news John Linton, the maverick chief executive of Internet service provider Exetel, has tragically passed away, according to several public notices published by Exetel staff this morning.

“Yesterday my dad was doing what he liked doing best. Eating at a nice restaurant, drinking nice wines, and talking about the state of the telecommunications market in Australia, and the various companies that make this up,” wrote Linton’s son James Linton on John Linton’s popular personal blog early this morning. “At lunch he suffered what was thought to be a mild stroke, and was immediately taken to St Vincent’s hospital. He was conscious in the ambulance, responding to their questions, but when he got to the hospital he had trouble breathing and they needed to put him into a medically induced coma and put him on a ventilator to help him breathe.”

“Unfortunately it turned out to be a very intensive stroke and there was nothing the doctors could do, without killing him in an operation or leaving him severely brain damaged. So last night, with most of my family present, his ventilator was turned off and a few hours later he passed away peacefully.” Exetel director Steve Waddington verified Linton’s untimely passing in a post on his own blog.

John Linton was known in Australia’s technology community both as a successful entrepreneur as well as one of the most outspoken and controversial voices in the industry.

Exetel was formed as a technology consulting company in the early 1990′s but morphed into an ISP in the early years of this decade. Since that time it has grown dramatically to become one of the leading second tier ISPs in Australia, likely fuelling the personal fortunes of Linton, his well-known wife Annette and others associated with the company such as Waddington.

Exetel has recently established offshore call centres to support the company’s growth, and a major focus of Linton’s work in the past several years has been working to ensure those centres provided acceptable levels of customer service. However, Linton’s motivations were not all commercially driven, with Exetel having been a long-time supporter of charities that support the co-existence of Australia’s animal and plant life with its human occupants. Linton’s favourite charity was the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Linton was also known as one of the most outspoken commentators on Australia’s telecommunications industry and has over the past few years vigorously attacked various Federal Government policies such as the National Broadband Network and Internet filtering initiatives. After Exetel was invited to participate in Labor’s Internet filtering trial driven by then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, Linton wrote the following satirical entry on his blog:

“We, along with all other ISPs I assume, received the ‘courtesy’ email asking us to visit the fourth Reich’s official sub-site where we could find the details of how to participate in Herr Krudd’s and Obersturmfuhrer Conroy’s scheme to purge the Fatherland of the filth emanating from the diseased brains of the untermenscen.”

The executive similarly described the Attorney-General’s Department’s proposed data retention police as “totally insane”. Over the years, Linton has variously described the NBN as “dreamed up by a total wanker (Krudd)”, “a Field of Dreams”, “Krudd’s NBN2 bankruptcy plan”, “the Krudd NBN2 face-saving plan”, “a monopoly which Telstra will end up controlling” and “the Krudd cover-up known as the NBN2″. Then there was the time Linton sued Telstra — and won, forcing the giant company to publicly apologise to his company.

In his post on his father’s blog, James Linton wrote that the loss was “the saddest day of my life”. “I have lost my dad, my mentor, my boss and one of my best friends,” he added. Waddington added: “I have worked with John for the last 16 years, at four different companies, and been his business partner for the last eight years.”

“We started Exetel with the objective of creating a ‘perfect company’. We faced many challenges, some that would have undoubtedly overwhelmed anyone with less indomitable determination than John. He was the toughest person I think I will ever meet. The most honest person I have ever met, and one of the kindest. But above all he was unique, with the clarity of vision and sharpness of mind that was simply awesome. He has been my manager, my mentor and my friend.”

However, James Linton added, his dad would not want people “fussing over him”.

“He would want to know what we have sold, which was actually one of the last things I said to him. He would also want Exetel to go on as he had planned for it to. He put in a place a strategic plan, so we need to move on as he had wanted us to, and remember him for the great man he was.” James Linton invited well-wishers to make donations to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

A personal note from the author of this article
John Linton and I were cut from the same cloth — we’re both highly opinionated, we held much of the same anti-authoritarian views, and we both loved to satirise authority. We also shared many of the same political views, both being small business owners with a liberatarian bent. This is probably why Delimiter gave Linton’s comments more air than most other Australian technology media outlets over the past several years. And there is no doubt that those articles have been some of the most controversial that we have ever published.

If I look back upon John’s life during the period that I have known him, I think these comments which I wrote about him, in one of the first ever articles published on Delimiter in the week that we launched, best summarise how I feel about the executive:

“There’s no doubt that the Exetel czar’s blog most definitely contains the sort of offensive language you would hear in the Coogee Bay Hotel. And Linton goes too far with his rants on occasion. But ultimately what the blog and John Linton himself represents is the pure, unadulterated voice of the liberal-minded traditional Australian small business owner.

In short, Linton is one of the few people in Australia to honestly and loudly speak the truth about the nation’s telco industry’s business — or at least, the truth as he sees it. This kind of “damn the topedoes” approach is a hallmark of Australian small business. Australians are known for favouring the rebellious underdog — and Australian SMEs love to talk tough and stick it to the giants.

If we are to believe that the NBN will provide wholesale opportunities for more players than just the major ISPs like Telstra, Optus and iiNet, it’s important that those making big decisions listen to unorthodox players like Linton.

That’s why I am going to continue reading Linton’s posts and even responding to them with my own commentary. I like a good rant, I like an executive who isn’t afraid to make his opinion known, and most of all, I like Australia’s telecommunications industry to be a hotbed of debate and competition. We need more unorthodox voices to keep the dialogue from becoming a one-sided chorus.”

I will miss Linton tremendously. One of the most vivid personalities in Australian telecommunications is no longer with us. And a great voice has fallen silent. Vale, John Linton.

fake news The Federal Opposition today released a comprehensive new broadband policy to rival Labor’s big-spending National Broadband Network project, describing its own initiative as a landmark ‘Fibre to the Nothing’ (FTTN) proposal.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra today flanked by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull told an audience of senior political figures and high-ranking executives from the telecommunications and technology industries that the new policy would be based on three key planks.

Firstly, he said, if it won government in the upcoming 2013 Federal Election, the Coalition would roll out fibre broadband infrastructure “nowhere”. “Nobody” in Australia would be provided with next-generation fibre broadband, Turnbull said, because there was “no demand” for the significantly faster speeds which it would provide compared with those available on the existing copper network, and “no-one” wanted to pay higher prices for faster broadband that would “not be used”.

