The Big Move

Posted by Jenni Colwill on 14 August 2010 | 1 Comments

There is nothing quite like an interstate move to remind you that nationally, Australia still has a long way to go. These are some of the things I encountered over the past few months in my Big Move from a rural community outside Canberra to another semi-rural community a short distance from Melbourne. Perhaps there are some policy lessons here for a government that is interested in moving forward?

Communications

You can’t believe how difficult it is to get the communications infrastructure stuff right when you move – phone, internet, etc. suddenly become huge barriers to your ability to communicate.

Clearly Australia needs to do something about this, but I am not sure that spending $1230 of my tax money on building a Telstra lookalike in the form of the National Broadband Network is the answer.

It seems that India, USA and Europe all achieved pretty effective broadband outcomes spending a fraction of this, by letting competition go to work.

After all, aren’t we in our current pickle with communications infrastructure because we relied on a monopoly – so now the answer is to build another monopoly?? Doesn’t make sense to me.

Removing layers of government

When looking at removing layers of government involved in the services that are provided to citizens, why not start with something a bit easier than health.  Then we might be able to build the skills required to deliver national services without creating a major disaster. 

For example, I have just found that it takes 10 days to issue a driver’s licence in Victoria; NSW and ACT both issue them on the spot. As the NSW licence has no date of issue, this creates a huge workload for Victorian registration, where it is required. Then, to top it all off, the Victorians blithely post your licence to you in the ordinary mail trusting all identity thieves to leave them in your letterbox.

I can’t help feeling that starting the reform process with something as complex as health is a big mistake. Let's see if we can have a national driver's licence before a national health system.

Baby steps might be advisable, particularly given that the government has had some spectacular failures in managing national programs.

Transport

The biggest problem we had in our move was the transport problem. The roads were all wet and boggy, and the trucks got bogged.

How can we live in a country where boggy roads are still a problem less than 30 kilometres from major cities? How about we fix some of these things, and get transport working properly throughout the country rather than spending billions on a railway connection for a small number of people?

So where does this leave my vote? 

In summary, I am thrilled we have Julia Gillard heading the ALP and am sufficiently chauvinistic to hope she becomes our prime minister. I want a female in charge.

But without the help of the Greens on the policies, Labor looks pathetic – none of the policies that are important to me (including paid parental leave) are being handled well.  In particular, I am very disappointed by the ALP's approach of over-promising on policy issues, and then under-delivering.

But I guess Jullia will still get my vote, even if it is via the Greens’ ticket.