I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Surfing stuff.co.nz this week I’ve been noticing this LTSA advertising message for ‘cars with stability control’.
I guess there is a joke here on pop up’s.
But I don’t think it’s good practice for web advertisers to mimic browser elements and fool the user into a click. Especially not a Government department.
Older web users get flustered by pop up’s and while this is no doubt well intentioned I think this crosses the line.
Maybe because it’s election year but as I know from experience what advertising on the few big New Zealand web sites costs it offends me to see my tax dollars spent on such a campaign which I can’t imagine has any cut through what so ever.
What do you think. Does this cross the line?
Heading into territory I’m not that comfortable posting about here but I feel really strongly about it, so here goes.
I’m going to talk about the Kahui case.
Yeah I know that my situation is different from that family, but most of us with busy careers are parents as well. I’ve got 3 under 5 and like many busy working parents you can’t cheat your kids. No matter how much money you have or don’t have it’s all about spending time with them. I try to be there for bath time, read stories at night and try not to work to much in the weekends.
Regardless of who eventually killed the twins it was clear from the evidence that the kids had been beaten regularly throughout their short lives. That is unacceptable in New Zealand or anywhere.
When the event occurred it sickened us that the ‘tight twelve’ held out for so long. They should have locked them all up immediately.
Something has to happen here. One parent is most likely a killer. Both failed to protect their kids. They both need to be locked up. If not for murder then for abuse. The wider family need to be charged for obstruction and repeatingly not protecting the most defenseless of their whanau.
Given the timing I suspect the police are making a political statement by not pressing further charges immediately. These matters must be concluded quickly.
What really bugs me about the budget is the lack of any sort of vision for New Zealand.
Thomas Pippos from Deloitte nailed it best for me.
Corporate vision sadly missing from the equation
But what’s missing in both Budgets is the vision to do something different to keep businesses here.
… we can actually influence corporate behaviour rather than just observe it. If everything is left to a competitive market and we play with a straight bat, we will lose every time. Every other jurisdiction “cheats” - they play to win. Capital and labour has never been as mobile.
Rodney Hide also nailed it
The trouble with Dr Cullen’s Budgets is that they are all about carving up the economy cake rather than baking a bigger one.
Australia is eating our lunch. Isn’t about time we got in the game?
I was at a meeting last night with a number of senior people in our ICT industry. One of the discussion threads was what aspirational goals should we have as industry.
Buoyed by the broadband discussion last year I think we’ve seen that you can actually change things if you get coordinated.
Some of the general themes we’d like as an industry would be around
- Encouraging more people into the industry
- Certification programs
- Immigration
- Education
But what would be some specific and measurable things we could achieve if we worked together?
Here are some that I’ve been thinking of.
- Establishment of an ICT procurement ombudsman, so that procurement issues can be raised without the vendor being penalized in the market.
- A work visa program between New Zealand and Silicon Valley so that we can send our talented people up to work there for a few years and bring experts down here tightening the relationship between ourselves and the center of the tech universe.
- R&D tax credits limits lifted if you are exporting products developed from that R&D.
- The industry supporting Government initiatives on Online Identity Management for individuals and businesses facilitating electronic commerce. We could lead the world here.
What do you think? What else could/should we do?
Quite liked the accounting analysis of the rail purchase from Craig Foss.
Dr Electoral Expense $235m
Dr NZ Rail Network $430m
Cr NZ Taxpayer $665m
Quite interesting being close to National’s broadband announcement and seeing the responses. A good case study on the political process.
Firstly David Cunliffe. I believe DC would have loved to have done this but it got stopped by Cullen and H1 after the Digital Summit, then the health hospital pass.
So he used the old ‘make up something and argue against that’ approach.
National’s plan as presented would inevitably reinforce the position of the incumbent, Telecom, as the dominant fibre provider.National’s plan replaces a narrow-band monopoly in the nineties with a
new broadband monopoly.
Err not sure where that came from, but good politics.
Next was the EPMU. They got right in there with their cause …
“If John Key thinks there is the skilled workforce available to start rolling out a project like this within the next year he may need to think again as there is an international shortage of telecommunications workers and our members are already working huge amounts of overtime simply to keep the network maintained and roll-out Telecom’s modest cabinetisation program.
Very opportunistic, but nice.
NZ First was a classic. Good emotion with headlines of Telecom Deal Outrageous and use of rapacious
And nice suggestion of a conspiracy with …
“If Mr Key has done a deal with Telecom he should come out into the open and explain what is going on. Taxpayers need to know exactly why they should pour $1.5 billion into the most rapacious company New Zealand has ever known,” said Mr Woolerton.
