The Australian Computer Society (ACS) is once more holding a Federal Election Forum on ICT issues, with the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy, his Coalition counterpart Tony Smith MP, and The Greens’ spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam.

As you can see from the photos, Australia’s political diversity is once more represented by a bunch of middle-aged men in dark suits.

When I wrote about the equivalent event in 2007, I noted that the Minster at the time, Liberal Senator Helen Coonan, looked rattled and scored a few own goals. Conroy, by comparison, was alert and scored some sharp political points. And Democrat leader Senator Lyn Allison — remember the Democrats? — was quietly confident.

Labor’s broadband promise was a Fibre to the Node network with a “guaranteed” minimum speed of 12Mb/sec to 98% of Australians, costing $4.7 billion. The Liberals were promising WiMaX through the OPEL consortium. From memory, mandatory internet censorship didn’t even get a mention, as both parties only added that little gem to their agendas after the official campaign period had started.

How times have changed…

This year’s moderator is Sky News political editor, David Speers. An odd choice, I must say. Sure, he has the profile and Sky News Business is the host broadcaster. But wouldn’t it have been better to have someone with a better technical knowledge of the portfolio, rather than a general political news reporter? My worry is that it’ll degenerate into political point-scoring rather than analysing competing policies.

So let’s help out Mr Speers. What are the issues this year, do you think? What questions should he ask?

I think we can take a question or two about internet censorship for granted. Please try to think beyond the obvious indignation du jour.

The Federal Election Forum is next Tuesday 10 August 2010 at the National Press Club in Canberra. The debate starts at 1pm Canberra time and will be broadcast on Sky News Business and possibly ABC News 24. [Update 3pm: The Forum will also be streamed live at YouTube's Australia Votes channel.]

[Photo credits: Stephen Conroy via Wikimedia Commons. Tony Smith via Office of Tony Smith MP. Scott Ludlam via The Greens. This composite image is licensed for re-use under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-2.0 license.]

Third Crikey story this week! Today I returned to that evergreen favourite, the idiocy of the Rudd government’s plans to install ISP-level filters on the Internet.

Alas, the story is currently behind Crikey‘s paywall, but it begins:

Is there anyone who reckons trying to filter bad stuff out of the Internet is the right way to go? Or even possible? Apart, that is, from sex-obsessed panic merchants and moral crusaders, politicians with Senate numbers to count on stubby little fingers, shiny-suited salesmen hawking boxes marked “Rooly-Trooly-Safe Internet Filter”, or cud-munching Luddites who just don’t understand anything about the Internet generally?

Those with a clue are getting sick of pointing out the same policy and technical flaws. But Minister for Denying the Bleeding Obvious Senator Stephen Conroy relentlessly continues his warped version of the trials program set up by Coalition predecessor Helen Coonan.

Filters won’t work because no shut up doesn’t matter let’s try again they don’t work no let’s try again they don’t work let’s try again don’t work try try try try … FFS!

The Rudd government says it’s all about evidence-based policy. Maybe this new report from the US Internet Safety Technical Task Force will help. This panel — a who’s who of Internet heavies — was set up by 49 state Attorneys General to tackle the problem of children being solicited for sex online. It discovered there’s actually no significant problem at all.

You can read the whole thing, if you’re a subscriber or take up the free trial offer, at Another nail in the coffin of Conroy’s Rabbit-Proof Firewall.

My writing must be starting to score some hits, because there’s been two comments today attacking the man and not the ball.

Someone calling themselves Verity Pravda, who blogs at The Interweb Warrior, commented:

Simple question. Does this raving lunatic think there should be no classification system on any media? Or that there should not be a Refused Classification category at all? If so I look forward to his campaign on that change.

I heartily agree that the policy is being handled atrociously. But Stil continually misrepresents what is proposed. Nothing about the filter is about the threat to children from being entrapped on line. The “protection of children” the Minister talks about is the protection of children from taking every action he can to stem trade in the images.

It is the functional equivalent of protecting elephants from poaching by banning the trade in ivory. It doesn’t mean you don’t also have programs to catch poachers. But you sure as heck don’t put up a special entrance way at your ports saying “if you have potentially illegal items please enter here”.

And at this point all the Minister is asking is that ISPs try blocking access to the websites and tell him how it works — that looks like real evidence based policy rather than just one person saying “it doesn’t work”. By the way, saying something more than once doesn’t make it true.