Secondly, Turnbull said a Coalition Government would “never” deal with the issue of Telstra’s vertically integrated operations, which bitter rivals such as Optus, iiNet and Internode have long claimed prevented them from fairly competing in the broadband market, with Telstra being accused of playing favourites with its own retail division. There was “no need” to separate Telstra, according to the Member for Wentworth, as the telecommunications sector had “no shortage” of existing competition.

Lastly, Turnbull added that rural and regional areas around the country would receive “nil” in terms of total subsidies to allow them to purchase broadband services at comparable prices to metropolitan areas in Australia’s major cities. Citing expert commentary from leading economists, Turnbull said investing in this area would unnecessarily lead to “negative” outcomes for competition, distorting the industry in directions that would not serve consumer outcomes, he said.

“Nowhere, never, nil,” Turnbull told the audience emphatically at the conclusion of the speech. “It’s a comprehensive package — we’ve left nothing out.”

Speaking after Turnbull, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott praised the new ‘FTTN’ policy, saying the Coalition’s approach was sharply differentiated from the NBN strategy of the current Labor Federal Government, which he described as a “white elephant”. “The beauty of our policy,” he said, “is the amount of public money that we’ll be allocating to it: Nothing.”

The policy was immediately praised by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which had issued a report in October describing Labor’s NBN policy as the “most extreme” example of government intervention in high-speed broadband planning globally. At the time, Turnbull had used the Economist’s statement to brand the NBN policy as “the telecommunications version of Cuba”.

In a new statement this week, the EIU stated that the Coalition’s plan was the “most conservative” example of government intervention in a telco sector globally. “At the far end of this range of intervention — even further than Antarctica — is the Australian Coalition, which has pledged the lowest level of total public funds pledged, due to its plan to create, own and operate an ultra-fast fibre network in virtually no parts of the country,” the EIU said.

However, not everyone was enthusiastic about the Coalition’s new policy.

Optus chief executive Paul O’Sullivan said it wasn’t appropriate for the Government to do “nothing” about the dominance of Telstra over the telecommunications industry. “From its humble beginnings in 1992, Optus has grown to become a company which today supports more than nine million mobile services and one million fixed and broadband customers,” O’Sullivan said. “We’ve achieved all that through doing almost nothing.”

“But we could never have achieved that if the Federal Government had also done nothing,” the Optus chief added. “It’s important that the Government does something, or else the entire telecommunications industry won’t be able to do anything, and it should be obvious by now that nothing will come of that. For heaven’s sakes, the industry can’t just be left alone to do everything!”

However, in a separate interview following his speech, Turnbull rejected O’Sullivan’s comments. “[Communications Minister] Stephen Conroy gave the industry everything,” he said. “And look where it got him: Nowhere. Now we’re proposing something so simple that it can’t help but work: Nothing. Under our policy, we’ll nip this National Broadband Network policy in the bud, so that it never gets off the ground. The industry will have no place left to run to and no-one to bail it out.”

One final brief comment on the matter came from the maverick chief executive of Internet service provider Exetel, who has been consistently outspoken in his criticism of the NBN policy. Linton posted a brief blog post discussing the National Broadband Network policy this afternoon. “I always knew it would come to nought,” he said.

This article is satire … did we get you? ;)

analysis Yesterday Opposition Leader Tony Abbott stated in a high-profile speech at the National Press Club in Canberra that cutting Labor’s National Broadband Network project would free up Federal Government money to be spent in other areas such as transport. It was a nice political soundbite. However, unfortunately, this statement was factually incorrect.

To illustrate why, firstly, let’s go through Abbott’s statement’s yesterday to get it clear what the Liberal leader said. According to the speech notes available on the web site of the Liberal Party, Abbott firstly said the following:

“At the heart of our plan for a stronger economy is getting government spending down and productivity up so that borrowing reduces, the pressure on interest rates comes off, and taxes can responsibly come down … A good government wouldn’t spend $2 billion buying Victorian brown coal power stations only to close them down; or $11 billion buying Telstra’s copper wires only to shut them down too; or $50 billion plus on a National Broadband Network that people don’t need and don’t want to pay more for.”

He later added:

“By the close of the next coalition government’s first term, I am confident that waste, mismanagement and reckless spending will have been brought under control … Better broadband will once more be delivered through market competition freeing more money to tackle traffic gridlock.”

Breaking Abbott’s comments down a little into real financial terms (because the Federal Budget is a complex beast), at the heart of the Opposition Leader’s comments here is the idea that the cost of the National Broadband Network project is an expense which will appear in the Federal Budget every year, requiring the Government of the day to balance its cost with other yearly expenses like spending on transport. The Coalition believes the NBN is too costly a project for Australia to undertake, and also believes that it should appear as a line item in each year’s budget. That is, the Coalition believes the NBN is actively costing the Government money on an ongoing basis, and should be expensed as such.

However, because the NBN is expected to make a modest return on the Government’s investment, according to its business case available online here, Labor has not entered the vast majority of the project’s actual costs in the Budget as expense items over the past few years. Furthermore, Labor does not see the NBN project as a whole as costly — because it will end up making money like any other investment (for example, interest on cash in a bank). According to NBN Co’s business case, the NBN will cost between $36.5 billion and $44.6 billion to build over the next ten years:

However, it is slated to make an internal return on that investment of between 5.3 percent and 8.8 percent on that investment — from $1.93 billion in the worst case to $3.92 billion in the best case:

So who’s right? Let’s throw the issue to an independent adjudicator.

According to a research note recently published by the Parliamentary Library of Australia, Labor is technically correct on this matter, and the Coalition is wrong. “Australia has adopted internationally accepted accounting standards, and these are applied in the budget treatment of the NBN,” the library’s Brian Dalzell, who works in its economics division, wrote in the report (available online here in PDF format).

“While the applied accounting treatment depends on the specific transaction conducted between the Government and NBN Co, this treatment is governed by accepted accounting standards and is applied equally to all government business entities (GBEs). This treatment is not determined by the return generated by NBN Co (or any other GBE).”

Dalzell goes on to provide a great amount of detail around how the Federal Budget treats the NBN, breaking up the Government’s investment in the area into a number of different sections and looking at the differences between cash flow, equity, debt and so on. But all of it only serves to reinforce the impression that the Coalition is improperly defining the NBN initiative as an expense. In fact, the economist addresses this misconception directly.

“Can the NBN be accounted for as an expense item in the budget operating statement?” he asks. “In the budget statement, the NBN is accounted for as a financial asset (equity investment) under the ‘investments in other public sector entities’ line item of the balance sheet. The NBN is not accounted for on the operating statement as an expense item, because it cannot be defined as such under accepted accounting standards.”

