www.nickhodge.com

In a G’day world pod­cast I appeared on in 2007 I stated I was vot­ing Lib­eral. It should come as no sur­prise I am doing the same in 2010

At the begin­ning of Tony Abbott’s reign as leader of the Fed­eral Lib­er­als, I will admit I was uncer­tain of his abil­ity to be the Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia. Through this cam­paign, Mr. Rab­bit has shown a wiser and more mature head. Hav­ing met Tony in per­son, spoken to him one:one and in 2004 man­ning an elec­tion booth — I am cer­tain what we see with Tony is what we are going to get. Whilst I am no longer a mem­ber of the Lib­eral Party, I would con­sider myself a “small-L” liberal.

On one of the occa­sions where I met Mr Abbott when he was Min­is­ter for Health (2003 I think), we talked about the import­ance of Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy. He was no more a tech­head as he was a Doc­tor; and was not con­vinced with my rant­ing on the power of the inter­net. A senior Lib­eral advisor stated firstly that all indus­tries lobby about their import­ance to the future. Inform­a­tion tech­no­logy is no dif­fer­ent. Secondly, that once the politi­cians care about your industry, it becomes a polit­ical foot­ball. Increas­ing con­trol, reg­u­la­tion comes with increased invest­ment. Wel­come to where we have been for the last 5 years.

This elec­tion Geeks have suffered a cog­nit­ive dis­son­ance: vote Labor, get a gov­ern­ment fun­ded National Broad­band Net­work (NBN) but with a coupled Filter/Censorship pos­i­tion. Vote Lib­eral, and you get no Fibre installed into your home but no Fil­ter. Greens sup­port­ers will make the obser­va­tion: “vote Greens”. They’re too pro­gress­ive and social­ist for a coun­try boy like me. Or, their attached policies are not to my lik­ing. Lar­ger Gov­ern­ment, more pub­lic ser­vants and more con­trol of our lives by a nanny state rubs against my grain.

In the 2007 elec­tion, Rudd prom­ised $4.7b for Fibre-to-the-Node NBN. This expan­ded into $43b Fibre-to-the-Home; span­ning 93% of Aus­trali­ans as a mech­an­ism for coun­ter­ing the GFC. Whilst there is no pure busi­ness plan to spend $5.37b per year over 8 years, Labor has failed to sell a com­plete social plan for the need for an NBN. There is no vis­ion. Whilst the Min­is­ter in charge is shackled by the Fil­ter debate, the geeker­ati will not help.

To illus­trate the import­ance of inter­net access, this elec­tion Lib­er­als are prom­ising to invest $6.7b (I think) into inter­net con­nectiv­ity. Not as gen­er­ous on fund­ing, and there­fore speed – but within their budget con­straints. To the Lib­er­als, the lar­gesse of the NBN is a place to grab for­ward com­mit­ted funds to reduce debt. They have no vis­ion for the use of the inter­net and how it has the poten­tial to trans­form. The Lib­er­als best war­rior, Mal­colm Turn­bull, has been side­lined. I would hope that Mal­colm gets re-elected and we find a prag­matic policy that is afford­able. A cut down NBN; cop­per con­duits pur­chased from Tel­stra with smarter nego­ti­ation. And with a vis­ion for its use 30–50 years out.

Fibre, along with wire­less, is the future. Both. This is not an either-or.

Oh, and if Labor get back in, the Fil­ter will arise. Games and apps for phones and other like devices will require expens­ive clas­si­fic­a­tion. With or without a won­der­ful fibre NBN, our cre­ativ­ity will be throttled at the bor­ders. Even if the Greens hold the bal­ance of power in the Sen­ate, Mr Con­roy (if Com­mu­nic­a­tions Min­is­ter) will find another way to imple­ment his filter.

But the NBN is not the main game as far as I am concerned.

My con­cerns with Labor is its propensity to plough Aus­tralia into more debt. Bad man­age­ment by both Rudd, but also Gar­rett et al have res­ul­ted in sig­ni­fic­ant wastage of my tax dol­lars. Less sov­er­eign debt will leave Aus­tralia in a bet­ter pos­i­tion to deal with the shock of a slowly col­lapsing US and Europe. The argu­ment that a Gov­ern­ment can always tax more to repay debt: this is on the assump­tion that busi­ness is healthy enough to be taxed (and employ staff to be taxed) and there is a healthy world eco­nomy that con­sumes Australia’s exports.

Apart from spend­ing hand over first, Labor has a track record of wastage. Reports on the Build­ing the Edu­ca­tion Revolu­tion (BER) state a low wastage %. This is cer­tainly not the case with the Insu­la­tion pro­gram, another GFC pro­gram. Gov­ern­ment pur­chas­ing should be effi­cient and not waste tax­payer dollars.

Inter­est­ingly, the most pro­gress­ive policy that taxes the big end of town this elec­tion comes from the Lib­er­als: Paid Par­ental Leave fun­ded by a levy on large busi­ness. I think that it is import­ant that women can both have kids if they choose, and con­tinue to work if they choose. Within the eco­nomic real­it­ies of today, the Lib­er­als have the most attract­ive policy.

Like all elec­tions, those mar­ginal elect­or­ates are receiv­ing the most atten­tion. This is our sys­tem work­ing. You have to make your elect­or­ate a mar­ginal elect­or­ate if you want the same atten­tion. Simple.

I am not so con­cerned with the “men in smoky back­rooms” or vot­ing by ran­dom party mem­bers that con­trol the levers behind our Fed­eral politi­cians. It is the same on all sides of polit­ics. Con­tinu­ing greater trans­par­ency on dona­tions and lob­by­ists would be nice. But nice never wins.

My wish is for all parties to reduce middle­class wel­fare, and reduce tax­a­tion. Or, at least, fun­nel money into places where the mar­ket will fail. Roads, Hos­pit­als, Education.

And here lies the drum. Both parties are using the flow on tax to wrest con­sti­tu­tion­ally state-based con­cerns (Edu­ca­tion, Health) into the Fed­eral sphere. If this reduced the man­age­ment over­head, I would sup­port this. The model that seems to be cre­ated to increase bur­eau­cracy. More wast­ing of money. Both parties need to not waste money on overhead.

Polit­ics is never simple: A vs. B; black or White. It is grey with mul­tiple dimen­sions. This leaves us all wiggle room to argue and dis­cuss; he said she said style con­ver­sa­tions. Prom­ises kept; changes in pos­i­tion. Hypo­thet­ic­als. Rhet­or­ical con­structs. It is great to live in a coun­try where we can openly dis­cuss, argue and most import­antly: vote.

As I hold a por­tion of my wealth in US$ and loc­ally in cash — higher interest rates and a lower exchange rate that a ALP/Greens Gov­ern­ment is likely to induce. And Fibre to my home, paid for by you bug­gers at $5000, sounds good too. But it is not good for the future of Aus­tralia. That’s why I am vot­ing Lib­eral. As I am now in Mr Rabbit’s elect­or­ate, he has a safe vote in my hands.