And exactly why is Crikey providing his rants. Since when has Crikey been a paragon of a complete libertarian view on content. Goodness me only yesterday Stephen Mayne seemed to be promoting ASIC’s investigation of those Packer stories and — horror — quite calm about the idea of the journalist being forced to reveal their sources. Somehow I thought that was on the taboo list.

Actually, I’ve corrected the typing mistakes. I’ve got this thing about publishing badly-typed material.

My response:

@Verity Pravda: As I’ve previously answered on your own blog… No, I do not think there should be “no classification system on any media”. I’ll even answer the question again, since you seem to be having trouble with my answer: No, I do not think there should be “no classification system on any media”.

It’s not “just one person saying ‘it doesn’t work’” but in fact the government’s own trials from the first half of 2008 (which we’ve linked to many times before), and the detailed commentary of experienced network engineers such as Mark Newton.

As I’ve also pointed out in your blog, many of the assertions you keep making about current government policy have been thoroughly debunked at Libertus.net (and elsewhere). But you keep repeating your incorrect assertions. As you yourself say, “saying something more than once doesn’t make it true”.

The opponents of ISP-level internet filters can back up their arguments with facts, references to official documentation and solid logic. You seem to keep avoiding addressing those argument and resorting to the straw-man “you want to flood the world with illegal material”, like Conroy does… why? Could it be because your own arguments are actually weak, and the factual basis non-existent?

My own argument is that the limited money we have available should be spent precisely where it will do the most good to “protect the children”: policing and education.

My experience with Crikey is that they publish a whole range of reportage, opinion and commentary. People who imagine there’s a “party line” can’t be reading very carefully.

I will admit to one problem with my article. Written quickly and with a word limit, it didn’t adequately separate out the threads of the government’s Cyber-Safety program.

On the other hand, Senator Conroy has continually jumbled up all the pieces too. And that’s deliberate. It’s a classic troll tactic. Keep changing the focus of the subject. Keep making personal attacks. Keep claiming things which are factually incorrect. Your opponents get lost trying to correct the myriad of factual inconsistencies — while the “ordinary person”, baffled, can only respond emotionally to the “we must protect the children” plea. Dirty, but effective.

One advertisement said a survey had shown that more than half of 11-15-year-olds who chatted online were contacted by strangers…

[Coonan] refused to make the research public, saying it contained personal information. The Age has obtained the research, a survey prepared by the Wallis Consulting Group, under freedom of information laws. It does not contain any personal information…

[The claim] regarding stranger contact does not appear in the government-commissioned research. The question was not posed in this form. Participants were asked: “When chatting online, have you ever been contacted by someone you haven’t met in real life?” More than half answered “yes”.

So, a “stranger” is anyone you chatted with online, even a friend of a friend, who you just haven’t met physically. A “contact” could have been spam. Gee, we all have them, don’t we?

The duplicity of Coonan’s statement is the conflation of “someone you haven’t met before” with “stranger” with “danger”. The pre-existing alliterative “stranger danger” meme made it even easier to promulgate this campaign of fear.

If someone’s mind already includes “stranger danger”, and you use loose terminology to say that anyone you haven’t met in “real life” before (as if people become non-real when your communication is electronic?) is a “stranger”, then instead of the perfectly reasonable “half of the kids have met a new friend online” you suddenly have “half of the kids have been approached by a dangerous paedophile”. Hardly the same thing.

There was an interesting discussion on the Link mailing list this morning. Some people have criticisms of my argument. But the “stranger danger” meme is just wrong.

As one fact sheet on child sexual abuse says:

A study in three states found 96% of reported rape survivors under age 12 knew the attacker. 4% of the offenders were strangers, 20% were fathers, 16% were relatives and 50% were acquaintances or friends…

In up to 50% of reported cases, offenders are adolescents. In 82% of accusations recently studied the accused offender was a heterosexual partner of a close relative of the child’s.

So, the NetAlert campaign promoted a completely inaccurate stereotype of the “risky people”. The typical offender is an adolescent “known to the victim”. But if you’re over 45 and male, don’t dare pause on your afternoon walk to smile with joy at the sight of kids playing in the park, and especially dare not ask “How’s the soccer going?”

I find it truly disgusting that saying hello to a fellow human being, of whatever age, is immediately treated with suspicion. That kind of paranoia can’t be good for society. Is that really the world we want to live in?

