his unfettered power to command local telcos, saying it gives him the power to compel them to wear red underpants on their collective heads. Conroy's remarks were made at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information …
Seriously this is the type of parliamentarians that we have fostered in this once beautiful country, what is even more laughable than this type of elitist behaviour is that a majority of our MP's especially our ginga leader are paid more than our Yankee brethren! (Sorry to say far more than our English ones by far as well)
I mean come on, running a country of 23m vs. running a country of 300m not to mention that in all aspects of scale we are one of the smaller western nations compared to the G8 (I think we just make it into the G20 :) and we have a PM that pays itself <--intentional use> far more than the Yankee presso!
I digress though. Conroy is a coc---k and now we have video evidence, (like we needed it!)
"I have no doubt he will lose his seat at the next general election."
Extremely unlikely, he's a senior senator for one of the major parties. By default, if the Labor Party gets one quota, he's elected. The only way for him to be unseated, short of being rolled by his own party, is for everyone in Victoria to direct their preferences away from him, which means voting below the line, and numbering every square. That's not likely to happen in the current electoral environment.
"Seriously - that level of arrogance is dangerous in any democracy."
Australia is a democracy? I thought it was a retardocracy. I only vote to vote out the retards I hate most and the last retard left gets the job. Democracy implies I'm voting for someone I want to run the country and these clowns can't run a chook raffle.
The only person worth voting for is Craig Thomson because he CAN organize a bonk in a brothel. The rest are not that gifted.
With a "Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy" like that it is no surprise broadband prices and caps in Australia are still quite different from those in other parts of the world. And yes, situations are different, but there is a point at which assholery is influencing prices more than enormous distances.
I must say that last time I was in Oz (January & February) I was pleasantly surprised by the prices. I bought a Telstra data-only pre-paid SIM, valid for 30 days, with 3 Gigs of data. It cost AUD30, which is around €24.
That is about 0.78 Euro-cent per megabyte.
In the large cities you would have 3G, outside large cities 2G, in the outback nothing.
Now here in Europe, until July, if I set one foot over the border, I would pay €3.50 per megabyte (350 Euro-cent).
After intervention by the EU (one of the very few things I can laud them for) that is now €0.87 per megabyte.
If I pre-buy a bundle I can get 100MB for €10 = 10 Euro-cent per megabyte, but I always pay that €10, even if I use less than 100 MB.
Domestically, you will pay 1-5 Euro-cent per megabyte, depending on how large your bundle is.
Bearing in mind that this is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and our cell towers don usually fall victim to bush-fires or floods, I'd say Ozzies don have that much to complain.
(But I know Ozzies *like* to complain, they are like Dutchies in that respect). Australian providers have a much less favourable customers / square kilometer ratio. (Even if you take into account that 90% of the population lives in urban environments with densities not much lower than Western Europe)
To table something in the US means to put aside and pretend it doesn't exist... In the UK it means to take something up and actively discuss it.... to bring it to the table.
Anyone know where Simon is from so we can tell which one it is? (from the language it seems to be the latter)....
"The reportedly teetotal Conory is not generally gaffe-prone, but has acquired many fierce critics thanks largely to his backing of a policy to create a national internet filter for Australia. "
Conroy has always struck me as someone that loved the powers bestowed upon him and was just itching to pull the trigger on a new law/ruling etc. You get the sense from his general demeanor and the way he approaches things - very dictatorial. I imagine his a very "I'm right, you're wrong" "my way or the highway" type. This just proves he's a total cock on top of that.
What a bunch of sooks! Conroy is just telling it like it is. Australia does have a legal system that centralises comms regulatory power on the federal government almost exclusively. It offers a good environment for actually screwing better deals out of telcos if used well. This hasn't been achieved historically since privatisation, it's been more of a case of the telcos telling the government what they want and the government saying yes, but in Australia the option is there. Conroy knows it and the telcos know it.
You might not like Conroy or some of his policies but he's right about this. Conflating everything into a single dumb narrative is, well, dumb.
I cant believe this guy is in charge of anything technical, he is even more embarrassing to listen to than the old Liberal communications minister Richard Alston, neither seems to have a clue. The embarrassing part is that they are Australian representatives. This isnt about pricing, its about the Conroy's pipe dream of nanny monitoring the Australian public.
If China isnt able to properly filter its own internet, what makes Conroy think Australia can. This guy would be a poster child for Hitler and Stalin, a power hungry psychopath with a shallow understanding of reality. Any attempt at filtering is a losing battle and a waste of taxpayer dollars. The only people that would benefit from a national filter system would be the technically clueless like Conroy (with a false sense of security) and the companies trying to sell Australia such a ineffective tool.
Listen to the parlimentary boadcasts, its amazing the contempt of which the current government has for everyone else. Conroy is the the Tony Abbot of the 'ALP'. The NBN was his way of punishing Telstra for trying to hold the goverment to ransom over a 'Fibre to the Node' plan when they first came to office.
He, and his kind (Penny Wong et. al.), are why they will not win the next election even if [Insert Deity here] was in charge.
A government is more than just the figurehead. In fact the Libs could be headed by a bigoted, monkey boy, Conroy Clone and still win.
Yes the Liberals have their Conroys, thankfully, less of them.
This is not the worst statement he made. He also said that if international bandwidth prices are not sufficiently cheap, the government will simply overbuild. I suggest that this could become a self fulfilling prophesy, because the financiers simply won't fund projects with that sort of threat hanging over the viability of the project.
I'm beginning to think we should ban political staffers from becoming politicians.
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