I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore. Let’s fix this goddamn thing from the inside.

128

For far too long, Australia’s political sector has gotten technology policy completely wrong. I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore. Let’s take Delimiter into the Canberra Press Gallery and literally write the book on tech policy while we’re there.

There was one particular moment during the recent Data Retention debate in the Senate which I will never forget.

The hour was late – close to 10pm on a Wednesday night – and I was tired. Dog tired. It was the third in a series of extremely long Sitting days which started at 8AM in the morning and lasted well past dinner. I can’t speak for the other staff and Senators who were still required to be in the building, but I suspect many of them were exhausted as well.

The reason we were up so late was that the Government and the Opposition were absolutely determined to pass the Data Retention legislation that week. The two major parties teamed up to artificially extend the normal hours of the Senate in an effort to ensure that, no matter what, the legislation would pass.

At the point I mention, I happened to glance up at the public and press galleries which surround the Senate.

I was disappointed to see that, despite the awful nature of the legislation being debated (it was almost universally opposed, except by law enforcement agencies), at that point not a single soul sat in physical witness to its debate. Not a single member of the public, and not a single journalist. Nobody was there to remind our political leaders of how badly they were screwing things up.

Of course, there were very many people watching virtually. Press gallery journalists have in-house TV screens to watch proceedings. And many people were keeping tabs on the debate online from their homes.

But here’s a little-known fact about Parliament House: Physical presence here matters much more than you would think.

This building is commonly considered by its occupants to be a giant ‘bubble’. It has its own rules, its own culture and its own population; a totally self-contained world. There are many things which only make sense here. When you leave the building, or when someone not part of this world enters, the bubble breaks and normality intrudes.

I’ve seen this phenomenon many times. The best lobbyists in Canberra are the ones who often visit APH. The most effective witnesses are the ones who appear physically before committees. If you don’t come to Canberra in the flesh, you won’t have much influence here. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the truth.

It’s for these reasons that I suspect that having outside observers – even just one — sitting in the Senate galleries during the late night Data Retention debates would have made a difference to the participants. It would have burst the bubble and brought the outside world in. It would have made those in favour of the legislation aware that there were people who cared enough about the issue to be here in person.

Having just one person in the galleries sure would have made a great amount of difference to me. It would have given me heart, and hope, where it seemed there was none. It would have made me feel a little bit less lonely in our fight to stop yet another piece of terrible tech policy from becoming law.

What I want to do about it

I’m telling you all this because my role with Senator Ludlam will end at the end of June (the staff member I temporarily replaced has opted to return from leave), and, after a great deal of thought, I’ve decided that I want to reboot Delimiter and become the technology community’s observer – your observer – as a Press Gallery journalist in Parliament House.

Right now, there are few journalists in the Canberra press gallery with a deep understanding of technology policy, and none dedicated to covering every nuance of the field on a day-in, day-out basis. Most technology journalism is done from Sydney. Likewise, there are few MPs who understand or are interested in technology policy at all (you probably already know their names), and few lobbyists permanently based in Canberra.

This means, in a very real sense, that there is often nobody here physically watching or influencing the powerful players at critical moments when it comes to tech policy. There are dozens of tech policy issues to cover, ranging from Data Retention to Internet piracy, from IT price hikes to the share schemes of IT startups. And who could forget the National Broadband Network? But there are few people raising those issues in Parliament House. And few people reporting on them.

Partially as a result of this, our politicians are getting these issues wrong. There are few people setting them on the right track. You have all seen this cycle repeatedly over several decades now. Internet filtering, data retention, the NBN, the disintegration of Australia’s video game development industry, billion dollar Government IT project failures and more. Our political sector continually struggles with tech policy. This is not a secret.

Having a seasoned journalist and commentator such as myself physically present and analysing the issues here, I suspect, would make our elected representatives sit up a bit straighter when they consider tech policy of all stripes. They might behave differently if they knew there was someone in the room not afraid to ‘put a bit of stick about’. If they knew that Delimiter’s large and influential readership was riding along.

Of course, things aren’t quite that simple.

Having a single extra journalist in Parliament House won’t fix the epic, decade-long disaster zone that has become Australian technology policy. The interests here are too entrenched, the lack of technical knowledge too widespread, and the system too gridlocked for that.

To truly change the way Australia’s politicians think about technology policy, the community needs to create a substantial dent in Canberra. We need a huge weight of evidence that bad tech policy leads to terrible outcomes. We need to maintain our principles in the face of pernicious political influence. And we need to unite our efforts around a common banner to make our case. In short, we need to throw our weight around.

