(Above: the Murdoch rags lead the way on a sensitive approach to the rural constituency by showing a photo of a hick. The hick in the top left hand corner is David Penberthy. For his hickish musing on hicks, you can go here or have a Skype whinge about how hicks from the provinces suddenly seem to think they're big city hicks, your broadband plan permitting of course).
Over at The Australian, the coverage of the grand national broadband network is looking more tangled than ever.
It seems that country folk are being favoured, and are getting this bright new bauble ahead of city folk, and this is just unfair, and wrong, and so there'll be no customer volume or density to make the NBN commercial.
So it should roll out in the city first.
Except of course it's useless and no one will want it in the city, because they've got it already, and how many movies can you download, and it's a waste of money, and it can't ever be commercial, and why don't we all just wait until Chairman Rupert, in his magnificent grandiloquence, rolls it out for us, and we can all pay through the nose, in the way that some people pay to have hundred of Foxtel channels to confirm that indeed there is nothing on and nothing worth watching ...
Yes, there's The grand National Broadband Network rollout is looking more tangled than ever, getting agitated about cross-subsidy, and quoting that steadfast warrior Chris Uhlmann. Perhaps next time around Uhlmann can ask Mark Scott about the cross-subsidy involved in delivering the ABC to the bush ...
Meanwhile, he can thank his lucky stars Tony Abbott didn't have a chance to take his axe to the ABC and 24/7/12/365/∞ News in particular.
But that's just for starters in The Oz, as it embarks on its now routine NBN rollout tirade. Why there's Kevin Morgan scribbling furiously on how Deal turns NBN into shameless pork barrel.
Drawing himself up to a full flowing level of righteous indignation, Morgan manages to deliver mind blowing inanities, such as this one:
Big telecommunications investments and certainly the copper network are built on a simple formula. The network is first rolled out in low-cost, high-income urban areas, which generates the cashflow to subsidise the rollout to high-cost, low-return rural areas.
The copper network? You mean the Telstra network, you goose? The one built by taxpayers' money back in the day when there was a Post Master General? Subsequently sold to mug punter taxpayers, so they could buy a share in what they already owned?
The big copper network was built on a simple formula. The government is what done it ...
And now you're rabbiting on about how the PMG did it all in an effective, market driven, cost conscious way?
What bizarre planet did you come from, and how soon can you return to it? What's that, you're making a living as a telecom consultant? Say no more.
Actually if you keep reading Morgan manages to deliver a judgement that will delight many rural agrarian socialists and Bob Katter in particular:
Keep furiously scribbling about the PMG, and the bush might just come to like the new coalition. I'm reminded of Garret Keizer in the current Harpers (no link, it's behind their paywall), and his outrageous, shocking celebration of the postal service and post offices in the United States, in Why dogs go after mail carriers:
More than once in my youth I heard it said that anyone who thinks socialism is a good idea needs to visit a post office. The advice seems to have backfired rather badly in my case, possibly because I have lived most of my adult life in small towns with indispensable and eminently reliable post offices. Though I doubt she'd appreciate the compliment, our town's former postmistress, Shirley B. - who for many years sorted mail and weighed parcels (along with a few babies, I'm told) in the federally deputized basement of her house - occupies a place not far from that of Eugene Debs. Her ill-advised attempt to sell me a sheet of Ronald Reagan stamps notwithstanding, a daily visit to old Shirley went a long way toward keeping me, shall we say, in the pink.
But enough of nostalgia and unions and mail and humanity, and Morgan thinking using the PMG as an 'f' word will rile country folk, and let's drop in on always spluttering Henry Ergas, giving it up in Bush subsidies a romantic folly.
Henry's attempt to beguile bush folks, who command 30% of the vote, and who currently hold the balance of power and who are agitated that their representative didn't jump in to bed with the coalition?
Why naturally it's to abuse them as dumb hicks and hillbillies:
The overall outcome is a pattern that is regionally fractured. The unpalatable truth is the farther one lives from our large urban centres, the lower are likely to be one's human capital, lifetime earnings and life chances. Poorer prospects translate into riskier behavioural choices, including a significantly higher incidence of smoking, problem drinking and poor diet, and more widespread antisocial behaviour, which reduce life chances ever further.