Of course, it is very possible to argue that this is all accounting semantics. Real money is actually being spent by NBN Co right now — billions of dollars — and that money is the Federal Government’s money, courtesy of equity injections into the company. However, that money is not diverting government funds away from other projects. It is funding which is being invested with the expectation of a return which will actually fuel other projects. The money the government is spending on the NBN is not an expense to be written off; it is a different type of money. It is capital — and Governments, courtesy of their incredible credit rating and asset base, have almost unlimited amounts of capital to draw on for investments which will make a return.

In addition, is also true that it is far too early to be able to show whether the Government will end up making any kind of significant loss on its investment in NBN Co, and what that loss might be. We are not far enough yet down the road of NBN Co’s business case.

Currently, early indications are that NBN Co is broadly on track with its project of rolling out a national fibre broadband network (and smaller satellite and wireless networks) around Australia. Furthermore, the company’s multi-billion-dollar deals with Telstra and Optus provide a great deal of revenue assurance for the company — it will have millions of guaranteed end user customers migrating onto its network over the next few years.

With this in mind, it is likely that even if NBN Co does make a loss over the next decade period and beyond, that loss will not represent anywhere near the full cost of building the network — just that cost minus NBN Co’s revenue, much of which is already virtually locked in.

In short, even if NBN Co does make a loss and end up costing the Government money in the long term, that loss would not be $50 billion. Would it be $10 billion? My gut says it’s unlikely, given the guaranteed customers it will receive from Telstra and Optus, the current growth in bandwidth demands and the fact that virtually the entire Australian telecommunications industry has swung in behind the project. But we just don’t yet know.

Yet another unquantified figure is how much the Government might make from its investment in the NBN if the capital it invested in NBN Co was realised (changing from an investment return on paper to money in the bank) through a full or partial sale of the company to the private sector, through a stock market float or other type of asset sale. In this case, the Government could stand to make quite a lot of investment return on top of its asset, as investors might be quite positive about a company like NBN Co, which would, at that point, somewhere between 2025 and 2040, be able to solidly predict what its revenues would be in future, in a growing broadband market.

There is also the Coalition’s own policy, which features a scaled down approach to the NBN, focusing on the likely separation of Telstra, upgrading current HFC cable infrastructure and targeted fibre to the node rollouts. Abbott didn’t mentioned the cost of the policy yesterday, but a recent analysis by Citigroup found that the Coalition’s policy would cost $16.7 billion. The Citigroup report didn’t mention what financial return, if any, the Coalition’s proposal was slated to bring in on its own investment.

Looking at these facts, it seems clear that Abbott’s statements yesterday at the National Press Club about the ability to save money by cutting the NBN were factually incorrect.

Firstly, if the NBN policy delivers on its current plan, it will make between $1.93 billion and $3.92 billion in money for the Government, and won’t cost anything. Ironically, cancelling such a project would cost the Government money. If the NBN policy hits its worst case scenario, it will probably still come close to breaking even, and so still won’t cost the Government anything. It remains unclear at this point whether the Coalition’s rival policy would make a return or not.

With all of this in mind, we urge Tony Abbott and the Coalition to reconsider the way they are discussing the NBN issue. A more targeted criticism of the NBN policy would serve the Opposition better than Abbott’s incorrect statements yesterday.

Table image credits: NBN Co

news Retail giant Woolworths today revealed plans to sell its Dick Smith chain of consumer electronics stores, following a strategic review of its broader assets finished in November 2011. It also plans to close up to 100 Dick Smith stores in the next two years.

The review, according to a statement issued by Woolworths today, concluded that Woolworths’ main strengths were primarily in “larger format, multi-channel, high-volume retail segments with market-leading positions”. In this context, the company said, “the future of the Dick Smith business, which is profitable, experiencing positive sales growth and has a strong brand position, could be better realised through new ownership.”

Woolworths said that its strategic review had concluded that the important consumer electronics category was better delivered through its Big W stores than Dick Smith, and that the investment and management attention given to Dick Smith had been “disproportionate”, relative to its position within the broader Woolworths group. “Following restructure, Dick Smith will be divested as a going concern to an appropriate buyer and will continue to operate as normal,” the company said.

Woolworths chief executive Grant O’Brien described Dick Smith as an “iconic” specialty consumer electronics brand, with a strong team and its own “leading” online presence.

“It has developed into a trusted technology retail and services hub, carrying world-leading brands and with strong market share in several key categories,” O’Brien said. “However, we believe that separating this specialty model from Woolworths is now the best option for the future of both businesses.” Woolworths has already received a number of unsolicited approached in relation to Dick Smith, which it will now explore, with the help of corporate advisory firm Greenhill Caliburn.

Woolworths claimed that Dick Smith staff, customers and suppliers didn’t need to worry about the changes, with business to continue as usual for the chain in the time being. However, it appears this statement is factually inaccurate. In the same media release, the company paradoxically stated that it would be closing up to 100 “underperforming” Dick Smith stores to be closed within the next two years, and affected staff to be offered redeployment elsewhere in the wider Woolworths group.

opinion/analysis
To me, this whole media release screams “Apple”.

In a year in which Apple’s Australian division announced record revenues, up 36 percent to $4.88 billion, and looks set to grow even more next year, Dick Smith’s Australian stores are “underperforming” and Woolworths is set to sell off the business and shut up to 100 stores. Well, I wonder what could be the problem? Where have all the customers gone? Maybe across the road to the gigantic Apple stores which have been opening everywhere around Australia over the past several years, and are known to be making record levels of revenue?

It is now a matter of public record that Australian consumers are buying less mobile phones, laptops, PCs, tablets, cameras and other devices from Dick Smith stores and are buying much of the same gear from Apple stores instead. And when they’re not buying Apple stuff, they’re going to mega-marts like JB Hi-Fi which sell the hottest stuff and lots of it, alongside 50,000 other things which Dick Smith doesn’t sell.

Sandwiched between this high (Apple) and low (JB Hi-Fi) strategy, it’s no wonder that Dick Smith is failing. A new Dick Smith store opened in my neighbourhood about six months ago, in the busiest shopping centre around. I like going in there to check out what’s on the shelves, but I always walk out, realising that there is nothing there that I actually want to buy. And usually I’m the only customer in the entire store. In contrast, whenever I walk into an Apple or JB Hi-Fi store, I have to physically stop myself from buying something. It’s like a compulsion. And there are always throngs of other customers everywhere.

