ZDNet Australia Interviews Richard Alston

ynotds writes "ZDNet Australia has an interview with notorious Australian IT Minister Senator Richard Alston which could even be read as suggesting that he, like some others in the Australian government, has learned a little about his portfolio during his 7 years at the helm. He responds openly about his censorhip regime, lack of action against spam and his antipathy towards Electronic Frontiers Australia but refuses to get into details on cyberterrorism response and security expenditure."

Comments

You guys, you guys!

[netsharc]

You know what I just heard? ZDNet Australia has an interview with notorious Australian IT Minister Senator Richard Alston which could even be read as suggesting that he, like some others in the Australian government, has learned a little about his portfolio during his 7 years at the helm. He responds openly about his censorhip regime, lack of action against spam and his antipathy towards Electronic Frontiers Australia but refuses to get into details on cyberterrorism response and security expenditure.

Go read it!

amazing...

[Gavin Rogers]

Considering the drivel Alston normally comes up with, this interview seemed to be quite good. Anyone involved in the Australian IT and/or telecommunications industry would be honestly shocked and amazed that Senator Alston even knew what 'spam' was! (even if he still doesn't read his own email)

Re:amazing...

[darkov]

the Australian IT and/or telecommunications industry would be honestly shocked and amazed that Senator Alston even knew what 'spam' was!

He does: "It's what broadband gives you besides games and pornography."

from the article...

[newsdee]

Do you regret making the comments that broadband in Korea is being driven primarily by demand for porn and games?

Has nobody told this guy that porn and games drive demand for the Internet in the whole world?

First they ban porn...

[MavEtJu]

...then they complain about the amount of overseas traffic. Can you add one to one?

freedom of speech

[katalyst]

Hypocracy.. why do countries/polititians claim they advocate freedom of speech , when they don't. Certain issues like child pornography and terrorist organizations , I can understand. But, why should they want to censor anything else ? DO they like flexing their political arms,or do they just want to be noticed ? And why drag Korea into all this ? Korean companies anyways have a much stronger global presence than Australian companies.. except for beer ofcourse.... ;)

personally...

[acehole]

I dont like him, he's doing nothing but damage to the net services in australia. The government is pushing to privitize the largest telecommunications company 'telstra', so what you might ask?

Well for regional centres the access to broadband is less than adequate and if it is pushed to be a private enterprise company then the new owners might not bother with the regional centres because of the cost involved.

Question

[jsse]

like some others in the Australian government, has learned a little about his portfolio during his 7 years at the helm. He responds openly about his censorhip regime, lack of action against spam and his antipathy towards Electronic Frontiers Australia but refuses to get into details on cyberterrorism response and security expenditure.

Out of curiosity, where did you aussies pick up those people to run your Government? Law firms? Car insurance companies?

Microsoft?

Re:Question

[simong_oz]

Out of curiosity, where did you aussies pick up those people to run your Government? Law firms? Car insurance companies?

My first temptation was to mention George Dubya Bush, but I'm not sure if you're american :)

But seriously (!), as an aussie who has spent a fair amount of time overseas, this is quite an interesting point. The attitude of the average australian to politics is hard to define - complete apathy is the closest thing I can think of but that's not quite right either. All I can say is that it's quite different from anywhere else in the world.

(Yes, I do realise I'm generalising and oversimplifying here)

All of the politicians and most of what they stand for are completely hated (that's too strong a word, but it will do). Australians have accepted that they care for nothing more than the next election and protecting their massive superannuation payouts. Whenever a politician speaks, they are just dribbling the same bullshit (read the interview carefully - is any of the questions actually answered?) and lies, and nothing worthwhile is actually going to happen.

Australians seem to realise that no matter who is elected, they will do the same crap job as whoever was in power before. If the same major party is elected they'll do the same crap job, if the other major party is elected they'll spend 3 years undoing what the previous government did and accomplish nothing anyway. There seems to be a genuine feeling that if every poiltician disappeared tomorrow Australia would actually be better off as a country.

The upshot of this attitude to politics is that nobody with the slightest grain of intelligence wants to be a politician, so we get people like Richard Alston. You just have to look at our prime ministers over the years ... ye gods

Re:Question

[hughk]

An aussie was heard to remark that anyone going to their parliament should first spend a couple of years in prison - it saves time later. Regrettably after a series of scandals, corruption and incompetence seems to be acceted as the norm of political life.

I would certainly agree that politician may be above child pornographer in the Australian list of professions, but not by much. I mean there are political scandals in every country, and incompetent politicians too (who can even be elected president) but the problem of disrespect seems particularly high in Australia.

Re:Question

[Idarubicin]

Out of curiosity, where did you aussies pick up those people to run your Government?

Disclaimer: IANAA (I am not an Australian).

The ministers that make up the Australian Cabinet are selected from the elected Members of Parliament in the ruling party. I imagine that they are chosen by the Prime Minister in consultation with his party. As in many other UK-style parliamentary democracies (ie England, Canada, etc.) there is little public input into the selection of ministers--though unpopular choices will often be shuffled off into other posts fairly quickly.