Body language is revealing. At Friday’s breakfast forum, two Senators’ body language showed their confidence in their grasp of Information and Communications Technology issues. Alas, the minister, Senator Helen Coonan (pictured), wasn’t one of them.

Coonan’s opening speech was long on motherhood, short on detail. Her opponents, Labor’s Senator Stephen Conroy and Democrat leader Senator Lyn Allison attacked with confidence — and hard numbers. Coonan looked rattled.

When he wasn’t speaking, Conroy was alert. His eyes scanned the crowd, noting tables for heavyweights Microsoft, IBM, Lenovo, Accenture, Fujitsu, Symantec, Gartner … though Telstra were notably absent.

Allison was relaxed and comfortable, sitting back and waiting for her turn, ready to rattle on about quantum computing, laptops in school, IT literacy, and a global brand for Australian IT innovation — something like Woolmark for wool.

But Coonan frowned and ruffled through her papers as if cramming for an exam, nodding as she recognised something. I’ve been told since that she wouldn’t agree to the debate unless she had all the questions in advance — and her answers were apparently scripted.

Then came the lists. Lists of programs and reports and millions of dollars spent. The Coalition vision, it seems, is based on how much money its spent. Few specific achievement were named.

Conroy repeated Labor’s broadband promise: A Fibre to the Node network with a guaranteed minimum of 12Mb/sec to 98% of Australians. At $4.7B, “this is likely to be the single largest commitment of a Rudd government, we’re that serious about it,” he said.

Coonan tried attacking it, saying FTTN won’t help distant farmers, but came unstuck. She claimed that with her championed technology, the OPEL consortium’s WiMaX, “if you live under a rock you’ll be able to get broadband.” Own Goal #1, Senator: WiMaX can’t penetrate rock.

“You get into trouble when politicians start picking technologies,” Coonan said. “You mean like OPEL,” retorted Conroy. Own Goal #2.

And everyone’s threatening to break up Telstra. But as one journalist asked to resounding applause, “Has anyone got the balls to say you’re actually going to do it?”

“If I tell you now you’d have to kill me,” answered Coonan. Own Goal #3: That “me” should be a “you”, Senator. Unless you really mean …

[Note: This is an edited version of an article originally published in Crikey.]

I’m happy. I’ve been published twice today, thrice this week.

As I mentioned before, Crikey was happy for me to cover today’s panel discussion with IT minister Senator Helen Coonan and her Labor opponent Senator Stephen Conroy. They were joined this morning by Democrats leader, Senator Lyn Allison.

My Crikey story points out that Coonan scored at least three own goals. I’m chuffed that it was selected as a “top story” for subscribers.

My other Crikey story was about Australia’s contribution to the Space Age, published on Wednesday and including my comments about the spaceport we never seem to get.

I’ll do a public version of both those stories tomorrow.

And the third piece was a little snippet for New Scientist, which I sent them on 24 June. There’s a picture (right), but here are the words for search engines to find.

The label on reader Stilgherrian’s Australian-made Starmaid ice-cube trays reassures him that they are “freezer safe” — which he says is “handy”.

But right now it’s Red Wine Time…

As mentioned last week, Friday morning I’m having breakfast with the ICT minister Senator Helen Coonan and her ALP counterpart Senator Stephen Conroy — along with some many members of the ACS.

That’s Senator Coonan on the right. In every sense of the word.

While the discussion will be chaired by some bloke from Channel 7, I’m assuming there’ll be a chance for questions. When I asked on Link last week, here’s what popped up. What would you add?

[In no particular order, numbered for reference.]

1. ICT as a critical “enabling” element in our response to climate change, which will require lots of distributed access to lots of information and the tools to evaluate it.
2. Protecting children online.
3. Increased broadband capacity at affordable prices.
4. What happened to the Information Economy? Why are all the information jobs going off shore to India?
5. What is going to happen to the CDMA network?
6. Why does the government continue to behave like they own Telstra?
7. Programming for digital TV.
8. What would each do in government to facilitate remote/teleworking?
9. Reducing Australia’s reliance on monopoly software — particularly in government; promotion of the use of open standards; and the development of a national software industry based on open standards and open source.
10. ICT security — do we want to develop critical ICT infrastructure with (how can I say this diplomatically?) levels of security commonly associated with user platforms?
11. An enforced split of Telstra’s retail and infrastructure divisions

I think I’d pull back to a Big Picture question about teh Internet. In 1995, Australia was 3rd on the planet in terms of Internet bandwidth and computer power per population, now we’re not even in the Top 10. What are your thoughts on that? Is it important? If so, how should it be addressed? If not, why not?