Note the jumping on the ‘beat up Telecom’ bandwagon there. That should get some oldie votes.
And NZ First want to just buy Telecom back anyway.
“Mr Key has acknowledged that telecommunications has been a market failure in New Zealand so perhaps it is time for New Zealand to take back the industry, like it has with Air New Zealand and will do with the railways system.
Must be great to be able to throw out policy when you have little chance of having to actually do it.
This election is going to be fun.
Update at 4:30pm
Dunne goes for the high ground …
Dunne: NZ needs broadband, not bickering
Press Release by United Future at 4:11 pm, 23 Apr 2008
UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne says the future of New Zealand needs a vastly improved broadband infrastructure, not the current bout of political bickering.
“John Key has proposed a $1.5 billion broadband plan with the declared intention of strengthening the New Zealand economy so that we can compete in a global market,” he said.
“Everyone agrees that’s a good idea, but all we’ve heard so far is the Minister of Communications carping that National is being opportunistic and handing too much monopoly power to Telecom; New Zealand First is similarly outraged that Telecom is getting too much money; and ACT has delivered the standard libertarian rant that hates the Government collecting or spending any money at all.
“Surely the point is that widespread, superfast broadband is a good thing for the New Zealand economy and the only question is: how do we get there?
“It’d be excellent if politicians spent more time working out the answer to that question and not simply whacking each other over the head and feeling they’ve accomplished something.
“If direct government investment like Mr Key proposes is not the answer, then I’d like to hear two things from the critics - first, what is the alternative, and second, why has it not happened to date,” said Mr Dunne.
Very sensible.
Looking back at the broadband debate over the last year it’s amazing how we as an industry moved broadband from a technical issue to a business issue and now to a political one.
For me it started back at Foo Camp in February where a bunch of tech, political and media people got together. Following Foo, stimulated by meeting a bunch of people with big ideas I published a document entitled Securing Our Digital Trade Routes. It raised the option of state ownership of our national communications infrastructure. I was totally surprised by how far that went.
Two weeks ago it came together at the Digital Strategy 2.0 Summit. A lot of the ideas we as an industry have been pushing this year came out in David Cunliffe’s speech and Pete Hodgson a few days later. Broadband is the number 1 initiative in Governments economic development program.
The government is now talking how important international connections are and raised the possibility of debt funding.
Looking back, my state ownership model was useful as a discussion starter but my thinking has certainly evolved since February this year.
First a couple of building blocks …
The New Zealand Institute did the important work of developing the business case for Broadband. It made it quantitatively clear that there is a compelling business case for world class links within New Zealand and connecting New Zealand to the world.
Am I a socialist or a capitalist? Left or Right. This was a struggle. I like money. I think the environment is important. I believe we should have free health care and education. I think we need to grow the pie before slicing it up. I prefer small government, low tax. I think saving should be compulsory. Exporting is good. Thinking globally is better. The ‘Buy NZ Made’ campaign is dumb. I like Cunliffe, I like Key, I like Russell Brown. Maybe the term Digital Socialist is the best for me.
Did the market fail in the Telecommunications industry? No the market is always working – but the free market will give you certain characteristics that may not balance out other objectives. So I’m reconciled that the government can regulate to set market conditions.
Operational Separation and Structural Separation I’ve never felt comfortable with. It seems to artificially fight the market.
I caught up with a very smart guy called Shaan Stevens this year and he influenced my thinking more than anyone else. We had a good debate on my state ownership ideas. Shaan got me thinking about how matching the investment models might make the market work and provide the characteristics we need as a country.
I’ve been calling this Funding Separation. It goes like this.
- There is a public benefit of having best of breed broadband connections between New Zealand and the rest of the world. No one company can monetize that. Certainly not a public company like Telecom who exist to earn a return for investors.
- The Internet provides an opportunity to nullify the tyranny of distance between ourselves and international markets - to leverage our real competitive advantage: the close networks that form in a small country.
- To exploit the power of the Internet we need to connect ourselves digitally to the rest of the world and treat the Internet as an abundant resource where we don’t even think about cost. We need to build businesses on top of networks. We need to remove the network as a barrier - physically and costwise.
- Therefore what we need is an open access network that operates on a cost recovery basis between New Zealand cities and the rest of the world. (Incidentally I think the role of central Government is to connect the cities. Local bodies should pick it up from there). People expect to pay for the Internet. Cost plus is better than free.
- The cost of that network is probably between $2-3bn dollars. On a debt funded basis it would cost less than $300m per year to fund that. I am sure that even just the Government spend much more than that per year on the Internet.