Dick Smith stores remain locked in the retail paradigm which they helped establish twenty years ago. The chain has completely failed to realise that the consumer electronics market is no longer what it used to be. It has divided rapidly into high-low camps. Most of the market is now highly commodified, while a handful of companies — predominantly, Apple — have occupied the premium and are now entrenched there. And Apple certainly does not need Dick Smith.

Is the end of Dick Smith nigh? Probably not; I’m sure it will stick around for a good half-decade or more. But in the medium-term, it seems likely the brand is going the way of the dodo.

Image credit: Jo Fothergill, Creative Commons

news Former IBM Australia leader Glen Boreham, Defence chief information officer Greg Farr, Wotif.com founder Graeme Wood and former NICTA chief David Skellern have all picked up Australia Day honours this week for outstanding service to the nation.

Farr won a Public Service Medal for outstanding public service in leading major reforms ot the strategy and delivery of ICT systems, particularly in the Department of Defence. Farr is one of the most high-profile and highly respected IT executives in the Federal Government, having previously had a long career at the Australian Taxation Office, where for some years he led the agency’s colossal Change Program.

Farr’s complete entry reads:

Mr Farr is the Chief Information Officer in the Department of Defence and he has completely reformed both the strategy and delivery of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems across the Department while fundamentally changing the client provider relationship. The reforms he has implemented are key enablers to the Defence Strategic Reform program and underpin many of the initiatives required to deliver revised business processes and savings.

He has provided strategic guidance for the largest transformation of ICT activities ever undertaken in the Department. Mr Farr has managed the development of the ICT remediation strategic plan, improved the management, governance and coordination of internal business processes, and rationalised and consolidated major ICT and support service contracts. He has also implemented a more customer focused strategy at the service and project level, as well as a major cultural change program and a formal professional skilling framework for ICT staff across Defence. In addition, Mr Farr made a major contribution to whole-of-government ICT reform and ensured that Defence is a central player in this area.

Boreham was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to business and the IT sector, as well as professional associations and the arts. From 2006 through 2011, he was the managing director of IBM Australia and New Zealand, an organisation which he recently left after a lengthy career with Big Blue starting from 1986. He has also held a number of positions with other organisations, ranging from the IT sector to the general business sector and Screen Australia and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Boreham also recently took charge of the Federal Government’s Convergence Review.

Graeme Wood, who shot to national fame and incredible wealth with the 2006 listing of his Web 2.0 hotel booking site Wotif.com in 2006, was also appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, for his service to business, particularly the tourism industry, and the through philanthropic support for young people and tertiary education institutions in Queensland. Wood is still an executive director with Wotif.com, but also leads his own foundation and is involved with other philanthropic organisations. He is currently funding new journalistic enterprise, The Global Mail.

The Global Mail will be headed by well-known journalist Monica Attard and has recently unveiled a team of senior journalists who will be reporting on a range of local and global issues through the organisation’s website.

Lastly, David Skellern was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. Skellern is best known for leading IT research agency National ICT Australia from 2005 through 2011, but he has also been involved in a wealth of other organisations, from academic positions to leading research organisations. He has been particularly active in the engineering space, beginning his career in 1974 at the University of Sydney working on radiotelescopes, and then moving on to academic appointments at the university’s electrical Electrical Engineering department.

Skellern co-founded the Radiata group of companies in the late 1990′s to commercial the results of a wireless networking research project he led at Macquarie University with the Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation. In 2001 Radiata was acquired by Cisco for AU$565 million. Skellern won the award for distinguished service to science and engineering as a leading researcher, and to the design and development of world-leading information technology communications applications.

opinion/analysis
It took me about half an hour of trawling through the Australia Day honours lists to find these awards, and during that process I learnt a bit about what kinds of people usually win them. Usually to win an Australia Day award, you will have contributed strongly to the fields of sporting (there were a lot of these), scientific research, medicine or government (especially, it seems, local government) in Australia. In addition, you will often have contributed to multiple fields, demonstrating strong community spirit.

There were relatively few people who won awards who were from Australia’s technology sector and those that were awarded were almost too obvious not to win an award. For all of NICTA’s failings (and, many people would argue, irrelevance), Skellern has become the face of ICT research in Australia and has contributed an incredible amount to Australia’s technology sector over the years. The man is an institution.

Greg Farr has done so much good for public sector ICT in Australia that he deserves something more than a Public Service Medal … perhaps a sainthood? A glowing halo would sit well on top of Farr’s normally beatific face ;) Graeme Wood has certainly contributed to the economy tremendously through his business endeavours, but has also recently turned his hand to philanthropy.

And, although I personally don’t think people should win awards for being CEOs, Boreham has certainly gone beyond the call of duty in many ways during his career, demonstrating a commitment not only to the furtherance of IBM’s interests in Australia but also the interests of the technology sector in general and its links with Australia’s business and political sectors. You also have to give the guy a deal of cred for his work with arts organisations like Screen Australia — and now he’s applying his skills to other areas of use, such as the Convergence Review.

But what about other members of Australia’s technology community?

I’m thinking here of telco sector luminaries like Simon Hackett and Michael Malone, who have worked tirelessly for better Australian broadband, Pollenizer’s Phil Morle and Mick Liubinskas, who have almost singlehandedly created an Australian IT startup sector, technology journalists Grahame Lynch (Communications Day) and Stuart Corner (iTWire), who have doggedly chronicled the sector for several decades now, and many more.

And if we’re going to give Boreham an award, what about locals who have founded their own IT companies and grown them into significant endeavours? Peter Kazacos comes to mind, or Adrian Di Marco from Technology One, who has proven an endless source of strength for local investment.

I would even argue that private sector IT executives like Suncorp’s Jeff Smith (who was also the CIO of Telstra and involved in startups) and Westpac’s Bob McKinnon (formerly of CommBank, where he got the CommSee program off the ground) should be in contention. All of these IT sector luminaries have done a stack for Australia over the past few decades and probably deserve an Australia Day name check at some point (who knows, some of them might already have one). Recently departed Department of Human Services CIO John Wadeson would be another one, as well as, perhaps, Bob Correll, who recently left the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Canberra-based digital privacy consultant Roger Clarke is another one.