So today I am proposing three things:

Firstly, I am proposing that the Delimiter audience fund a new book chronicling the past 20 years of horrific tech policy mistakes in this country. The working title is: The Frustrated State: How terrible tech policy is deterring digital Australia. I would write this book over the next year. Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie (one of the Australian technology figures that I most respect) has consented to writing its foreword.

Click here for the Kickstarter funding page with all the details.

This book would tell the inside versions of stories which have never been fully told, including:

  • How the NBN has been torn apart by poisoned infighting between political parties, leaving Australia languishing in global broadband rankings
  • How successive Governments’ failure to structurally separate Telstra has led to almost two decades of telecommunications regulatory instability
  • How Australia’s Internet has become subject to comprehensive Government censorship, control and surveillance
  • The almost complete disintegration of Australia’s video game development industry due partially to a total lack of Government support
  • The failure of successive Australian Governments to address core issues in the tech startup sector, leading to our most successful companies leaving Australia
  • How a complete lack of copyright reform has left Australia languishing behind the rest of the world in the new era of digital content
  • How state governments are actively hamstringing disruptive new industries at the behest of powerful interest groups
  • How the Government killed new investment in renewable energy infrastructure almost overnight
  • How a series of catastrophic failures has left public sector IT systems locked in the stone age

If my funding goal of $25,000 for The Frustrated State is reached, I’ll reboot Delimiter, seek to join the Canberra press gallery, and start work on the book. If my stretch funding goal of $35,000 is reached, I’ll send a copy of the book to every Federal MP and Senator and relevant State MPs. I’ll try and personally hand a copy to Malcolm Turnbull and request that he review it for his popular blog.

And meanwhile, I’ll commit to attending every Parliamentary debate on technology legislation. I’ll attend all the committee hearings in Parliament House (and in other cities if I can). I will be in the room every time; listening, watching and writing.

Note: As I would be writing a book at the same time, Delimiter would not see quite the same frequency of articles as previously possible. I’m only human. And, of course, all of my knowledge from my time as a political staffer will remain strictly confidential, as you would expect. I won’t actually start work on any of this until I finish with Senator Ludlam at the end of June — there will be a clear separation.

But I have been in the belly of the political beast now. I ken its nature. I believe my articles would be more insightful as a result.

Secondly, as you know, I have made mistakes in the past. Not all of the articles I have written have been on target. Sometimes I have been naïve. In particular, I know that many of you will continue to feel angry at me about believing Turnbull’s NBN promises before the 2013 Federal Election. I screwed up there, and you all know it.

So that this wouldn’t happen again, today I am publishing an open draft of a Statement of Principles for Delimiter. If Delimiter is rebooted, this document will represent the will of the Delimiter community and guide my writing. And I will expect you all to hold me to these principles on a daily basis. The draft is now open for comment here. Go hog wild. Rip it to shreds and make it better.

I have also resigned from the Greens party. I’ve loved my time with the team here and the wider party. I believe it represents a significant bright spot in the Parliament and in our political system, and it would be foolhardy to pretend that I haven’t been influenced by my time with it. But I now need to seek a new role to serve the greater good in my own way, and I need to ensure that readers and all sides of politics are confident of my objectivity. If I return to journalism, I will ensure I take a non-partisan approach based solely on evidence.

Lastly, I am proposing that we set up a new and permanent hashtag which will allow Australian journalists, digital rights activists, broadband evangelists, IT professionals and tech geeks of all kinds to organise via social media around one common goal: To fundamentally reboot our politicians’ understanding of technology policy on a long-term basis.

No matter if we’re talking about the NBN, data retention, Internet filtering, IT price hikes, video game classification schemes, disastrous government IT projects or how much corporate tax Google should pay, we’re essentially talking about the same issue: Rebooting the technological mindset of political leaders. Resetting their flawed assumptions and installing a new operating system.

That hashtag would be #rebootau. Let’s start using it today.

Now it’s your time to make your decision. If you take the blue pill and reject my proposals, this story ends, The Frustrated State never gets published, Delimiter stays on ice and I’ll find something else to occupy my time. If you take the red pill and the book meets its crowdfunding goals, Australia’s technology community gets another strong voice within Parliament House and we see how much of a dent we can make over the next few years.

Click here to fund The Frustrated State. And click here to read Delimiter’s new Statement of Principles and comment on it.

