Being in Generation Y and not wanting with the NBN has so far made me an outsider amongst people of my age. The advent of super-fast broadband has become for my contemporaries the greatest gift any government could give them.
As a student of politics and a keen reader of economics, the NBN really didn’t resonate as highly with me as it did for my friends. Whenever I make my opinion known among them, I was told that I was being elitist.
Why is NBN so tantalising a policy for young people? The answer is Mum and Dad will pay for it, and I will be able to play, download movies and see friends’ facebook photos faster than ever before. Of course this is exciting and even I can see the appeal, but it’s no wonder the NBN was adored by my Generation. And the adore it despite the fact that it will be Government owned, expensive and deliver nothing substantial to Australian battlers.
The fact that the NBN was to be a nationalised corporation should have had alarm bells ringing. The private sector would have provided the equivalent service, albeit later rather than sooner. This does not fly with Gen Y. We are the Now Generation. The desire for downloads completing now is the same desire for super fast broadband now.
When the NBN finally comes online, Australians will have one choice when it comes to broadband. What complicates the matter further is that as Labor becomes increasingly steered by the Greens, the chances of the NBN ever being privatised become smaller and smaller. If anything, this should be the greatest fear of the Australian people, especially those who praise the Internet as the greatest platform for free speech. There can be no greater a dissonance than the Government owning the Internet.
The Internet is the technological equivalent of a perfect free market: there is no regulation. The details of Stephen Conroy’s Internet filter are frighteningly sketchy at best – a worrisome prospect. Julian Assange would have found it very difficult to leak any cables if the Internet was controlled by the very Government he sought to incriminate. Young people cannot see the connection between “Government owned” and “inefficiency”; we’re too young to remember Telstra being the only telecommunications company in Australia.
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