Beyond NBN: Improving digital inclusion through a National Digital Communications Strategy

Korean art: Chatting at a well at night

Beyond NBN — new research suggests that advancing Australia’s digital economy and improving digital inclusion needs to start with a National Digital Communications Strategy led by the Federal Government.

The research examined lessons from other developed nations — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Republic of Korea - which indicate that user-focused or demand-side policies are key to an accessible and inclusive Australian digital communications strategy.

The presenters explain how COVID-19 restrictions exposed the importance of digital inclusion and demand-side policies, for example, enabling vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, to develop digital literacy skills to utilise online services, when in-person services were no longer an option.

The findings support existing policies including, for example, Service NSW-assisted digital services in shopfronts and elsewhere, and digital classrooms in Seoul Citizens Hall - a multipurpose space in the South Korean capital.

The research determines that the ongoing enhancement and usage of the National Broadband Network needs to be drawn into a broader policy, where broadband services are part of a digital communications ‘ecosystem’, led by the Federal Government, but integrated with the State Governments as social policy.

This presentation is an outcome of a TelSoc internship project at the University of Canberra. A paper on the subject was published in the last issue of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy.

GMT_20230221 from TelSoc on Vimeo.

On Labor's Heraclitus; or, The Fragments of Socialism

Democritus and Heraclitus [CC0]

My copy of The Fragments of Heraclitus translates his most famous line as: ‘Into the same river we both step and do not step. We both are and are not.’ We are all part of the economic system of capitalism, but we do not all agree on the role of government in the economy. Using Heraclitus’s statement to signal that we need a ‘new’ type of capitalism is misguided. Here’s why.

Here is my latest article in The Spectator's Flat White, On Labor’s Heraclitus: the fragments of socialism.

For in this line from Heraclitus, all is revealed about the values-based capitalism being pushed onto voters: flogging the dead horse of #socialism, rolling it over and flogging the other side. Put simply, socialism doesn’t work.https://t.co/CN0J6yHNy1

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) February 16, 2023

What does Australia Day mean to me?

Nothing says Australia Day like Aussie flags made in China, sold by Germans, with Mardi Gras beer. 

Tomorrow, I'm gonna wave my Aussie flag, made in China, sold by Germans, while drinking my cans of Mardi Gras-badged Little Creatures Pale Ale, because I bloody can because that's what Australia Day means to me.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna wave my Aussie flag, made in China, sold by Germans, while drinking my cans of Mardi Gras-badged Little Creatures Pale Ale, because I bloody can because that's what Australia Day means to me. pic.twitter.com/B3dBdeO4bx

— Le Flâneur Politique (@FlaneurPolitiq) January 25, 2023

This came about after Telstra's CEO decided to abandon the Australia Day holiday and certify their wokeness. As a customer, I am not impressed.

So I put in a complaint to Telstra via the Telstra App. Surprisingly, the helpdesk was on to it toot sweet! Perhaps they have had enough of woke bosses, too?