Oh, and just one more thing …

I’m sure all of you think by now that I spend 100 percent of my time singlemindedly railing against Malcolm’s Multi-Technology Mess and trying to kill off data retention. It’s true — I do do those things a lot. But I also have had a bit of spare time over the past year in the hours after 10pm to work on personal projects.

One of those is a novel tentatively titled ‘No Brother’. It’s a sci-fi action/coming of age story set amongst Sydney’s dark glistening skyscrapers. I’ll need a while to get it nailed down, and it’s planned to be part of a trilogy. My plan is to work on that on Fridays. You can fund that too, if you want. The first three draft chapters are now online on its Kickstarter page.

128 COMMENTS

  1. I’m really glad you’re back Renai, it’s been pretty frustrating without your coverage of ICT and the NBN.

    • Not at this point — however, I have had a couple of requests along these lines, so I will investigate this a bit further down the track, to see how difficult it may be to do.

  2. DELIMITER COMMUNITY UNITES!

    Backed as well, that’s $100 well spent IMO.

    Welcome back Renai, Great to hear the fire is still burning! Your torch into dark corners has been sorely missed publicly, despite what you have been able to achieve privately.

    Your apology is not accepted, because (speaking for myself) no apology was needed in the first place.

    *thumbs up*

    • Cheers, much appreciated!

      I can assure you that the fire has been burning strongly behind the scenes. I just haven’t been very loud in public — I’ve been leaving that to the boss ;)

  3. Welcome back to the fray! NBN such a disaster now — is it too late?

    The book is a great project, but for Delimiter as a whole, in addition to a Statement of Principles, is it sensible to consider forming some sort of Advisory Board with a few key individuals with high profile?

    • Cheers!

      An advisory board is a good idea. However, when I’ve worked at other organisations I have never really seen that this kind of board has been active in any way. I’d rather keep a continuous dialogue going with readers and rely on their feedback — you guys are more likely to keep me on my toes, in my opinion, than a more remote advisory board who may not be so close to the action.

  4. It’s not payday until Monday, but I’ll definitely be backing the project then, haha.

    I’m sorry to hear that your time with Senator Ludlam has come to an end, but I am very, very excited at the prospect of Delimiter coming back, I have missed it terribly. The book sounds like it will be a fascinating read as well.

    Welcome back, Renai. Let’s #rebootau!

    • Actually you can back anytime you want!. KS doesn’t take the money out until the end of the campaign.. and only if it’s successful!! (ie. tell your kids, parents, friends, grandparents, the random jesus people knocking at the door and that kid who lives in the corner of the road to back it!)

      In fact the earlier you back the better it looks for a campaign as the chances of people contributing after the first few days can taper off if it looks like a project won’t succeed!

  5. I hope you’ll cover the appalling standard of internet and even mobile phone coverage available to those who live in rural and regional areas. I work on an outback project. People have been told they that the internet will ensure they can be part of new economic opportunities elsewhere around the globe. And access state of the art health services via the internet Ha! I defy anyone to be able to do that when even satellite broadband operates at almost snail pace, is very expensive and data download allowances are pathetic. Big chunks of Australia are technologically in the third world.

    • Services to the bush is certainly an area I’m interested in. You’re right — satellite is appalling. Wireless is better, but the long-term future of the NBN needs to be transitioning everyone eventually to fibre. The cost of connection is increasingly coming down, and reducing the tyranny of distance is a key factor in making Australia more productive and reducing congestion in the cities.

  6. Unfortunately at this late stage I feel it will be close to impossible to unscramble this rotten egg & Uncle Rupert will continue to pull the strings while having a far wider audience of the faithful.
    Welcome back & I wish you the best of luck anyway!
    G.

      • No worries! Anything you can contribute is fine :) And thanks for the kind words and contribution!

        I agree the Forces of Rupert are powerful. However, change is made one small step at a time, and there are many, many opportunities to influence things in small ways, which will inevitably lead to larger positive changes :) This is the only way change normally happens, IMHO — all you need is to consistently push in one direction and things will happen.

    • I’m not so sure Grump3, it just takes commitment to make the decision. The issue has become the broken egg it is because they managed to politicize it, and never consider alternatives.

      But there are ways to get the best of both FttP and FttN, they just need to be willing to compromise. Fibre to the drop point for example makes the last mile copper connection very manageable, without incurring the expensive labour costs of the last mile installation.