- The Government could regulate that the infrastructure layer of this network can only be funded by debt and returns a maximum rate of return of say 8%. It could also commit that all Government traffic goes over this network. This is the Funding Separation bit.
- With the recent financial meltdown there is a flight to quality and strong demand for these types of investment products that return a safe long term return. Left just here the market may work to solve the problem. Telecom could also provide this network if they desired.
- With Kiwi-saver coming on stream there is a lack of large onshore investments the government could make. They could be a foundation investor.
So lets look at who’s impacted:
- New Zealand Business. Low cost connection to global markets. Winners.
- New Zealand Citizens. Boom times, we earn more, pay more tax ($’s not %), have better schools and hospitals. Winners.
- Telecom. Can play at both layers but no longer have to invest at the base network so can inject new services into the network as fast as they can market them. Winners.
- Government. Hasn’t spent any cash, has lowered their costs, have transformed the economy. Winners.
- Southern Cross owners. You’ve held our country to ransom for years you pricks and get what you deserve. Probably just make normal money now. Less winners than before but well positioned in their retail businesses so not losers.
There you go. Problem solved. Now lets fix the environment.
Great day at the Digital Strategy 2.0 summit yesterday.
http://www.digitalsummit.org.nz/
I’ve been putting out that the Digital Summit was a key focal point for our industry this year. I think yesterday lived up to that. Some key points for me were.
- David Cunliffe has definitely been listening. Key parts of his plan moving forward included a focus on international - where economic transformation can really take place, and that aligning funding structures to the infrastructure layer may hold the answer. I’ll post about my Funding Separation thoughts later. But yesterdays DC speech was excellent.
- Maurice Williamson, the National party spokesman who I’ve mentioned before as being the invisible man this year, has sprung into life. Maurice was saying why don’t we just do Fibre to the Home (FTTH) on a debt basis and take a bold step. Yeah boy. (I think it’s clear that the National Party members have been told not to speak on specific policy yet so they must be getting things lined up for a big launch next year.) Maurice was in great form and good to spend time with him.
- The people in the industry we spar with are all good people, and their behavior is completely logical. I especially enjoyed spending time with Alan Freeth yesterday who has a great sense of humour. Paul Reynolds is great bloke and had a good first speech to the industry. Good to also see Mark Ratcliffe was around. I worked with Mark at EY many years ago so feel a sense of pride as he moves up the ranks. Tom Chignall’s mo was looking quite acceptable by the end of the month.
- Sam did a great presentation. I think people are pleasantly surprised to see that Sam actually is very bright and doesn’t take himself to seriously.
- Andy’s presentation from Austin Texas was excellent. His points on ICT having to be environmentally friendly were well made. That got me thinking big time.
- The long tail presentation from Chris Anderson was also great. Really ties into our SaaS messaging. Lots of goodies in that session.
- Loved the Gen-Y people. Really impressive.
- The broadband map project looked like a useful initiative. http://www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz/Your-Region/broadbandmap/
- There were 500 people there. The conference laptops put on by HP and Cisco were excellent. Being able to participate and converse during the speeches was very useful, though the moderator didn’t seem to appreciate my sense of humor.
- I really like the people in our industry and it was good to catch up with many many smart people in person.
More to come later but just wanted to get this up.
Google have a massive initiative in place for the Australian elections.
http://www.google.com.au/election2007
This is fascinating as they are aggregating a bunch of content and have interesting ‘worm-like’ graphs of political searches. Will be interesting to see how these map to the final votes.
How easy would it be for them to add a ‘vote now’ button!
We’ve been waiting for years for the electoral authorities to start leveraging technology but perhaps it will be lead from the outside in, rather than inside out.
This is a big step forward into our lives from Google though. Very, very interesting.
Lance also noticed the lack of voice from National on communications issues this year.
My conspiracy theory radar is beeping wildly. As commented …
The invisible man is definitely seen as yesterdays man by the industry.
JK is a smart guy and it’s puzzling that National has been so quiet through the whole debate this year. The only scenario that makes sense is that there was a deal that left MW intact in the last leadership change.
Nuts really when there are new guys like Craig Foss who actually get the internet, blog and have RSS feeds!
http://craigfossmp.blogspot.com/
Where is MW’s web presence?
Under my ideal scenario, DC flips to National (he’d look better there anyway) and keeps going for another 3 years.
Had a fun day at Otago University today with the International MBA program and Masters of Entrepreneurship classes. It’s the 2nd year I’ve been invited down and I enjoyed meeting the people down there.
