Microsoft Critiques Australian IT Policies

StorminNorman writes: "Microsoft have criticised the Australian Government's handling of IT policy. It's not the first time they've done this either. Basically they talk about the lack of competition in the Australian broadband market, as well as the current Australian Government's boneheaded IT policy. Story here." Source aside, what do Australians (and anyone else for that matter) think of the conclusions? For a company which on some fronts decries government intervention, Microsoft seems to have a different tack here.

Comments

One Aussie Geek's perspective

[Jeremy Lee]

Oh boy. This is NOT going down well.

I really should read the whole 'Accellerating Innovation' paper before commenting on details, but I can give a first-glance perspective:

On Bandwidth:

Australia was significantly behind the US in terms of broadband until about six months ago. Cable and DSL have arrived here with a vengance! $60 a month will get you 400kbit/s DSL. Really. The technical implementation has been rock-solid: none of the problems the US has been having. There are still political issues with the 'duopoly' telco situation, but the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Comission) should do a good job of sorting out the more draconian stupidities in their 'Acceptable Usage Agreements' if they try to enforce them.

(The ACCC is way cool. They're currently having a spat with the MPAA over DVD regional coding.)

Home users here are in the best position they've ever been in. The biggest problem is that Telstra keeps running out of cable modems.

Academic and Business users are, however, in a position of paying rather more for interet access than is really sane. Telstra and Optus C&W both charge about $0.17 per megabyte for inbound traffic, (yes, you heard right) something which deregulation should have put an end to. But Optus likes the money too. Things should change with the recent landing of the Southern Cross Network pacific fibre.

Microsoft wants more broadband in Australia because they've targeted us as one of the prime test markets for .NET. Make of that what you will.

As far as accessibility goes, anyone who wants net access can get it. It's in every library, government department, and medium to large business. ISP's and net cafe's abound. The only people who don't have access are those too lazy to get off their fat arse and walk down the street.

On Taxes:

Yes, Australia has fairly high income and corporate taxes. We have correspondingly higher 'socialist' programs like decent state-sponsored Education, Medical care and Welfare. Australians are, on the whole, happy with this situation. Similar to Canada, in many respects. Multinationals don't like high taxes, though.

On R&D:

There is a cultural difference in what R&D means. We still have a very strong Academic research tradition: most really innovative stuff in Oz gets done by the CSIRO (commonwealth science and industry research organisation) and the universities. I think this is fine. Corporations suck at real R&D. I think Microsoft are just complaining they can't twiddle their thumbs inventing things like "Microsoft Bob" and get massive tax rebates for it.

Besides, what most US companies would call R&D, we call 'getting shit done'. We're an emminently practical people in many ways.

Failure to create local centres of excellence:

Rubbish. See above. The main issue seem to be the existing centres of excellence contain people who work outside the corporate domain and are, therefore, fairly unpoachable. ie: No talent pool waiting for Microsoft to snaffle them all.

On Piracy:

Australia has one of the highest rates of 'Piracy' in the western world. And literacy too. We are significant users of information products, even if we can't quite afford it. :-) Most of that 'piracy' happens on an individual level. Software swapping with friends, etc. Small and 'backyard' businesses run a lot of 'grey' software. Large companies tend to be utterly legit, though.

There are some historical reasons for that, mostly due to semi-monopoly locks on imports of information products (the mentioned "parallel import restrictions") like software and music that kept the price artificially high for a long time. These have been changed recently, and will change again, since anyone with a net connection and credit card essentially ignores it.

A skills shortage:

"Australia faces many specific hurdles to train and retain skilled people."

Duh!! You know why? Because of the famous 'brain drain'. US/UK companies tend to make our best and brightest offers they can't refuse. We'd have better people if Microsoft stopped poaching them all.

On Capital:

Australia doesn't have anywhere near the level of Venture Capitalism that exists in the states. (but who does?) Yes, this does hurt us. He has a point here. But, if microsoft want to fix it, all they need to is start investing themselves. A billion US dollars goes a long, long way here. Microsoft has no lack of access to capital. I think what they mean is; there's no easy pool of money for Microsoft to suck from.

Technology security:

I can't think of any Oz sites that have been DoS'd, or even defaced. (I'm sure there's been some. Nothing to the level of Yahoo or Ebay. Mostly a US phenomenon) All major banks in Australia now offer internet service, and I've never heard of any problems. What has the writer been smoking?

Summary:

Yes, as many people would expect, Microsoft are complaining about local factors that tend to favor individuals and small businesses over large multinationals like them. There are one or two decent points in the dross, specifically those about lack of telecom deregulation and capital availability.

The gist of the complaint seems to be "give us more money or we won't invade your nation".

Sounds fine to me.

Microsoft are pretty-well spot on

[Goonie]

There are a few points I'd take issue with - technology security is really no different here to the US AFAICT, the "inability for some groups to have net access" comment could be applied anywhere in the world, and the "piracy" comment is blatant Microsoft self-interest, but basically virtually every Australian government in the past 20 years (the previous Victorian government, for all its considerable faults, understood IT as well as any government on earth) misunderstands, distrusts, and dislikes IT, and has consequently screwed up its IT policy.

Some cynics in the local IT press have even gone so far as to suggest that there must be votes in pissing off the local IT and, more broadly, the "knowledge" sector, they do it so effectively.

To list just some examples of screwed up policy in the area:

• The tax concession described in the article.
• Continually underfunding universities, attempting to force universities into "applied research" (which often barely deserves to be called "research") and beauty-contest degrees in flavour-of-the-month jobs.
• Telecommunications policy has been one great disaster after another.
• The government has just abandoned an IT outsourcing scheme whose main achievement is paying US consultants millions of dollars for zero return.
• In broadcasting policy, the government has just squashed any chance of a viable datacasting industry in Australia by agreeing to a ridiculous scheme where the entire spectrum will be used for HDTV broadcasts, despite the fact that nobody will be able to afford HDTV sets to take advantage of it.
• The net censorship regime, which has had no practical effect, by the way, but is just another example of the boneheaded attitude of the current Federal government.

Take it from me, I could go on for a *lot* longer.

Re:what..

[Xenex]

The Australian government isn't restricting Microsoft. Microsoft is staing some (correct) observations. They are right for once.

Broadband in Australia is expencive, limited, and almost totally controled by one company (Telstra).

Nothing in Australian law is hurting Microsoft.