General Approach
Asking the right questions and asking many of them is my approach to difficult problems. No-one can know everything so it is vital to consult experts and stakeholders.I believe in personal freedom and economic freedom with government intervening where is sensible to do so. I believe our country and economy should be run to benefit all Australians - rich and poor. I do not believe in "punishing" the rich but some Australians have a better capacity to contribute.
Education
Education is vital to having a well functioning economy and for preventing poverty traps.Education helps to minimise "structural unemployment" - where workers can't find jobs they are qualified for and employers can't find work that are qualified in a different field.
Workers can go to TAFE to learn a skill that will qualify them for a job - benefiting employers and workers.
The United States is having problems with structural unemployment - there are jobs but those people who are unemployed are not qualified for them.
Education also helps people escape from poverty traps. Education can help someone find a job or find a higher paying job. If a person has no job, or a low paying job, how are they going to afford an education - so affordable education is also vital.
Education is particularly important for people who have been out of the workforce for a period of time - such as parents who have cared for pre-school children or workers who have been injured.
Furthermore a large proportion of inmates in gaol are illiterate - ensuring a high literacy rate is important for reducing crime.
Health
Affordable quality health care is vitally important. If a person is too sick to work, how would they earn the money for treatment?I have talked to people from countries that do not have public healthcare systems - they will stockpile at least A$100,000 for medical treatment. This is money that is not being productively used in the economy. Furthermore without a competing public health system it often costs hundreds of dollars just to see a GP.
NBN
The NBN is a critical piece of infrastructure. The isolation of Australia makes telecommunications more valuable. The Nationals even suggested a plan similar to the NBN because it is the most isolated locations in the bush that will obtain the most benefit.A great number of pie-in-the-sky uses for the NBN have been mentioned but there are a great deal of uses everyday for the NBN:
- backups will take minutes instead of days - critical business data, personal photos or personal videos won't be lost
- better reliability means everything you do today - internet banking, ordering online, communicating - is less likely to be interrupted by an internet outage
- better reliability means you can rely on cheaper services such as VOIP or skype
- cheaper access for business that already pay around $3000 a month for a fibre connection that is inferior to the NBN
- cheaper multi-line phone lines for business using VOIP - the NBN has both the capacity and the reliability
- businesses can easily send large files to customers or other businesses, for example:
- sending product photos for catalogues
- sending scanned plans or documents with high detail
- businesses can export overseas in fields that are data intensive such as software engineering, graphic design, music and filmmaking
Fibre to the Node (FTTN) will still rely on the aging copper telephone lines which were never designed to carry high speed internet. The telephone lines are becoming unreliable as they become older. The experimental VDSL2 can achieve speeds of up to 100Mbps over 300m but there is no current technology which can achieve 1Gbps over telephone lines.
Note that there is some confusion - mobile is not wifi. Some people use "wireless" to mean either. Mobile cannot currently get anywhere close to the NBN. Wifi can reach those speeds - but it needs to be connected to your home internet connection.