      You can do it for not much more than FttN, offload what at bulk is the most expensive part to the consumer, and just as importantly, gives a clear upgrade path.

  7. Don’t have the cash today to back, but have put a reminder in my diary for the weekend. Looking forward to seeing the #rebootau go fast and wide.

  8. You are forgiven for believing Turnbull’s pre-election lies. I did and I voted for them on that basis.

    Never again will I vote for any party which has Abbott and/or Turnbull in it

    • I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking about the issue of renewable energy technology recently.

      Personally, as most readers realise, I am not a typical ‘greenie’ — I don’t spend a huge amount of time thinking about the environment, nor did I join the Greens for that reason. It’s obviously clear that climate change is a real and present threat to human life, and I will do what I can to support the cause of dealing with it, but my reasons for joining the Greens were based on human rights issues such as asylum seekers and technology policy — those are the things I am more focused on from a personal perspective. Everyone has their own areas of interest.

      However, since becoming part of the Greens I’ve had a lot more exposure to the issues suffered by the energy sector in Australia and globally as the struggle to deal with climate change gains speed.

      This exposure has led me to be interested in renewable energy technology for the technology’s sake, and I have come to realise that renewable energy technology is just another technological change that I am interested in writing about.

      There’s a clear technological transition currently going on from old-world energy technologies such as coal-fired power stations, to renewable technologies such as wind, solar, hydro and so on.

      And the tech sector is increasingly tracking these issues as well. You only have to look at the great interest from the tech sector to the electric car and battery technologies constantly being launched now by US company Tesla, to realise that energy technology is now becoming part of the mainstream technology media discussion. Many major tech media outlets now cover these areas.

      I am personally interested, and I believe many Delimiter readers would also be interested, in the details of how Tesla’s new battery can be installed in their own homes to help lighten the load on the electricity grid, for example. This is personal technology which many of us are very interested in. Same thing with electric cars.

      Another area where the tech press is expanding into is space coverage, as companies such as SpaceX are increasingly changing the paradigm there. The recent launch by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is another example.

      What this means is that Delimiter will be expanding its coverage a bit as part of its reboot, to touch a bit more on emerging areas as they relate to Australia such as:

      -renewable energy technology
      -electric vehicle technology and infrastructure
      -space technology
      -drone technology

      However, as ever, I will be covering these issues from the perspective of technology and how they relate to Australia specifically.

      I hope this makes sense! I have always based my writing for Delimiter on issues I am interested in, in the belief that if I am interested in these issues, then other geeks like me will also be interested :)

      Feedback welcome!

  9. zen, I think the RET was cited as an example of how the gov’ts in Australia destroy new technologies almost on a whim to satisfy the desires of the incumbents.

    I agree that Delimiter is probably not the place to debate the pros/cons of renewable energy technology, or what it’s place should be in Australia, though.

    Going to follow those links to the kickstarter pages, now…

  10. Welcome back!

    Also regarding the kickstarter – funds won’t leave your account until the end of the campaign (June 12) so if you don’t have money now you can still pledge.

  11. Appears I highlighted just a day ago that delimiter was defunct on the reddit list of independent media..

    Glad to hear you are starting something. You aren’t the only one mad as hell.

    Make sure you put on your list of terrible policies (or inaction):

    * privatising telstra without splitting off the infrastructure portion
    * prioritising mining over IT/tech/science
    * cuts to the CSIRO/universities in general
    * categorising Software Engineering in the high rate HECS band rather than encouraging more to go into it
    * not teaching programming as a core language in schools
    * data retention
    * spooks getting read, write, delete powers to any data anywhere on any network

    • Cheers! Hehe yeah, that Reddit list may need to be updated :)

      I will indeed be writing about many of those areas. I hadn’t heard about the software engineering HECS issue — do you have any more information about that?

  12. Great to see you back Renai, I was always of the opinion that you were doing more good for Australia with Delimiter than anything you could do as an advisor in Canberra.

    @Bern Why wouldn’t it be (the RET that is), Delimitors by-line is “Just Australia. Just Technology” after all and there is some really cool tech/research going on in that space at the moment (not so much here in Australia though…which is kinda the point).

  13. No need to apologize. One of the problems with politics is that everyone assumes the worst of the other side and then use that to justify their own bad behaviour in a vicious circle that ends with politics descending into gibberish (e.g. Malcolm Turnbulls declaration that there had been no cuts to the ABC in the face of the ABC sacking 10% of their staff).
    While assuming the worst is frequently justified, we are never going to get a better political debate if we don’t at least try to take each other seriously.