I was relieved when I got back online to see that David Cunliffe was still looking after ICT. Phew! It would have been really frustrating for the industry to start building the sort of relationship we have with DC over again.
He also got Health. It would have been great if he got Education as shortage of talent is a big issue for ICT and those portfolio’s would have gone great together - but at least we didn’t loose him.
The latest NZX Open Magazine has an excellent discussion from several business leaders on the funding models for State Owned Enterprises.
You can download it here.
This is a very worthwhile read and congratulations to the NZX for their thought leadership.
This is interesting …
The non-exclusive partnership will create a branded TVNZ ‘channel’ on YouTube, offering a range of New Zealand-made short video material from current programming and the archive, reflecting the style of content popular with YouTube users.
I like that this means that TVNZ does not need to reinvent the wheel and hooks its content into an international community. Very progressive - for an SOE :)
Communications Minister David Cunliffe’s address to the 8th Annual Telecommunications and ICT Summit
in Auckland this morning had an interesting softening of language ….
So, the government remains optimistic that competitive pressures, combined
with a balanced and prudent approach to policy settings, will see total
telecommunications investment increase, not decrease, over the next few years.Will there be gaps in the marketplace? Yes, I don’t mind betting there will
be. Does this mean there may be a need for government investment? Possibly.
But we need to be very judicious about this.It is not the business of government to crowd out private investment. These
are big issues. They are billion dollar bets and we risk putting the cost on
the taxpayer if we are injudicious about our approach.I do not want anybody to think that means the government is not sensitive to
these issues and that it will not do more for all New Zealanders,
particularly rural New Zealanders.But what this government will not do is act with undue haste, or imprudently
disguise underlying market failures, before the appropriate commercial
realities are clear and all the options have been carefully analysed.As minister, I am not afraid of tough calls. But I also believe in getting
the best data and analysis to ensure that they are the right calls - not
just the temporarily expedient ones.
I believe Cunliffe has done a good job of respecting the process. But I also believe he understands the business case for the people of New Zealand to invest in some parts of the network. If I am correct in this belief then the language of this speech is consistent with that.
There is not doubt that the Digital Summit in October is setting itself up as an important time for our industry.
(From Simon) An academic in Australia goes a big step further …
OPINION
Australia needs fibre to the home
By Dr Nicholas Beaumont
June 13, 2007.Australia faces an important decision: should we build a national optical fibre network?
There are four questions:
*Is the demand real or just blue sky?
*Should we choose fibre to the node (FTTN) or fibre to the home (FTTH)?
*Who should control the network?
*How much will it cost, who will pay for it, and what should users pay?The demand is probably real.
The Internet has been more quickly accepted than any other technology. There is huge demand for technology that enhances personal contact (the mobile phone and SMS). Emails have been augmented by instant messaging, photos and videos (youtube.com), videophone telephony will become the norm. The Internet is a universal encyclopaedia and convenient way of transacting.
Business is moving advertising, transactions and relationships from paper to the Internet. E-education and e-health (eg monitoring people in their own homes, instead of their occupying expensive hospital beds) are emerging applications. Telephony should be moved from Telstra’s copper network to optical fibre, saving appreciable network maintenance costs.
Tomorrow’s child may enjoy a birthday party in a room of which one wall shows life-sized three-dimensional images of besotted grandparents projected from another hemisphere. In 2015, households will use the Internet to tune in to any one of the world’s thousands of television stations and wonder at a world in which most people could receive only four channels.
We should choose FTTH. The FTTN model requires Telstra’s copper to join homes to the node. Aside from technical limitations, this would give Telstra an effective monopoly. Prices would remind remain high and innovative uses would be stifled.
A national network should be treated as infrastructure and controlled by a body different from, and independent of entrepreneurs using the network to provide products (phones, PDAs, home security systems, software) services (VOIP, downloading films, Internet access, TV, multi-person games, video conferencing, , e-education etc).
The cost of a national FTTH network might approximate $A20 billion. The Government should pay for it and charge little or nothing for its use. In particular, national phone calls should be free. Public utility will be maximised if (as is the case for education and to some extent for roads and health) we pay for it through taxes rather than for use. Put this figure in perspective by noting that in FY2005-6 Telstra’s ordinary operations reaped $25 billion or about $1,200 from every man woman and child in Australia. Every year the Federal Government alone allocates about $3-4 billion to roads.
A FTTH network would cost serious money to build, little to manage and almost nothing to use. Social and business utility will be maximised if every residents’ and business premise was connected. There should be a modest connection fees and a modest annual fee covering maintenance and administration.
