Wake up everybody !
You, me and the man in the street will pay for everything.

There is no one else there that will pay for everything in the long run.
All there is, is short term advantages of one over the other.
Sooner or later it all evens out to the consumer paying for everything either through the cash register or in taxes.

Ok here we go, todays little rant...

The broadband network, it really is ordinary, the thinly veiled contempt for rural people. Saying things like "97% of the population will have it" is really slimy. All you need to do to achieve that is make sure things are fine in Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne, where they actually can get ADSL already and have a great choice of providers. Well, if you live 12km from an exchange, or if the exchange is an older one (RAX?), or if any of the pits leak when it rains (most do), then you cant get ADSL. There is a great scheme to finance satelite broadband, but if you have trees on your block (quite common in rural areas) you wont get it either. And so for me, I am paying about $70 per month for dial-up and as we type I am getting 31.2k, but that goes down to about 16k if it is raining. That 3% who wont ever get ADSL or broadband of any type, are possibly those that grow your vegetables and raise your beef. So on behalf of all of us in the bush, thanks for bloody nothing.

The other clown is no better, the idea of welfare quarantining and sending young people to outback western Australia might seem like a good idea at the time, though would you like your own grandparents to be forced to pay for things with foodstamps or charity vouchers? Its fine to want to humiliate unemployed people, because apparently that makes them feel more included and worthwhile. How about when one of your own kids is between jobs, and then forced to go to Kunanurra to operate farming machinery or drive a forklift or something... Often these ideas only apply to other people's kids or grandparents.

Pat, I can understand your frustration.
If you are within about 60 Km of a town Wimax should work for you if
you have a decent antenna at a good height.
Wimax is not time multiplexed like mobile phone systems which have a
distance beyond that they will not work no matter how strong the signal.
I have seen talk that Wimax is to be used by NBN in remote areas.

What many do not realise is that with fibre at 100 Magbits you will not
get downloads at that speed.
Data is sent in packets. The packets arrive at 100 Mbits but you will
find that the gap between packets is longer.
It all depends on the remote computer to which you are connected.
How fast can it dump its data into the internet ?

Unwired uses an early version of Wimax and they are to update to Wimax.

Pat, the broadband network will bring fast broadband to a lot more communities than if it was left to private enterprise. The whole point is that by the government doing it we will have this product available to communities that would never see it otherwise allowing them the economic opportunities that come with this system. also understand that the optic cable is only limited by the technology that is plugged into it, so it will improve with advances in technology.
As for increases in prices at coles, well the tax is direct to them so the price rise is direct to us. As for the mining tax, Trshcanman covers it perfectly. Eventually it will get us through lower employment in the sector and you can bet less investment though this will balance out with longer life for the sector into the future.
My question is why do we avoid taking much stronger action to curb the over exploitation of our natural resources for the short term greed of a single generation? History will surely show that the majority of resources were consumed by a single generation in a fit of greed that left little for the future and nothing to their children.

TrashcanMan>>Mining giants will still take massive profits out of Australia, they just won't be as massive because they're contributing to the Australian Government like all other entities making a profit in this country.

So please explain what 'company tax is' if it's not paying thier fair share, just like other companies. If you can!

Naribe >>My question is why do we avoid taking much stronger action to curb the over exploitation of our natural resources for the short term greed of a single generation?

This is also the time in history when we have less individuals paying taxes and more relying on hand outs and,along with boat the people and massive government waste, we are also fighting some elses war, all of which costs us billions each and every year.

This is why we rely more on resourse taxes/royalties than ever before and, there appears to be little improvement on the horrison.

If we stop the waste and stop the 'hand outs, this in turn will reduce our relience on resources, then we can look towards preserving the supplies by increasing the prices or offering limmited supplys.

But, until we find a way to take presure off the relience on the mining industry to top up our economy, then we have little choice other than to sell as much as possible, to the highest bidder.

It's all about everyone doing thier fair share and gross government waste.

"It's all about everyone doing their fair share and gross government waste."
Rehctub, on the surface this is a pretty straight forward statement. I would put to you that it is not just about people paying tax as with the current unemployment rate being within one percent over the last few years and a larger business sector than we have ever had i would have thought the number of tax payers was up and that it was the rate of tax paid that was down. Also the GST and tax file number system have cut out a lot of the black economy that existed before the eighties. I completely agree with you on government waste and behaviours like fighting wars that are none of our business, but to over come much of this it would require a change in our societal thinking. Such as who we see as the threat and why, less personal greed and sustainability, meaning control over population and resource use not sustainable profits at any cost because i need the new plasma from my family tax bonus this year. This all means less for the individual and that is why it will never happen.