I think the significance of the Australia Day honours can’t be understated. These aren’t industry awards — they’re awards which show Australians’ contributions to wider society. And that’s just the kind of exposure that the nation’s low-profile IT sector needs. Anyway, let’s see what Australia’s IT sector can do to get a few more names in next year ;) And if I missed anyone this year, drop me a line in the comments.

Image credits: Department of Defence, AIIA, Australian Computer Society, IBM

news Tier two banking and insurance giant Suncorp has picked Oracle’s next-generation banking platform to replace its ageing Hogan core banking system, as the momentum around core banking replacement projects accelerates in Australia.

In March 2010 Suncorp chief information officer Jeff Smith (pictured, right) acknowledged the bank was investigating the case for replacing its core, although at the time the CIO noted he believed there was still life in the legacy infrastructure. He said Hogan operated “quite well”, but the software’s owner CSC hadn’t upgraded it in a long time: “We are taking a look at that now, saying: ‘Do we want to go and do something bigger?’”

Yesterday The Age published an interview with Smith confirming Oracle had been selected and the project would go ahead. “The big priority is around simplification … this year it’s going to be simplifying our banking system,” Smith reportedly said.

Further details have also been published on the LinkedIn profile of Mark Smith, an infrastructure architect at Suncorp, who appears to be seconded from Oracle to work at the bank and assist with the project.

According to Smith’s profile, Suncorp has badged its core banking replacement project as the ‘Banking Platform Program’ (BPP). “BPP is the complete replacement of the banks core banking software with the new Flexcube product called Next Generation Platform (NGP),” Smith’s profile states. “Additional to the Flexcube product, they will be deploying the following Oracle prodicts: Golden Gate, Active Data Guard, ODI, OBIEE, WebCenter, SOA Suite, OSB, OEM, E-Business Suite, IDM Suite, BPA Suite.”

The decision represents a loss for CSC, whose Hogan software appears to be gradually losing ground in Australia to the likes of Oracle, and also SAP, who was in the running for the Suncorp deployment but lost out, despite having been used in a successful core banking deployment at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Core banking platforms sit at the heart of any bank and constitute the base on which the bank’s technology platform is built – for example, modern applications such internet banking systems commonly sit on top. However, many of Australia’s banks have core banking platforms that have been in place for decades – often built on mainframe technology – and are becoming increasingly unwieldy and difficult to maintain.

Other banks such as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia have already instituted major programs to replace their core, but they can be pricey – CBA’s SAP- and Accenture-led overhaul has a budget of $1.1 billion. CBA chief information officer Michael Harte has hailed the new technology’s ability to provide ‘real-time banking’ – without the need to run batch processing jobs.

National Australia Bank has also put its foot in the water on its own core revamp based on Oracle, but others such as Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and Westpac appear to be holding off for now to focus on other projects.

In 2010, Smith said that Suncorp had been able to cut the cycle time down eighty percent to build a new service on its existing Hogan platform. The CIO noted opening accounts and conducting transactions between systems in the bank’s branch and automatic teller machine networks took place in real time even with Suncorp’s current platform. One of the main motivators to migrate to a new platform, he said, was the availability of talent to maintain it.

“We all have to be cognizant that the average age of Hogan developers is in the fifties now,” Smith said. “That is a bigger issue for me, because we want to keep people enthused and keep them engaged, but you are running into retirement years, and I think that is a bigger issue than the technology side. I think the big advantage of the new platforms is the ability to be able to do more with them because you have a bigger supply base of individuals and technology that you can use.”

In mid-2011, Suncorp also revealed plans to invest some $9 million in a new customer relationship management system from Oracle. The value of the new core banking platform has not yet been revealed.

opinion/analysis
I’m not surprised by the fact that Suncorp has chosen to take the plunge with a new core banking platform. Smith is a very forward-thinking CIO and has long appeared to have the complete support of Suncorp’s upper management and board when it comes to major new technology deployments. He’s one of the only CIOs in Australia’s current banking sector who enjoys that level of support — with the other one being CommBank’s Michael Harte.

Suncorp had already knocked so many systems upgrades off its ‘To Do’ list over the past half-decade. It makes complete sense for the bank to go after its core at this time.

A successful Suncorp deployment of Oracle’s platform will ratchet up the pressure on the other major banks yet to initiate a core replacement strategy — Westpac and ANZ — to get into the game. NAB is also deploying Oracle’s system, but very little is publicly known about how it’s going. From the little that the bank has said on the matter after it conducted some early test rollouts a while back, I have no doubt that it’s going slowly.

CommBank’s core deployment has given it a real advantage in the marketplace. If you sign up for accounts with the major banks (most of which I have) to test their customer-facing systems out, it quickly becomes apparent that there is just so much *more* you can do with CommBank’s systems — and so much faster.

New accounts are created virtually instantly, money is transferred around faster, and there’s a stack of little features which its online systems let you do — such as changing your PIN number online. If you haven’t played around with CommBank’s new online platforms, I recommend you do so. And that’s just the most obvious indicator of the deep underlying structural change the bank’s successful core revamp has wreaked on its systems. Now Suncorp’s going in the same direction.

Image credits: Delimiter, Suncorp

news Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has publicly stated that he suspects law enforcement agencies of bugging his mobile phone, despite admitting that he doesn’t have a shred of evidence that such action might be taking place, and despite the fact that he has not had his mobile phone examined for bugging software.

In a radio interview with 6PR this morning (the full audio recording is available online here), Ludlam, who is the Greens Communications Spokesperson, said he first became suspicious that his phone had been bugged during the past week, part of which he has spent at several events with independent computer security researcher and hacker Jacob Appelbaum, an associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Appelbaum and Ludlam spoke extensively at an event in Melbourne on Saturday about the dangers of increasing levels of covert government surveillance on Australian residents. Today, Ludlam said at one point when he was with Appelbaum he noticed that “the battery on my phone was draining very fast”. Appelbaum’s view on the matter, he said, was that it could be a symptom that the phone was being wiretapped. Ludlam uses an iPhone, several models of which have recently suffered battery draining technical issues unrelated to wiretapping.

Ludlam emphasised that he had “nothing” to back up the idea that the phone was being tapped. “I wouldn’t even dignify it with the term evidence … it’s entirely circumstantial.” he said. “It was something I was whingeing to Jacob about, and he said: ‘You know what that can mean’.” In addition, he stated that he hadn’t “made any accusations” about the Government tapping his phone.

However, in the same interview Ludlam said it was “concerning” that “simply by being in the company of Jacob or people associated with Wikileaks that my phone might then have been wiretapped”. In addition, he noted that “it seemed interesting to note that there is no reason that we would be immune” from wiretapping, referring to himself and the organisers of the Melbourne event.

