NBN: Tech goes mainstream at RootyQ

James Riley
Thursday, 19 August 2010 02:24

Opinion and Analysis

It has been a long time coming, but the 2010 federal election has finally delivered a campaign in which technology has been a front and centre mainstream issue. And so unused to this kind of attention is the tech sector that many of us have found it hard to take.

The attention has been welcome, for sure. We have a Prime Minister and an Opposition leader now talking directly to voters about technology because they think it's an issue that will get them over the line on Saturday.

More importantly, the punters have been asking the questions. The campaign didn't start this way, but by the time the so-called #RootyQ town hall-style meetings were held in Brisbane last night, demand for information on sector issues were coming from the bottom up.

There were plenty of questions on broadband, which has obviously become a key differentiator in this election. But by the time the Prime Minister was asked a question that referenced a state government payroll implementation, you had to guess that Australians' reluctance to embrace tech-head issues in a had been shaken off.

Of course, technology as a core issue had to surface at some point, given how central it is to everyday life. The wonder is that it happened in this country 20 or 30 years after industrially developed peers.

Weird too, because Australians have always been early and enthusiastic adopters of new technologies. Our gadget-heads are world class, as evidenced by the very cool goofiness on display in queues that form overnight for big product launches.

Freaky Apple aficionados will claim that it is the iPhone that made it OK for gadget-heads to wear their tech-love on their sleeve, loud and proud. But then, they will claim the iPhone is responsible for world peace too if it ever breaks out. (They'll be in a death struggle with Twitter users about who and what had most influence.)

Whatever it was, Australians' innate technical cringe has hopefully been banished for good.

Which is all good news for the tech sector, especially for the smallish indigenous companies that have long struggled to get taken seriously in their home market and by their own governments.

But as novel as it is to watch our most senior politicians talking about the industry, it also makes you want to chuck stuff at the television (and not just because Julia keeps referring to "the broadband" and Tony doesn't even bother to disguise his disinterest in the economic and social fundamentals of telecommunications.)

Because debates that the industry seemed to have settled long ago are now being replayed in the mainstream, and the issues are getting tortured.

The broadband debate provides the obvious and most frustrating example. The industry agreed perhaps ten years ago that fibre was the future - for both the backhaul and access networks.