Consider the social benefit of elderly and immobile people being able to telephone their friends, participate in chat groups, see real-time images of their grandchildren, and access education and health services for free. Society as a whole would be poorer if less well off households were excluded.
- Dr Nicholas Beaumont, Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University
I think this is ‘a bridge too far’ and free is not necessary as business and consumers are, I believe, happy to pay for the Internet. But we want tomorrows Internet, not yesterdays. We know that all developed countries are looking at this issue and my fear is that we get left behind. Wouldn’t it be great to lead the world in this technical and social policy, exploiting our small size to get coordinated.
I presented with David Skilling in Napier last week. It was disturbing that by any measure New Zealand is disengaging from the Global Economy. A key statistic was the amount of Foreign Direct Investment from New Zealand which really nailed our inward focus.
I’m normally more blue leaning these days but happy to take a chocolate out of every box and be socialist when it suits - especially a digital one.
I have to admit that my first reaction to Cullen’s Budget is positive.
- R&D tax credits are good. (This will need policing). I would have liked an export component in here as well so that we are not just focussed to playing with things, but actually generating export revenue. Still, this is a good step.
- Company Tax Rate drop to 30%. Good, though tightly related to the next point.
- Compulsory Super Scheme. Very good. Even though the net effect of the tax cut is largely negated by employee savings contributions I think this is very good for business as savings lead to investment. Businesses shouldn’t thrive or die on a tax rate change. But creating a culture of savings is something we just need as a country. Some will say that it is an additional cost on business but I think that salary levels will come to take into account these contributions and they will net out.
It really irks me when they say that Tax cuts cost money. If you decrease tax rates that may lead to more investment and potentially the net tax take may actually increase. It does not make sense that changing Tax policy has single direct effect on the total tax take.
In Export Year I would have liked to have seen more focus on exporting. We are too inwardly focussed as a country.
The new blue team under John Key has had good running for the last few months, but there is a lot for business to like under this so it will be interesting to see how they respond.
In summary, a positive step forward, but I’d like to see more focus on growing the size of the pie, rather than how it is sliced up.
What do you think?
Our very own Hamish was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit.
Who took away knighthoods? The only people who possibly benefit from no more knights is existing knights. Is Sir Bob Jones behind this?
Some background: New Zealand Order of Merit, which notes that Brash plans to bring back knighthoods.
Clearly this is an important election issue. Lets bring back the Sirs.
Sometimes I just love New Zealand …
The Prime Minister said some stuff but it’s our man Duncan that makes an impression with George W.
Watch to the end.
Oh, just noticed this link from DPF, Colin Espiner’s account of the George W day.
Matt McCarten’s article in the Herald on Sunday this morning was appalling.
Matt McCarten: Foreign owners muscle in as New Zealand sells off all its assets
He is only focussed on symptoms and interventionism. He does not cover any of the basic underlying issues.
The big reason that foreign companies are buying up New Zealand companies is that they have savings, therefore money is invested in businesses. Once they have exhausted their own supply of businesses to invest in they of course look elsewhere. As dividends are repatriated they move into a virtuous circle (for them).
To say that we should have more restriction on foreign ownership seems like the boy with his finger in the dam. Surely the answer is to create incentives for saving and investment. We should be investing money both here and globally, earning and returning funds back to New Zealand for further investment. We need to start the positive cycle.
Our leaders and wannabe leaders need to lead. Writing this alarmist drivel without real analysis or solution proposition serves nobody.
Crazy, crazy times in NZ Politics this week as MP’s personal lives and vile (but exciting in their scale) rumours fuel the coffee houses.
As an entrepreneur, proud exporter and high tax payer, I’m naturally right leaning, thinking we should be incentivising business to grow the pie rather than arguing about how to slice it up. But I wasn’t anti-Helen. I have never been a fan but I did respect her intellect and control.
Her actions of the past few days, ongoing unprompted personal attacks against Brash and hypocrisy, have left me - and I suspect many others - turned off and repulsed. It’s fascinating to watch her plainly try to establish themes with misinformation and accuse others of what she is actively doing.
Anyway, enough of that.
What has been interesting from a technology and blogging point of view is the immediate direct channel and speed of conversation.
For example Ian Wishart can defend himself: http://www.tbr.cc. Incidentally, I thought the Sunday Star Times blatant attempt to introduce the subject into the mainstream media by taking the high ground against Ian Wishart was disgusting.
This incident lead me to David Farrar’s blog, which apparently is the hotspot for these current issues. Politics in NZ has entered deeply into the blogosphere.
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