“I went through the same sort of psychology as most people,” he told the 6PR host. “Your first reaction is look, well I’m not interesting enough, I’m too boring to spy on, so I’m not worried about this. The second stage is saying, well maybe I am being spied on, but I’m not doing anything wrong, so it still doesn’t bother me, and the third stage is no, bugger that, we do deserve privacy, we have a right to privacy, and it’s not appropriate for, in my view, as many as a quarter of a million of these data access requests being made every year, with nobody having the foggiest as to what they’re for.” Ludlam was referring to telecommunications surveillance statistics recently published by local law enforcement agencies.

Ludlam linked the issue to a Sydney Morning Herald article published several weeks ago which revealed that the Federal Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, had secretly pushed for increased surveillance by police of environmental activists who had been protesting peacefully at coal-fired power stations and coal export facilities, with some of the work being carried out by a private contractor, the National Open Source Intelligence Centre (NOSIC). If these kinds of activists could be spied on, he said, ” why not a Greens MP?”

The Senator noted he would be following up the issue with Australia’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, which oversees Australia’s intelligence agencies.

opinion/analysis
I am extremely surprised to find the normally level-headed Senator Scott Ludlam engaging here in what I feel I have no choice to describe as conspiracy theories.

Frankly, as the Senator has openly admitted, he has not a shred of evidence that his phone has been bugged. I consider it irresponsible of Ludlam to raise the issue in public without first finding that evidence, if indeed any exists. I would also consider it irresponsible of him, and potentially an abuse of his parliamentary position, for him to contact the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security about the matter, without first finding that evidence.

Now, I think it’s important to note here that I personally am highly suspicious of surveillance efforts by Australian law enforcement agencies, and I have personally made great efforts to bring these efforts to light. For example, I have been one of the main Australian journalists reporting over the past few years on the Attorney-General’s Department’s data retention proposal, which would dramatically expand police powers to retain Internet users’ data. In fact, I filed a Freedom of Information request with the department this week on the issue.

Likewise, I have consistently published information on other government censorship and control measures, such as various Internet filtering proposals and secret meetings about online copyright infringement. So I am not unsympathetic to Ludlam and Appelbaum’s views — far from it. I am not the Australian Federal Police’s favourite journalist and I’m probably on a list of rabble-rousers who would be first against the wall if the Attorney-General’s Department got their way ;)

However, I listened to the whole ‘War on the Internet’ event held by Ludlam and Electronic Frontiers Australia (the videos are available here), and I must note that I found much of the event to be chock-full of the sort of conspiracy theories which any rational journalist must feel uncomfortable listening to. The entire event had a more than blasé’ relationship with the facts, and I believe Ludlam’s suspicions this week about his phone being tapped are the fruit of spending too much time in the company of people like Jacob Appelbaum, who are visibly attempting to construct a narrative around inappropriate surveillance based on what, at least in Australia, is very thin evidence. I’m sure things are different in the US.

TL;DR: Show us the evidence, Senator Ludlam, or else stop discussing the matter in public.

Image credit: Still taken from EFA video broadcast of the War on the Internet event

analysis $46 billion in revenue. 64 percent quarter on quarter growth. 37 million iPhones shipped. Apple just stunned the world with some incredible financial growth over the last three months of 2011. But what do these results mean for Australia?

Normally, it’d be fairly hard to tell. But thankfully, the company filed its latest set of local financial results this week. With these in hand, plus Apple’s latest set of global financial results filed today, we can do some extrapolation to look at what the numbers for this little company we call Apple might look like in Australia over the next year or so. This is going to get a little complicated, so stay with me. Or, you think it’s too long and can’t be bothered reading all this, skip to the end; I’ll summarise ;)

Firstly, some background. What Apple has just filed in the US today is its financial results for the quarter (three months) to 31 December 2011. Globally in that quarter, Apple made $46 billion in revenue, a figure up 73 percent on the previous year, and 64 percent on the previous quarter.

Now Apple doesn’t break out Australian revenue in its global results — all we get is a headline ‘Asia-Pacific’ figure, which probably doesn’t represent Australian growth well, because it also likely includes countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and so on, which aren’t quite as affluent as Australia and probably don’t buy as many Apple products.

However, if I was to compare Australian growth to one of Apple’s operating divisions, I would say that we’re probably quite similar to Apple’s European division, which experienced revenue growth of 55 percent in the last quarter of last year.

Like most European countries, Australia has a mature and competitive mobile market, with multiple competing carriers and rapidly improving data speeds. Most European countries are easily classified as first-world nations and have affluent populations (their ongoing financial crises notwithstanding). In addition, Apple’s major product release in the last quarter of 2012, the iPhone 4S, no doubt drove much of the company’s incredible revenue growth. And importantly, the iPhone 4S launched simultaneously in October in the US, Australia and major European countries such as the UK, France and Germany, giving us a solid basis for comparison. Europe has also strongly adopted the iPad, like Australia.

Conversely, comparing Apple Australia’s results to Apple’s Americas segment (which achieved 92 percent growth, year on year, in the last quarter of 2011) may not give an accurate comparison, as it is likely that division of the country includes more countries (in South America) not classified as first world. I’m not sure what growth in those countries would like like.

Not that I’m implying this analysis is in any way ‘accurate’, by the way — it’s basically just slightly informed speculation ;) But it’s interesting to play with the numbers.

If we compare Apple’s results over the whole 2011 financial year (which ended at the end of September) for its various divisions, it also leads to a conclusion that Australia could be better compared with Europe than with Apple’s Americas division. In that financial year, Apple Europe grew revenues 48.6 percent, while Apple Americas grew 56.4 percent. In that same year, we know from Apple’s Australian financial results released this week, the company’s local division grew local revenues by a smaller amount, 35.9 percent. So still a fair way behind Europe — but more comparable to Apple’s Europe division than its Americas division.

Now we can start to extrapolate the future.

In the last quarter of the 2011 calendar year (which, remember, is the first quarter of Apple’s financial year), the results released today tell us that Apple Europe grew a little stronger than it had been — 55 percent, as compared with the 48.6 percent aggregate of the previous year.

However, perhaps the quarter which we should be comparing Apple’s Q1 2012 financial results with shouldn’t be the one twelve months previously, but Q4 2010, the quarter which would reflect Apple’s release of the iPhone 4? Again, for the European division we come up with a figure of about 56 percent growth. See where we’re going here? It’s starting to look like in general, Apple is growing its revenues at a consistent rate of something like 50 percent-ish a year in Europe at the moment.