Yes, you useless, hopeless rural clowns, you're a waste of space. Get over it and drop dead, and see if we care (sorry relatives, but you know you stayed behind because, well, because you're on the dumb side of the family).
Now of course following Henry's logic, this means we should spend all of the loot on people who live as close to large urban centres as possible. Let's face it, if all you can afford is Rooty Hill, you're rooted, and deservedly so. That far from a large urban centre? Chances are you're a dangerous risk to everyone. No brains, bad lifestyle choices.
Yes, let's have broadband rolled out right now to the inner city.
Hang on, hang on, that would mean rewarding the inner city elites whom I'm told regularly by Janet Albrechtsen and Miranda the Devine and such like are ruining the planet for everyone else, including nice types who live in the outer suburbs, and honest sturdy rural folk.
Lordy, what to do? Let's read Henry and see if we can hear the twanging of banjos:
All of this leads also to differences in outlook. Surveys show people in regional areas are likelier to believe government cannot be trusted and that politicians are just in it for the money.
As opposed to inner city folk who firmly believe politicians can be trusted, and that they're in it for the love and the caring and the sharing. Never for the money. Ssh, don't mention the money.
They also score more poorly on survey questions about openness to different types of people and ways of life, and are likelier to follow local, rather than national or international, news. These attitudes engender a politics that is more local, oriented to immediate benefits and volatile.
Parochial volatile hicks! Hey ma, did you hear them duelling banjos? Reckon some city slickers have come a looking for a plucking, seeing as how we's so vole and vile.
Net result? Well as well as being a waste of space, and a waste of life, and a waste of time, it's also a waste of money:
Our political system has responded by throwing money at the bush: more frequent and costly drought assistance, with almost continuous periods of "exceptional circumstances"; large subsidies for irrigation; roads that would never pass a cost-benefit test; hefty subsidies for rural health and education; and now the National Broadband Network, with a cross-subsidy from metropolitan areas of several billion dollars a year.
Much of this spending is ineffective. To believe, for example, that computer use in country areas is low because networks are unavailable is wrong. As for believing digging optical fibre into the ground will solve the problem, that defies common sense.
Yes, that Tony Windsor, he can't even use a computer, all he does is sit on the porch all day and play his banjo, or drive his plush rolls royce motor mower, and that's why computer use is down, as they wait for government to drop them bundles of cash, so they can keep on playing their banjos:
Yes, it's all the fault of the bush, and their welfare dependency. Instead of sensible money being spent sensibly, like on cross city tunnels so inner city types can cruise from traffic jam to traffic jam ...
Well I guess there's nothing for it, but that everyone has to move from the bush and become part of those despicable inner city urban elites. Otherwise everyone's going to be an illiterate, financial and otherwise:
Let's start with what we know. Gross household incomes are about 25 per cent lower, on average, in the country than in the capital cities. The income gap largely reflects lower educational attainment; the proportion with a tertiary qualification in regional areas is about half the urban level, and while about 30 per cent of Australians live outside the capital cities, 40 per cent of people who left school at Year 10 or before do so. Data shows functional illiteracy, a problem in urban areas, is even more widespread in the country, as is its close correlate, financial illiteracy.
Is it worth spending a little to help country folk battle their stupendous illiteracy? Could it be that a rural types might actually contribute to the big city sounds by running away from home, bringing their experiences with them?
Sorry, there's simply no point pondering on what the bush might do for you or what you might do for the bush. Either you're one of the inner city elite, or you're fucked:
It is important to sort out the predominant causality here. By and large, people do not have few skills because they live in country areas; rather, they live in those areas because they have fewer skills. Were their skill levels higher, many would not remain where they are; rather, they would move to the main centres.
It is important to sort out the predominant causality here. By and large, people do not have few skills because they live in country areas; rather, they live in those areas because they have fewer skills. Were their skill levels higher, many would not remain where they are; rather, they would move to the main centres.