What are your thoughts?

What do you reckon the key IT, Internet, media and communications issues will be for this federal election?

For me, I think it’ll be facing the Raccoonan’s hairstyle at 0730. But maybe it’s, what? Broadband rollout? Protecting the kiddies on the Internet? Suggestions please!

Andrew P Street is a genius. I say that because (a) he is, (b) knowing Andrew is one of the three vital components for understanding the full subtlety of this week’s poll, and (c) I dare not upset him by failing to acknowledge his enormous throbbing brain.

Last night ’Pong and I went to the Excelsior Hotel in Glebe. Their website is slick and glossy — but the web designer has clearly never set foot in the establishment because the Excelsior is what we in the business call a “dive”. Or, as the Macquarie Dictionary puts it, “a disreputable place, as for drinking, gambling, etc.”

I wish to report that the Excelsior is well-equipped for drinking, and we made ample use of its facilities.

Andrew P Street is, I believe, also well-equipped for drinking, being in possession of hands, mouth, gullet etc. He also has a guitar, and his mouth is so arranged that red wine may flow inwards while, at other moments, song flows outwards.

You may learn much more about Andrew from his MySpace profile and in particular the blog post The *Real* Andrew P Street. I was moved to learn — and I’m sure you will be too — that:

Like so many of the world’s hottest supermodels, I’m entirely made up of tinier Andrews; each of whom are, in turn, made of deliciously spicy Andrews which are only slightly tinier, but wear thicker jumpers. That’s fractal geometry at work, right there.

And:

WHAT’S SOMETHING THAT YOU’VE NEVER TOLD ANOTHER PERSON?
“My hovercraft armada will take those universal dorsal flaps to Bournemouth, Jason Donovan.”

Andrew P Street was also at the Excelsior last night. But before I elaborate on that, I encourage you to revisit the 1980s and listen to a song.

Yes, Samantha Fox, singing Touch Me. Possibly the finest song of the 80s, in the same way that I Like It Both Ways was without doubt the finest song of the 1970s.

Samantha’s performance in that video is notable for three reasons:

• Her breasts
• The young man who dances with her who, in my expert opinion, is extremely unlikely to be genuinely interested in said breasts. That’s professionalism.

Last night, Andrew P Street also sang Touch Me. And can I say that the song has a very different meaning when sung by a 35-year-old man who’s had more than one glass of red wine and who, it must truthfully be said, is not quite as slim as when I first met him more than a decade ago.

Like a tramp in the night
I was begging you
To treat my body like you wanted to

Uh….
Uh, it’s begging for you

(this is the night)
Touch me, touch me

This all set me thinking.

If Andrew P Street is perhaps not the most appropriate person to be singing this song, who is?

Obviously it has to be a politician because politics remains the most popular topic on this website. But which one? Please visit the website to vote. Or, if your favourite candidate isn’t listed, please add them in the comments — with an explanation.

Last week’s results: It started off looking like the most annoying Howard government action was buying $6 billion of military aircraft the RAAF doesn’t want, the “intervention” in Aboriginal communities edged ahead.

On the ABC’s The Insiders on 25 March, the Raccoonan said: “If you just look back a couple of years ago no-one had even heard about broadband.”

No, Senator, I think it’s only you who hadn’t heard of it. The rest of us had it connected to our homes and offices.

Even 12 years ago there was Paul Keating’s Broadband Services Expert Group. Their final report included recommendations like:

With the spread of broadband infrastructure, broadband links be provided to all schools, libraries, medical and community centres by the year 2001.

And:

Telecommunications carriers and broadband network operators be required to inform government annually of their strategies for upgrading their networks, including the expected level of digitisation of existing network services, and the expected extent of broadband network coverage. This requirement should be reviewed by the year 2000.

Hat tip to Prof Roger Clarke for bringing this one to my attention.

[P.S. If you haven't already done so, please vote in my poll about Coonan. If you're reading this in the RSS feed, you'll have to go to my website for that.]

While writing an article for Crikey last night — the follow-up to yesterday’s post — I was “inspired” by this frame grab of communications minister Helen Coonan from her interview on The 7.30 Report Monday night.

I cant help but think that the Raccoonan‘s wide-eyed enthusiasm for WiMaX is reminiscent of the Springfield Monorail. She doesn’t understand it, but the salesmen’s convinced her it’s the answer.

Just think about that. In 1995, a cutting-edge PC was an Intel 486 DX66 with 64MB of RAM and a 2x CD drive. The year’s big software release was Windows 95 — the very first version of Windows with Internet connectivity built-in.

Senator Coonan rejects the claim that the Government has been left behind. “You can’t really say that,” she says, “when you look at the Government’s record in rolling out broadband.”

Can’t you, Senator?

So how come back in 1995, Australia was third in the world in terms of Internet bandwidth and computing power per head of population, while today after a decade of Howard at the helm we don’t even make the top 10?

[Update 22 June 2007: I'm amazed no-one picked up the most obvious mistake in this post. The Optus/Elders plan may be costed at $2 billion but only half of that comes from the taxpayers. I've edited the post to fix the mistake.]

Ever since Crikey listed Rudd’s repetitive catch-phrases — assertive government foreign policy is “hairy-chested”, opponents “should take a long cold shower”, amongst others — I’ve noticed, yes, he really does use them all the time. Including this morning’s edition of The Insiders (transcript available Monday).

Rudd is presumably trying to follow Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda number 14 by using memorable labels. (Well, either that or he’s too stupid to remember more than a handful of standard media soundbites.) But he’s forgetting Principle 14a. His labels don’t evoke “responses which the audience previously possesses”.

Downer simply isn’t hairy-chested. Woolly-headed, maybe. An object of ridicule, certainly. But for me, “Alexander Downer” and “hairy-chested” just links to “fishnet stockings” to deliver 70s Glam Rock. I laugh, yes, but we’re already laughing. We all know Downer stays on as Minister for Cocktail Parties because he was a good little boy and resigned the Liberal leadership in January 1995 to make way for John Howard — who was elected PM the following year.

Downer is the only federal Liberal leader never to lead the party into an election. Like the rest of Howard’s cabinet, he’s just a mouthpiece — but Downer’s mouth is solely for canapés going in, dodgey karaoke coming out, and self-satisfied smugness in between.

As for “taking a cold shower”… Ah, Kevin! What does this tell us about your fantasies? And what do we make of communications minister Helen Coonan suggesting that critics of her new media laws take a cold shower together, along with Senator Stephen Conroy?

Kevin? Helen? Stephen? What have you three been getting up to?

Hmmm… Should I have included photos with this post?

According to Friday’s media release from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA):

bq. The Government has strengthened its ICT advisory group to include peak business bodies to ensure the needs of ICT business users are also considered in the development of ICT priorities.

And minister Helen Coonan says:

bq. ICT offers significant potential to further build economic growth, prosperity and quality of life for all Australians.

But if you look at who’s actually on this board, you wonder whether anyone will ever get past the “build economic growth” issues to that “quality of life” stuff.

You’ve got seven people from the hardware and software industries, someone from labour hire firm Manpower, two from government research bodies CSIRO and NICTA, a token academic and the inevitable representative from Macquarie Bank.

Let’s run through that again. That’s nine from business, two from government, one from academia.

And from the community?

Nil.

Not a single person representing families and how always-on workplace communications might intrude upon their private time. Not a single person representing workers whose jobs might be affected. Not a single representative from health, legal or social welfare organisations, from religious organisations or from anyone who might want to think about privacy issues.

There’s no doubting Steve Vamos’ understanding of the industry, since he previously ran NineMSN and Apple Computer Australia. But how can he possibly frame the board’s agenda to consider all options when his day job _requires_ him to promote the interests of Microsoft above all else?

Since one priority area is “ensuring Government and industry achieve and maintain the best ICT capability over the next five years,” one obvious question is whether open source software would deliver cost savings or more transparency. Mr Vamos cannot _possibly_ chair such a discussion in any credible way.

Linux Australia president Jonathan Oxer gets it right:

bq. ICT is playing a major role across all industry sectors, [but] the counterpoint is that ICT is also a huge contributor to our current trade deficit. It is crucial for the ICT advisory board to do all it can to support local ICT companies so we are not just a consumer [of IT].

If you were putting together the minister’s ICT advisory board, who would you suggest?