In Australia, Apple’s growth has been a bit more subdued (as I mentioned, 35.9 percent in the 2011 financial year), although we went through a substantial growth spurt higher than 50 percent in the period through 2008 and 2010. So extrapolating from the European experience, what we might expect to see from Apple’s first 2012 quarter in Australia is something a little higher than 35.9 percent, because of the launch of the iPhone 4S locally in that period.

Could Apple Australia see growth rates of somewhere around 40 or 50 percent in the last quarter of calendar 2011, compared with the same quarter 12 months earlier? I’d say a figure somewhere around that would be likely. And the likely release of the iPad 3 this year, plus refreshed Apple Mac hardware and the constantly growing music, apps and eBooks iTunes ecosystem is likely to help keep that growth on track. Apple’s penchant for opening new retail stores in Australia won’t hurt.

What all of this means is something remarkable.

If Apple can achieve a revenue growth rate of between 40 and 50 percent in Australia over its 2012 financial year ending in September, that will mean the company will be pulling in revenues of between $6.8 billion and $7.32 billion from Australia in that year. When you consider that the company made $4.88 billion from Australia in the 12 months to the end of September 2011, that’s remarkable. It’s even more remarkable when you consider that in 2006, Apple’s Australian revenues were roughly a tenth of that — just $717 million a year.

Revenues around $7 billion will mean Apple Australia is closing in on Optus (which last reported operating revenue of $9.28 billion) in terms of sheer financial scale in Australia. The company’s revenues will start to approach 30 percent of those of Telstra, one of the largest companies in Australia of any kind. To put this further into context: Woolworths made $54 billion in revenues in its last financial year. If Apple’s growth trajectory continues for the next three or four years, it will be making something close a quarter of that total in very short order.

Now, I want readers to take all of this with an absolutely huge grain of salt. I’m extrapolating wildly here in almost every direction, and we really do not know enough about Apple to make any solid predictions about what kind of money it will be making from Australia over the next few years.

However, if we have learnt one thing about Apple in the past few years, it is that it has been able to make a metric ass-load more money than anyone expected it to. And if it continues to perform that way in Australia, it will quite shortly become one of this nation’s largest money spinners of any stripe.

TL;DR: Apple could be making almost as much money as Optus from Australia over the next two years.

news Apple has revealed that its Australian division has experienced incredible levels of revenue growth over the past five years, in new financial documents released this week which paint a graphic picture of the effect that the global resurgence of the iconic technology giant’s fortunes have had on its local operation.

Globally, the success of new product lines which Apple has introduced over the past five years (such as the iPhone and iPad) has had an extraordinary impact on its revenues. In three of the most four recent fiscal years, the company has achieved annual revenue growth of more than 50 percent, with the exception of the recession year of 2009 in which its growth dipped to 14.4 percent.

All of this has added up to create the most valuable technology company in the world — with more than $108 billion in revenues for financial year 2011 and a pile of current assets, predominantly in cash, which is estimated to be close to $100 billion. In financial year 2006, the company was making less than a fifth of those revenues globally — $19.3 billion — and it had just $6 billion in cash on hand. Yesterday, the company delivered the first complete picture for some time of what those results have looked like in Australia.

In its annual set of financial results published yesterday with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Apple revealed that it made $4.88 billion in revenues from its Australian division in the year to 24 September 2011. That figure was up $1.29 billion compared with the previous year, in what is believed to be an unprecedented annual revenue jump for a technology company operating in Australia. Apple Australia’s financial results for the 2008 financial year, published by ZDNet.com.au several years ago, show the company was at the time making less than a quarter of that revenue — $1.16 billion. And in 2006, the company was making much less — just $717 million a year.

The figures place Apple Australia in the same league in terms of pure revenue as the local divisions of other major global technology giants such as HP and IBM. However, Apple’s entire revenues come from individual product sales; it does not hold the style of major IT services contracts which IBM and HP do with major government and private sector organisations. Those contracts can often run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Apple’s Australian headcount has grown dramatically along with its financial growth, as the company has hired a throng of new administrative and retail staff to deal with its massive increased product distribution and store footprint locally. In 2006, the company employed some 322 Australian staff. By the end of 2011, it had some 1505. It spent $80 million on local wages and salaries in 2011.

Multinational technology companies operating in Australia typically don’t disclose much profits locally, with most of their costs being allocated locally (despite the fact that they might be generated overseas) and their financial statements don’t typically disclose much tax being paid in Australia. With respect to this trend, Apple is no exception. In its local financial results filed yesterday, the company stated that it made just $190 million in local profits in the past year, with $94 million of that being taken out for local tax. The year previously Apple actually made a net tax gain, off claimed local profits of $9.98 million.

Apple’s success has come about through the rapid uptake of virtually of all its product lines over the past half-decade in Australia — ranging from the iPhone and iPad, to the iPod and even a resurgence in interest in Apple’s Macintosh line of computers. Foad Fadaghi, a research director at local analyst firm Telsyte, said it was “no surprise” to see such strong financial performance from Apple locally.

Fadaghi said the company had seen a five-fold increase in the uptake of Apple’s flagship iPhone handset since 2009. In that year, the analyst firm estimated there were about 700,000 iPhones in use in Australia. “As of 2011, that has increased to about 3.7 million,” Fadaghi said in an interview this morning.

“That’s a massive growth in two years — that’s incredible,” he said, adding the iPhone’s growth meant the Apple handset had “severely cannibalised” other vendors in the marketplace — notably Nokia, whose position in the smartphone arena has been decimated over the past few years. Fadaghi said the iPhone was estimated to own about 42 percent of the smartphone market.

The iPad has done even better in term of market share, according to the analyst, capturing over 80 percent of the local tablet market — which Apple virtually created singlehandedly — with over 1.2 million iPads in Australia. “It’s pretty incredible, considering it was launched in May 2010,” said Fadaghi. He noted the iPad had also been successful over the recent Christmas period.

And the analyst had even tracked a movement towards Apple products in the hyper-competitive laptop and PC markets — where Apple has paradoxically managed to have both “very expensive” desktop hardware often used by professionals as well as lower-end consumer products such as the MacBook Air which have performed strongly in their own segment.