  14. Hey everyone,

    thanks for your support for this project! And your kind words! I feel quite overwhelmed :D

    FYI I am still at work on a Sitting Day today, so limited in the time I can devote to this — I don’t want to try my boss’s patience too much ;) However, I will respond to all comments tonight after work. There is a lot to talk about!!

    Wow. It feels great to be commenting on articles on Delimiter again!

    Renai

  15. Committed to the eBook :)

    I look forward to seeing your article highlighted on Whirlpool news again, I’ve missed them.

  16. I’m in for $100, looking forward to chapters on Senator Luddite :), Sol Trujillo, Ziggy Switkowski and not to mention Malcolm NO-NBN Turnbull :)

  17. Nice one. Here’s a topic, the never ending cycle in Canberra of IT Contractors v’s Permanents. One government want to cut the public service but still wants the projects so contractors on over-inflated wages are hired. The next government wants to cut contractor numbers but still wants the projects and so hires permanents at lower cost.

    The next government sees the increase in public service numbers and so wants to cut them but still wants the projects done…and so on and so on and so on…

  18. Backed with $32. It would be nice to pledge more, but unemployed and this is stretching what I can justify.

    They say if you make a friend of an enemy, you have a friend for life. Yes you have made errors of judgment regarding Malcolm Turnbull that some warned you about but what is important is that you have now seen the error of your ways and even more importantly, doing something about it.

    I wish you well with this endeavour. Maybe this can achieve what 272,032 signatories could not!

  19. Been a big fan of your work (and selfishly happy you’re coming back to Delimiter!).

    This also appears to be one of the best strategies to get some sense into politics about technology – so, $100 flying your way Renai.

  20. Glad you are coming back. News coverage of the tech sector has been shocking without you. I’ll back you for as much as I can next pay (don’t expect too much).

  21. When sending out hard copy books, can you please provide an option to have it sent to a library, and establish a library list who would benefit from a copy. Maybe the university that generates these poorly informed pollies?

      • I don’t know which uni our politicians fell out of, but it is a free one. Most politicians never paid HECS…

        I would also support donating my copy to journalists. Publish their names so we can say, “You’ve got the book, you should have known better than to write…”

  22. 50 Coming your way…..
    Welcome back.
    Looking forward to see this mess nicely time lined and compiled.
    No more dark corners to hide…..only Rupert can still use his “media cloak” to obscure the truth.

    God bless

    Alfred

  23. I’m in!
    Half way to the initial target already – better get that biro ready Renai! ;)

    As a suggestion, it might be worth sending a copy of the book to a few mainstream media journos, who might then actually start making a bit of noise about the NBN and put it in the public’s face again.

    • Cheers, much appreciated!

      We did have quite a big first day :D Things are slowing down a bit now though — I have a lot of work to do :)

      You’re right — it may be a good idea to send copies of the book to the journos. This is a very good suggestion and I will add it to my plan for the book launch.

  24. Sweet Merciful Goddess! Delimiter is back! Finally something to read at work! =P

    I’m definitely in for the book! I’ll pitch in once I get back home and access to my KS account! :D

    Great to see you back Renai!

  25. Wow. This is epic news!! Can’t tell you how stoked I am to see Delimiter back in action with a bold new plan to help undo the giant clusterfuck of IT policy in Australia. Am behind your awesome new plan 100% Renai. Best of luck!

  26. Currently dole bludging, but it also means no longer bound by ATO craptastic policies. Will kick some money when I can.

    BTW, have you thought of Patreon to support your ongoings after you blow your kick starter on drugs and loose women (or heavens forbid you waste it on food, bandwidth and accommodation)?

  27. I’ve already kicked in for one “dead trees” version, but will probably kick in for another to donate to the uni I work at…if you make over the KS goal Renai, I think it’d be a really good idea to donate a book to all the Unis in Oz…the politicians here that are “in” are a bit of a lost cause really, but the “up and coming” may still be interested in the facts and actually making a difference…

    gawd, I’ve become so jaded :( It’s really sad to loose faith in your countries political class

  28. Welcome back, I’m a greens member a number of the greens are ex democrats and the old hard left. Many don’t really have any commitment to environmental policy. The arguments that Milne and Brandt used to block the petroleum excise indexation were absurd, I corresponded with Lee Rhiannon a hard left member, she was the only one of the current leaders that saw that policy mistake coherently.
    Politics is now an endless spin show and teh only thing that politicians have a commitment too, is doing nothing and getting re-elected. To be re elected the safest course is to do nothing, because it upsets people he least.
    We need a Tech Party!

