Clever Country - Can Haz Now PLZ?

I've put this post in a couple of different categories, because what I'm going to talk about affects so many people.

The term "Clever Country" was a term coined by Bob Hawke waaaay back in the early 90's. Yes I know there are people for whom this is all ancient history given that some of you weren't even born when he said that. While it was politically puffery at its finest it came to symbolise what many of us felt was wrong with the way the Government had been treating the country and its resources. For 109 years now, the federal government has been treating Australia as if the only thing worth supporting is mining, farming and to a much lesser extent, manufacturing (cars especially). Anything based on "new tech" like those new fangled computer thingies was left to the vagaries of a market already dominated by those big Government suppliers.

This continued through the Hawke/Keating years, worsened under the Howard/Costello Government and now the year old Rudd/Swann Government has proven that for them, tech means scary (see the Internet Filtering shambles). This doesn't look like changing any time soon.

There are many things about this that frustrate me.

It frustrates me as a business man. I run a business that is internet based. My business is trying to provide new and innovative services (notice no blatant linking in this post) to areas that can really use it, like Local Government and the Not For Profit sector. However thanks to incredibly high data pricing I'm paying through the nose for hosting in Australia instead of heading to the states. I don't want to head overseas to host my data. I want to support our local industry and I want my Government to ensure there is true competition.

It frustrates me as a consumer of media. I read, listen to and watch content from all around the world. Thanks to Michael Stills mythnettv, I can do things like add Make.tv's tv programme into the same interface I view my normal tv recordings. However I am limited in what I can download because of the data pricing in this country. Add to that the fact the government feels like recreating the Super Nanny in legislative form, and I'm a little ticked.

Then of course we have the Freeview fiasco, which while not specifically the fault of the current Government (Howard/Costello deserve the blame for the completely stuffed digital opportunities) is threatening to introduce by private fiat the broadcast flag the United States struggled with and ultimately rejected, while at the same time taking away the EPG that all us digital users rely on and replacing it with a Video Programme Guide.

It's about time we had someone in Government who knew what the hell they were talking about when it comes to tech.