“No doubt you’ve seen a movement towards Apple products, you’ve seen it in the enterprise as well,” Fadaghi said, noting a so-called ‘halo effect’ which had seen Australians buying Apple Macs and MacBooks after becoming enamoured of the company through other products such as the iPod, iPad and iPhone lines. And Apple was even making substantial amounts of money through selling applications, music and other content through its bundled iTunes store.

Overall Fadaghi said Australians seemed to be very partial to Apple products compared to other countries — with a higher rate of local iPhone usage locally compared with the US. Part of this was because of the nation’s first-world, highly-educated status, he said — as a country we tend to gravitate towards more expensive technology products such as the ones produced by Apple.

In 2012, analysts are already predicting more massive revenue growth from Apple, on the back of the company’s successful iPhone 4S launch, as well as expected new products in the iPad and iPhone lines, as well as a predicted expansion into other areas of the consumer electronics market such as integrated televisions. So is there more room for Apple to grow locally as well?

“Absolutely,” said Fadaghi today. “Especially if they start playing in the consumer electronics space via televisions and other devices. Once they’ve got people locked into their ecosystem, they can upsell. For the best part of it, it’s a licence to print money … this is what’s happening with humanity. We’ve become a technology society.”

opinion/analysis
I’ve never seen anything like this level of revenue growth from any other technology company operating in Australia. The only example I have to compare it to would be the massive jump in local revenue experienced by networking giant Ericsson in the 2006 calendar year, when it booked $1.4 billion in revenue — up from $557 million the previous year. However, that jump was only temporary — and was caused by a billion-dollar contract Ericsson signed with Telstra to build its Next G network.

All indications are that with the expected launch of the iPhone 5, iPad 3, new Macs and MacBooks in 2012 and possibly even an Apple television of some kind — plus the ongoing growth in digital product sales through its iTunes store (particularly eBooks, music and apps) — Apple will continue its growth throughout 2012 and beyond.

With this in mind, I’m not even really sure what we’re dealing with here. I’m sure we’ll see Apple Australia booking $6 billion in annual revenue — that figure doesn’t seem much of a stretch, given its current levels of growth and the new products to come. But will we see a $10 billion Apple Australia? Or even larger? At that point, Apple Australia would be approaching half the size of Telstra in pure annual revenues. It would probably be bigger than Optus in terms of pure revenue. Its revenues would likely be as large in Australia as HP and IBM combined.

I’m sure that Apple knows this already … but that’s a ridiculous scale. At that point you can pretty much do whatever you want. Enter whatever market you want. Buy whatever you want. You can set your cash on fire and burn it for years on end without even making an appreciable dent in your money pile. The phrase “Do you like my hat? It’s made of money!” comes to mind.

Apple isn’t just a huge global business. It’s becoming one of Australia’s largest, most valuable and most dominant businesses of any stripe. And now we have the figures to prove it.

Image credit: Apple, graph from Create A Graph

news Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has attacked the Federal Government, which his party is in broad partnership with to form Government, for holding what he said were “offensive” secret meetings with the content and ISP industries on the issue of illicit Internet file-sharing.

The last known meeting was held on 23 September and convened by the Attorney-General’s Department. It saw major Australian ISPs sit down with the representatives of the film, television and music industries with the aim of discussing a potential industry resolution to the issue of online copyright infringement. The issue has come to the fore over the past several years due to the high-profile court case on the matter ongoing between iiNet and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.

The Attorney-General’s Department has subsequently revealed a representative of several public interest groups — the Australian Communications and Consumer Action Network (ACANN) and the Internet Society of Australia (ISOC) had requested to attend the meeting and been denied. It has also declined to release any information about what specifically was discussed at the meeting.

Speaking at Electronic Frontiers Australia’s ‘War on the Internet’ event on Saturday in Melbourne, Ludlam, who is the Communications Spokesperson for the Greens, said the various parties had been “locked in a room by a former Attorney-General and told to sort something out” — asked to resolve the question of how content creators could make money in a world where file sharing through platforms such as BitTorrent was popular.

“What I find the most offensive about that, is that they locked the people out of the room that actually matter,” Ludlam said. “All of the writers, the creative artists, the performance people, they’re not in there. The rights holders are in there. The end users, the consumers … us, are locked out of the room as well.”

Ludlam said it was the “intermediaries” who were discussing the issue under the auspices of the Attorney-General’s Department, who had been told to come up with something that was “not too offensive” for their corporate interests. “They’ve locked out the producers and consumers. The model which will be introduced in Australia, when we get to hear about it, will probably be stuffed and offensive,” he added.

The Greens Senator said in the US, where the past week has seen a huge amount of protest actions held to defeat anti-piracy legislation in the form of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), it was similar organisations running the anti-piracy agenda. Ludlam called last week for the Australian Government to support efforts such as Wikipedia’s site blackout to protest the SOPA and PIPA legislation.

“… the intermediaries: We don’t need them any more. These people are trying to preserve their incumbency in an age which no longer requires them, because things have changed.” Ludlam said that he was interested in having a “real conversation” about how the creative industries should be remunerated in a file sharing world. “If the Government’s not going to ask that question, then we will,” he said.

The talks were previously being held under the auspices of then-Attorney-General Robert McClelland. McClelland lost the role in a cabinet reshuffle late last year, however, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard appointing Health Minister Nicola Roxon to the Attorney-General’s portfolio in his place. Roxon had been Shadow Attorney-General in Opposition.
In a statement issued today in relation to Ludlam’s comments on the SOPA and PIPA legislation, a spokeswoman for the Attorney-General’s Department said it was aware of the debate in the US, but that things were different in Australia.

“The Government is not currently considering similar legislation in Australia,” they said. “It is the Government’s preference for industry (content owners and Internet Services Providers) to work together to develop a code to address the issue of online piracy. The Department is facilitating ongoing discussions between content owners and ISPs’ representatives, including the Australian Content Industry Group and Communications Alliance, to address online copyright infringement. The next meeting is scheduled to take place in early February.”

The statement mirrors similar statements issued by the Attorney-General’s Department and the Office of Robert McClelland and the Attorney-General’s Department during his tenure.

Despite the ongoing nature of the talks, Ludlam and senior figures from the Opposition have previously declined to respond to repeated requests for comment over a period of several weeks on the Internet piracy issue and the meetings being held by the Attorney-General’s Department, with Ludlam stating at the time in Delimiter comments that the issue had come up at a time when his team was “extremely stretched”. The Greens were looking at the issue, he added, but not until it was “a properly informed one” backed by good policy resources.

Image credit: David Howe, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence