walterjadamson

I've mostly voted Labor but also against Labor when they completely lose the plot like Keating in the end and successive Victorian Labor Goverments including the present one. How successive governments can so successfully turn Australia into a lame duck in the IT and Internet world is beyond me, and this one appears to be getting off on the same misguided foot as Howards reign of destruction.

The digital economy is about helping people to create wealth and value faster. It doesn't have to be universal, that;s an economic pipe dream but might rightly fit in the Department of Social Security if we have enough taxes for everything else. But is does have to be fast and competitive and serve current and future centres of wealth generation. That wealth generation can pay for any other subsidies needed if its decided to go the social service route for universal services.

The shambles of data-casting, digital radio, the Internet filter, the outsourcing fiasco, makes you wonder which so-called experts Governments consult as all of these fiascos could have been avoided (the digital radio one is still in the making) and the relevant point is that all have destroyed wealth and value and yet could have been part of building a digital enabled economy.

Finland has many components right, and as a small and geographically dispersed country offers some good insights. Denmark has come from the basket case of Europe only 20 years ago to one of the most thriving entrepreneurial and "digital driven" economies.

But, even though I am an "IT person", I despise this whole topic of "digital economy" as it artificially divides "digital" and creates an industry of advisors which is self-serving just as "innovation" has created an "innovation industry" of advisors who leave nothing of value.

Getting back to basics in the "digital economy" is about getting back to competition, incentives to create competition, incentives to create wealth and sensible strategic policy decisions that are based on a realistic view of Australia's pauper status in this regard and not some rose-coloured bureau-speak meant to please all political agendas.