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UncategorisedSome things never change
alison gordon | December 19, 2007In an odd way it’s comforting to know that despite the “effort” to break down the social and cultural stereotypes and unflattering tags that have attached themselves to various geographic areas of Sydney, at the end of the day many of them live on with vengeance.
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Uncategorised
A Modest Proposal
Open Forum | December 18, 2007"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." – P.J. O'Rourke
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“Government 2.0” – is it Safe to Play for the citizen?
Malcolm Crompton | December 14, 2007How can government make it 'Safe to Play' for citizens when they are offered wiki or blog or social networking styles of interaction with government?
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UncategorisedThe electronic grapevine and the great information noise
tamaraplakalo | December 11, 2007Social media is changing the nature of information exchange, but it is information itself that is suffering an identity crisis.
If Marshall McLuhan’s global village is to be understood as a toponym for a digitally connected world, then social media have to be seen as a cross between a village meeting point and its informal information (ie gossip) network.
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UncategorisedA mandate from “the Australian people”?
editor | December 5, 2007
By Philip ArgyWithout detracting from the new Government's victory, the media really does a poor job in reporting facts. With a 5% to 6% swing from the Coalition to Labor, it means that 94% to 95% of voters voted exactly the same as they did in 2004. Out of about 13.5 million voters, that means around 800,000 people changed their vote. But of those, some were in electorates where a swing of that magnitude didn't change the result becuase the incumbent had a greater margin, and in others most of the swing was 'absorbed' by the margin, so that the no. of votes that actually determined the outcome of the election were probably less than 100,000 across the country, and perhaps even as few as 20,000. Ultimately you have to wait for the results to be formally declared and then see by how many votes the ALP candidate won in the aggregate across the seats that changed hands to change the majority in the House of Reps.
In an average electorate of 80,000 voters a 5% swing is 4,000 votes. Very few seats were wrested with a margin of that magnitude, so at the end of the day, what are we to make of it all? In Bennelong, for example, it has been suggested that there is a large enough Chinese community that if they all found appealing the idea of having a Prime Minister who could speak mandarin, and they voted for Labor as a consequence, that was enough to unseat the PM. We may never know, but language like landslide and overwhelming mandate and suggestions that the Howard government was despised don't seem apt to me given the facts.
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UncategorisedThe changing focus of innovation
proberts | December 4, 2007The focus of innovation changes, but how many of our businesses have moved on?
It comes as a surprise the first time you are driving along in a new car and the dashboard lights come on by themselves, or the windscreen wipers start up, or the car helps you turn that tricky corner. But the greater level of intelligence of our cars shown in these autonomous systems is just the outward manifestation of the latest model of innovation.
When the Model T ruled, the average car was a marvel of the era of mechanical engineering. Japanese cars first got traction when they offered the goodies of the electronics era in the form of the push button radio and two speed wipers.
Today we take for granted the engineering and the electronics and are deep into the era where software is the key to the customer experience and value adding.
Software accounts for a greater and greater proportion of value in today’s products. In a car it works with us when we apply the brakes, helps us maintain the right line and stay level when driving through a corner, and controls myriad systems from air conditioning to valve timing.
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Losses of personal information, trust and privacy: This is going to change your life
Malcolm Crompton | December 1, 2007We are watching a very rapid change in community attitudes on privacy. One of the strongest contributors is the repeated and significant loss of control of personal information by private and public sector organisations around the world.
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Uncategorised
Croatians get cranky with diaspora vote
tamaraplakalo | November 26, 2007Last weekend, Australians voted in another election — the Croatian one, causing some serious electoral crankiness abroad.
As Australia strode into its first post-ALP-win Sunday, my eyes and ears opened to another election day, this one some 18,000 kilometres away – in Croatia.
The said election was, in fact, not as far away as it may seem, given that Saturday was the day all dual citizens of Croatia in Australia could vote to keep the incumbent conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)-led government in power, or give the new mandate to its archrivals – the Social Democratic Party (SDP). For anyone who knows anything about the Croatian political environment, the previous sentence was a moment in a TV skit where audience should have been prompted to laugh.
Let me explain. The eleventh electoral unit, also known as the diaspora vote, is what in Australian political terms would be described as a “safe seat”, no matter where its boundaries begin (Bosnia and Herzegovina), or where they end (New Zealand). Almost as one, they vote HDZ (the current election count has the HDZ diaspora vote at 76,53 per cent), with other conservatives and a few independents picking up the rest of the vote.
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UncategorisedWin an annual subscription to BRW!
olgabodrova | November 23, 2007
Open Forum would like to hear your thoughts on the recently proposed National Innovation Policy (NIP), the national agenda for a more innovative Australia. Have your say at our Topic of the Month, take part in our Innovation Survey or set your own agenda by writing a blog on an issue of interest to you – and you could win an annual subscription to BRW, Australia’s No 1 business magazine. We look forward to growing our informed debate project with your help!
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UncategorisedSalvation through Innovation? Some thoughts on the Australian future under Rudd PM
editor | November 22, 2007
By Steve Blume
Throughout his leadership and in the election campaign Kevin Rudd has painted Labor as the Party of innovation and has asked that we contemplate a government that would encourage ‘fresh ideas’ under his ‘new leadership.
Laudable notions these certainly are and admirable goals too, but at the overview level raised in the campaign they are motherhoods – who would ever disagree.
What sorts of actions might be taken by a Labor Government to ensure that Australia is positioned to move beyond our reliance on the current mining boom? How does a national government produce a substantive attitude change in all tiers of government to work co-operatively with the private sector and academia so that innovation is truly encouraged?
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Uncategorised
Innovation and climate change
proberts | November 19, 2007Australia's innovative capacity can be turned to the problems of climate change.
The really surprising thing about the latest report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is its optimism. After years of focusing on the negatives such as the terrible drought obvious to all Australians, the focus has moved to what can be done.
And, it turns out, a lot can be done to delay or avoid the impacts of climate change.
Australia’s participation in new market signals to encourage the development of a less carbon intensive economy through a successor to Kyoto is vital. It is vital from the purely selfish point of view that we will be excluded from world trade if we fail to take action and to reduce the effects of change on agriculture.
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UncategorisedEconomics of renewable energy (not)
StephenWilson | November 16, 2007It's not for nothing that they call economics the "dismal science". It seems to me that the world's attention to macro economics is what stops renewable energy. I don't know if the following analysis is really new or not, but if it's accurate, then as things stand, no renewable energy scheme stands a chance, regardless of the greenhouse effect.
When you procure and install a renewable energy source, like a wind turbine or hot rocks plant, the financial transactions are simple, limited and rather local:
– build the power plant
– operate the plant (pay a few staff, buy some occasional maintenance).
But our globally favorite energy schemes — coal, gas, nuclear — all involve mining and massive ongoing exchanges of finance and resources, both human and physical…