You see, just because you're been reading Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian, you dumb rural bunnies, about the dangers of the inner city elites, you've entirely missed the point. But then you would, wouldn't you, you dumb fuck illiterates:
This is because human capital is far more productive in cities. There it benefits from economies of agglomeration: the efficiencies that come from spillovers of ideas, opportunities only large population concentrations can afford, and the collocation of so wide a range of activities as to intensify competition and increase the pressure to succeed.
The end result? I think Henry's come up with a truly spiffing campaign slogan for the Liberals.
A vote for the Liberals is a vote to keep dumb fuck rural hillbilly bunnies in their place, while also a vote celebrating the infinite wonder and joy of being a part of an inner city elite (sob, yes, even including inner west chardonnay sipping, latte loving, ponce and poseur elites).
By golly, I think I'll run that up into a poster, it should come in handy.
What's that you say? Abbott tells Libs to lay off independents.
Abbott might need the independents to help form a government should the current Labor arrangement collapse? And then he'll keep on delivering barrels full of pork to the bush? In exchange for barrels of pork so that inner city elites can continue to enjoy BLT's with their lattes?
Oh no, poor Henry's scribbled his deepest insights, his most caring and considered thoughts about inner urban elites, and dumb fuck hillbillies, and it's all in vain?
Is that a phone I hear ringing? Henry, Liberal headquarters here, just what the fuck have you been taking? Don't you know urban elites don't have a fucking clue?
Poor Henry echoes the ...
... inner-city sophisticates who are so disconnected from the rest of Australia.
The interests of the left are easily identifiable. They invariably involve anything but what were once referred to as ''bread and butter'' issues. The inner-city radical middle class has moved beyond bread and butter - and even focaccia and caviar - to such issues as international and national security, nuclear power and the environment. (Gerard Henderson).
There is a special place reserved in elitists' hell for McMansions and their owners. These fancy new double-storey project houses in the outer suburbs have always held sneer value for those wealthy or infecund enough to live in the established inner suburbs.
But then came the latest federal election, won by the McMansion's friend, John Howard, in the outer suburban mortgage belts which are the natural home of the four-bedroom Montclair with Riviera facade.
Now mockery of the McMansion has turned into spitting, blinding rage as those disappointed by the election result blame the suburban troglodytes with no aesthetic taste, a habit of churchgoing and too many family values. (Miranda Devine).
You see Henry? You've got it totally back the front and ass up, just as I'd expect of anyone celebrating the inner city elites, and doing down decent honest sturdy Australians.
But to be fair, Henry's opening par did get one thing right:
Australians are romantic about the country. Like most love affairs, that romance is well-served by at least a veil of ignorance. Few Australians visit the bush and even fewer know much about it. With few facts to go on, myths emerge and take control.
Can we put Henry in the veil of ignorance category?
Not to mention dickhead, nongish prejudices and bile, backed by cherry picked statistics and a little bit of class warfare. Pull your head in Henry, adopt the posture of a turtle, and let's hope no one notices you've been a dickhead ...
Meanwhile, in other news today, it seems some rural people keep buying The Australian for the quality of its opinion pages. What an amazing extraordinary piece of emo self loathing ...
Could this mean there are goths living in the bush?
Now Dorothy, Henry knows that it's no good digging optical fibre into the ground in the country because the farmers will be complaining that it just doesn't grow in most years – there's not enough rain and the crops will fail and they'll need more subsidies to tide them over during the bad years.
ReplyDeleteBetter they bring their few skills here to the inner city and improve our banjo playing. With all of us in our tenured employment we need us some entertainment.
Did this kind of debate occur when electricity and/or telephone lines were rolled out across the country as a matter of interest?
ReplyDeleteWhat's Ergas doing kicking around, running down his immense human capital, in a pissant, regional country like Australia? Off to the nearest megalopolis with you, dear Henry. Step on the Er-gas.
ReplyDeleteGiven the congestion of the main cities (and even the regional provinces), I'd say anyone who chooses to live in a rural area is doing the nation a service, simply by decentralising the population.
ReplyDelete