Fibre optimism, even to Abbott's cave

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This was published 13 years ago

Fibre optimism, even to Abbott's cave

By Mike Carlton

"Now, Mr Stephenson,'' said the Duke of Wellington. ''Pray tell me about this curious machine of yours.''

''I call it the Rocket. It is a locomotive steam engine,'' said the inventor. ''Which is to say it travels along rails under its own power.''

'''Pon my soul,'' cried the Duke. ''No horses?''

''No horses, your grace. The motive impulse comes from a furnace which heats a boiler to make steam that drives the wheels. It draws behind it a train of carriages to convey people and goods over long distances at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour.''

The Duke had heard much in a lifetime of soldiering, and since as prime minister, but nothing as extraordinary as this.

''So, at enormous expense, this furnace of yours would rattle around the countryside at a breakneck pace, endangering life and limb, frightening the horses and setting fire to the crops? '' he asked.

''Not at all, your grace. I am confident that one day the railway will lead to an industrial revolution the like of which England and the world has not seen.''

The Duke's eyes popped and he appeared to choke in his collar.

''Revolution! '' he bellowed. ''Damn your eyes, sir. We'll have no talk of revolution here. You and your infernal contraption can go to the devil!''

The opposition's furious opposition to the national broadband network has echoes of the Iron Duke. No imagination. No grasp of the possibilities, no vision of the opportunities. No sense that the optical fibre delivery of the internet at lightning speed to every home, school, university, office, factory, farm and hospital might be as revolutionary in the 21st century as railway was to the 19th.

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All we get from the Coalition is pigheaded conservatism: small minds bleating endlessly about business plans, the dreadful burden on the taxpayer, Labor's mad extravagance endangering the budget, the frightful risk of the unknown, etc. Surely private enterprise could cobble together something cheaper with Telstra's old copper network, blah blah. The latest whinge, delivered to an astonished Parliament on Thursday, was that the cable layers had dug up somebody's nature strip.

This Luddite tone is set by Tony Abbott, a self-confessed technology ignoramus. ''I'm no Bill Gates here, and I don't claim to be any kind of tech-head in all of this,'' he admitted to Kerry O'Brien in August.

His one idea is to oppose for the sake of it. It had been a good year, he told his party room on Tuesday, ''having destroyed one Labor prime minister, nearly destroyed another and deprived a first-term government of a majority''.

In essence, Abbott is still the campus bully of his university days.

Back in September Barry O'Farrell sent me a glossy brochure setting out his plans for government. It was more a motherhood list of good intentions than anything that looked like solid policy, but he had stuck a handwritten note on the front of it.

''Who says I'm against ethics classes in schools?'' it read.

Well I do for one, Barry. Unless, of course, you are prepared to repudiate your education spokesman, Adrian Piccoli, who announced this week that the Coalition would scrap the ethics lessons due to start in NSW state schools next year.

Or could it be that you have buckled to the nutters of the Opus Dei wing of the Liberal Party, also known as the Taliban for their hardline religious fanaticism?

Every opinion poll I have seen on this issue says an overwhelming majority of parents wants ethics offered as an alternative to the so-called Special Religious Education lessons.

As a Herald reader wrote on Thursday: ''My children have been shown the same Wiggles video week after week and told to sit still and watch it: appropriate for a two-year-old, perhaps, but not a year 2 student. How can an education department justify wasting children's time in this manner?''

The god-botherers have pulled every trick in the book to force their beliefs on the rest of us. One of the many specious arguments is that their kiddies would be deprived of the ethics teaching given to other children.

The sensible solution, then, is to get rid of the religion classes. They should not exist in a publicly funded, secular education system. If you want to fill your children's heads with this mumbo-jumbo, there are places you can do it. They are called churches, synagogues and mosques, and there is one near you.

Barry? Are you there, Barry?

Gay prostitutes the world over have been thrilled by the Pope's decision to allow them to use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.

''It's a dream come true,'' said Trent, 21, a strapping blond guardsman and part-time rent boy in London's St James's Park. ''It's the last thing I expected from the Vatican.''

Jai, 24, who works for a male escort agency in Sydney's Kings Cross, agreed. ''As a devout practising Catholic, I've worried both about AIDS and the sin of wearing a rubber. This OK from the Pope means I can see my Catholic clients without fear of either disease or damnation.''

That is if Benedict actually said what he is said to have said. In an interview with a German journalist, in their native language, he apparently hinted it might be a bit less of a sin if male hookers wore a condom on the job.

When this was translated into English it was hailed as a giant leap forward from the church's implacable opposition to contraception of any sort. When it came out in Italian, using the female noun, prostituta, it was seen as including women as well.

Chaos now reigns, as it usually does after papal pronouncements on any subject. The language is invariably impenetrable, no doubt suitable for lofty pontificating on how many angels might fit on the head of a pin, but little else.

Cardinals and bishops around the world have been scrambling to stuff the genie back into the bottle. The Bishop of Parramatta, Anthony ''Boy George'' Fisher, rushed to instruct his flock that nothing had changed.

So Catholics can still go to hell for a franger or the pill.

smhcarlton@gmail.com

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