Deputy ministers hold unelected staff position, and they are usually the ones that actually have a good understanding of the portfolio and deal with it on a day-to-day basis. Some ministers are more clued-in than others.

There is no equivalent to the Senate confirmation process that exists in the United States, which is something of a mixed blessing. There isn't any public debate about choice of ministers. On the bright side, you have to option of not reelecting particularly annoying Ministers.

The system has its flaws--but it does mean that anyone who holds a cabinet post has had to win an election. In the States, I note that the current Attorney General was nominated shortly after losing his election bid to a dead man. (In principle, IIRC Ministers do not have to be sitting Members of Parliament, but this is almost unheard-of. A Minister without a seat would not be able to speak during government debates--utterly a sitting duck. The Opposition would eat him alive.)

Many ISP's is better than one big ISP.

[dagg]

Q. Why isn't there a single successful Australian IT company competing and shining on the world stage? Can you name one?

A. I think that's a bit misleading in some ways. I don't know if you should put all your eggs in one basket. In many ways it's better to have a series of smaller companies coming through.

... That is truncated. I agree with that statement. The net was probably better off in the US when there were many small ISP's (rather than just AOL, AT&T, etc).

--
your sex in america

Alston humour

[danny]

For some Alston humour, check out Tapes purporting to originate from a certain government agency and new plans to protect the country's children from bad weather.

More censorship humour.

Danny.

Re:Alston's an Idiot

[sql*kitten]

Exactly, who ever heard of something really useful that benefits the community, but expensive, being available for free. Like free roads. Or free education. Or free healthcare.

Free electricity? Nope.

Free telephones? Nope.

Free air conditioning? Nope.

Nothing is free; it all has to be paid for somewhere. All the things you mentioned are paid for, by the taxpayer. The only people clamouring for anything "free" are the ones who have made the deliberate decision that taxpayer-funding will result in them getting more from the system than they have contributed, i.e. they want their personal luxuries to be subsidized by other people's work.

The full story

[Anonymous Coward]

For those overseas readers who dont know, senator alston is the minister for technology in Australia, he has copped alot of flack for issues regarding Telstra, and the infamous 3g cap imposed by the company on the users.

Senator alston is famous for quotes such as "Broadband is only used for pornography" and "3 gigabits (note bits) is enough for everyone".

He was the head of a 4 million dollar investigation of how spam affects australian businesses. A 98 page report was the output of 4 million dollars of Tax payers money.

I personally believe that he is out of touch with technology, and is being hand fed statistics and information by australias technology corporations, in their favour.

Without the necessary infastructure, Australia as a country can not expect to keep their IT professionals in Australia.

Srg. Shultz gave Oz IT to the USA.

[TapeCutter]

First off Telstra's systems are basically owned by IBMGSA. I have worked as an independant contractor through EDS, IBMGSA and IBM-Biz as a developer/team leader on Telsra's internal IT systems from 95-2001. Telstra and MS are good mates, you cannot get Telstra to intall broadband unless the service man eyeballs an "original MS-Windows CD". Apparently the certifiacte that comes with an OEM machine in place of the CD is not good enough, anyhow I digress.

When two of IBM's board members turned up on the Telstra board in the mid 90's, guess who got the megabuck five year outsourcing deal in the late 90's. IBM then spent the first three years documenting and testing everything. "Y2k & GST & CSG & LNP...", "its important", "gotta be done". "Pssst, Telstra you could make a truck load of your workers redundant and impress your new shareholders". "We will make offers to the key people with "Y2K" knowlage ( suckers ).

Year number 4 sees IBM rewrite just about everything they could and re-arrange the org chart on a daily basis. By this time they didn't need expensive "contractors" ( read Alston's SME's ) because Telstra's systems were declared "Functionally stable".

A cynic might say that they froze development and systematically dispersed the old corprorate IT knowlage as best they could in order to gain control. ( The employees refer to IBM as the "Borg mother ship" ).

IBMGSA called it "diversifying skills" and "new challenges", had grand speaches about "mindshare" and played "who hid my cheese" videos to the troops.

Suddenly the telecomms/IT market took a nose dive at the height of the re-org and everything turned to crap. The result, as I see it, is that Telstra's IT is now stocked with MS cerified TAFE graduates spending most of thier time on procedures designed to "push back on problems".

There will never arise a multi-national IT company from Oz. As soon as one pokes its head up the US boys will just kick the crap out of it. What happened to EDS I hear you ask, well since MS already had the education franchise they went on to do the the South Australian Government and ( I think ) the Commonwealth bank.

Alston is the Australian answer to Sergent Shultz ..."I know nothinnnnnnng, NuuuThink. H'er Comondant Johnny".

Alan Mortimer.

BSc, Computer Science.

Melb,

Australia.

BTW. I do not make any representations for the above companys. But I do appreciate the income they gave me for a while. Politians who want my vote are fair game for comic relief :o).