Telstra’s head of Public Policy & Communication, Dr Phil Burgess addressed the Rural Press Club of Victoria last week on the issue of building high-performance communities in Australia.
I can’t think of a better time to be talking about the opportunities for rural Australian communities.
From my observations – and I have been here for 34 months now – Australia is going through a re-awakening. There is a new sense of hope.
Perhaps it reflects that a new Government was elected in November last year. Perhaps it’s related to the Apology. I’m sure it has something to do with the anticipation that surrounds many of the changes that are in the air – from water policy to foreign policy.
It may have something to do with the Request for Proposal released by Minister Conroy on 11 April that the new Government will make good on its election promise to bring broadband to 98 per cent of the people of Australia.
It may represent the aspirations for the future that were expressed at the 2020 Summit last weekend in Canberra.
Whatever the reason or combination of reasons, I believe that people are looking forward to change, and change for the better. Change that can get Australia more aligned to succeed and prosper in the new global economy.
Last week, the Australian National University released their findings on their inaugural poll on the ‘Public Opinion Towards Governance’. This caught my attention because it demonstrated that opinion in Australia is much different – and much more positive – than in most of the rest of the developed world.
More than 70 per cent of Australians are satisfied or very satisfied in the direction that Australia is heading. Only 20 per cent are not satisfied, and seven per cent haven’t made up their minds.
This is the polar opposite of what can be seen in both the US and Britain. Only 22 per cent of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the US. In the UK – only 25 per cent of the Brits are pleased with the direction they are headed as a nation.
These kinds of nation-wide polls, however, can often mask differences among regions or between urban and rural – especially since respondents from the major urban areas represent well over 60 per cent of the samples.
What about the boomtowns – the rapidly growing communities in rural Australia that are having problems coping with explosive growth?
What about communities that aren’t booming – that are stagnating or in decline?
What about drought-stricken farming communities
What about communities that are losing population to surrounding regional centres or to capital cities?
There is an underlying issue that deserves serious attention – and that is the urban centric focus of much of what we do, especially the urban-centric orientation of many national policies and regulations, and the urban-centric views of dominate national media.
Let me give you some examples.
First, consider the urban-centric bias of the experts at the ACCC who set prices for telecommunications services.
Nearly everyone in Australia embraces the idea of national uniform prices – that idea that people in the bush should pay roughly the same for telecommunications services as people in the cities.
Telstra believes in national uniform prices. The elected Parliament has repeatedly affirmed national uniform prices. And public opinion polls show that city folk support the idea that people in the bush should not pay higher prices for telecoms services than people in the cities.
But the policy of national uniform prices is not the view of the ACCC. In its wisdom – not the wisdom of elected leaders – the appointed officials and experts at the ACCC have decided that people in the bush should pay more for telecoms than people in the cities – a lot more. The ACCC experts call this “de-averaged” prices. It sounds innocent enough until you see what it really means. The current prices set by the ACCC look something like this:
- CBD @ $6.40
- Inner suburbs @ $15.20
- Outer suburbs @ $30.20
- Regional, rural and remote Australia @ $150.00 - $180.00
Second, consider the urban-centric views of the two national newspapers on the issue of broadbanding Australia:
- In June 2007, The Australian said “But amid all the claims of revolution, the high-speed internet age realistically means more movie and song downloads.”
- In May of the same year, the Australian Financial Review said “Though industries are clamouring for subsidised fibre, it is not clear that it is an economic imperative.”
So in the middle of last year, our two national newspapers didn’t get it.
But there was a change, particularly in what people were saying through elections and policy making.
In November 2007, the ALP won the election to take Government. On 11 April of this year, Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, called for proposals for a National Broadband Network to bring 12 Mbps to at least 98 per cent of the Australian population.
Yet still, some of the urban mainstream media didn’t get it. On 22 April, the Australian Financial Review said in an opinion piece that it was “…a phoney broadband crisis…”, “…there is no justification for the rush, apart from politics…” That there is “…no evidence of market failure…” And “…the ‘crisis’ is gradually being fixed – at least in built-up areas.”
This urban-centric mindset is a real problem for regional, rural and remote Australia. It is a problem because these papers continue to throw cold water on the urgency of broadbanding the entire nation. It’s sort of like, “Hey, we got ours, so what’s the rush? We’re not sure we need it anyway.”
But not everyone lives in the five capital cities.
The broadband complacency of The Australian and the Australian Financial Review sits well with readers who have access to 8, 12 or 20 Mbps through their cable TV or ADSL connections in urban areas.
But Telstra is changing things in regional and rural Australia. Telstra has been in the bush for generations. Over the past 12 months, we have significantly improved access to telecommunications services in rural Australia.
Despite the views of national media, the challenge for regional, rural, and remote Australia is to build high-performance communities…and that requires high-speed digital connections to each other, to the rest of the nation, and to the outside world.
What is a high-performance community? A performance community is a place where things work:
- in the public sector — e.g., water, sewers, streets, hospitals, schools and airports — all the things government does;
- in the enterprise sector, where per capita wealth increases and where all enterprises have a good chance to become fast, flexible, customized, networked and global — the hallmarks of a New Economy enterprise; and
- in the civic sector — e.g., neighbourhoods, churches, mosques, synagogues, centres for the performing arts, museums and other cultural resources — indeed, all the things voluntary associations do; and where there is a broad sharing of power, and other values (e.g., learning, well-being, skill, respect), many of which can be affected positively by increasing wealth.
This is why it is important to revise and overhaul the way we think about “economic development” and, especially to liberate the concept from urbanization and measures of growth.
The challenge of economic development is bigger than growth. Economic development is about:
- Creating jobs }
- Expanding wealth } For People and Communities
- Increasing hope }
And you can do this in any human settlement regardless of size or location, especially in this day and age with telecommunications. That is why success in economic development requires new ways of thinking.
More specifically, a high performance community is a place that provides:
- good jobs at good wages — growth or not!
- business enterprises that have a future — growth or not!
- more per capita wealth for the community — growth or not!
- strong and healthy voluntary associations, a robust civic order — growth or not
- a user-friendly government that responds to citizen direction — growth or not!
- more hope for families, communities and the future — growth or not!
It's our view these are nearly universal goals in a democratic society. Reason: The high-performance community vision requires a community where:
- per capita income increases (increasing wealth)
- enterprises become more productive (increasing competitiveness)
- social, economic and political values are broadly shared (increasing equity).
And the key to each of these objectives? Social, commercial and political engagement. Connections. Telecommunications – and not just POTS (plain old telephone service) but PANS (pretty amazing new stuff).