  29. Hi Renai,

    Really glad you’re back – I’ll be pledging soon.

    I was just wondering, if you had another pledge goal to say, $50,000, could we put in a goal to stealthily replace all of the books on Senator Brandis’ bookshelf with your upcoming book?

    Thanks!

    • A very interesting speech from Shorten :D

      And the guy that wrote that article, Paul Smith, is a good technology journalist and an old mate of mine :D

  30. Well the effort is appreciated, however from an external viewpoint your stance on the coalitions direction on the NBN was badly wrong. (And you misread MT badly).

    I may sound defeatist however the reason for this is that neither party will get the NBN done correctly in the near future and data retention is here to stay and worse.

    The reason why is that vested interests have made it that way, and the Labor party cannot unscramble the egg. Security agency funding has grown exponentially and they have a life of their own.

    Democracy basically no longer exists.

    Good luck, you’ll need it.

    • It’s true — I did misread Malcolm Turnbull. I had believed he genuinely wanted to solve this problem … but the rapid turnaround after the election showed the reality.

      I must say, I am a great deal less naive about politicians and the political sector than I was previously, having now spent a year in the thick of it ;)

      Democracy is still here, however. While the bigger picture is a bit worrying, there are bright spots in the Parliament, even when it comes to technology policy. As a younger generation enters and brings a heightened awareness of technology into this environment, we will gain more strength and more positive voices still.

      Let us never forget that. When it comes to technology policy, the march of time is on our side. Technology is becoming ever more important as a policy issue (there are already several dozen live tech policy issues in the Parliament as we speak), and even the Parliament cannot resist the societal change that comes with the development of new technologies. We’re pushing in the right direction.

      And when enough people push in the right direction for long enough, they get results. That much I have learned over the past decade.

      We defeated the Internet filter. We can unfuck the NBN.

  31. Please reinstate our fibre and technology future please. The Liberals are dividing the country and destroying the economy to fulfil the agenda for Murdoch so he can keep his HFC.

    We need to deprecate HFC and telephone lines moving forward. Satellite and LTE or any wireless is just congested and a stop gap measure. Fibre is the only way.

    Optus planned to scrap HFC in 2016 now they get to remove their faulty liability from their hands so who does it benefit really ? HFC is congested. They don’t even plan to spend the millions upgrading to Docsis 3.1 from 3.0. They are going to still be paying millions to pay an America company to fraudulently upgrade HFC to Docsis 3.0 when we already have it. HFC has no upgrade path so trapping millions of people with Murdoch which is the plan.

    They will never intend to deliver 300/40. Once every joins everyone will likely get 10/1 ! I currently have 100/2.5 but am expecting that to degrade.

    FTTN will just fall over. It’s still ADSL. Many people will spend more time offline than online.

    FTTP will encourage growth in areas the government could every imagine because they are luddites and techno illiterate. Business need FTTP and 99% uptime connections and fast upload.

    The Liberals NBN will go down when it rains like the same services currently do. It’s not a new network it’s exactly what we have right now.

  32. Glad to see you back, the way its going you’ll hit your KS goal in no time. I’ve posted about your kickstarter campaign on a whirlpool forum talking about the current mtm situation, most are pro fibre there. hopefully they will spread your KS campaign and help to fund it as well. Cheers for helping to voice our concerns for Australia’s telecommunication future.

    Good luck :D :D :D

    • Cheers for your help! Much appreciated. I did suspect the Whirlpoolians would be interested in this :D

      The Kickstarter campaign is going better than I could have possibly anticipated — we’re getting close to the goal. Almost at $20k, which would be 80%. But I’m still a bit nervous about it ;)

  33. You’re a legend Renai! I remember you from the Bulletproof days :) Good to see you’re fighting this good fight. This is amazing, 100% backing this and spreading the word.

    Thank You.

    • Cheers for your kind words and for your support — much appreciated! Bulletproof kept Delimiter online through many storms, so I have a very soft spot for that company :D

  34. Welcome Back Renai!

    Getting sick of reading editorials and advertorials from entertainment reporters and sub-editors masquerading as ‘journalism’ and ‘news’ about IT matters in most of the mainstream media. Even most of the dedicated IT magazines are nothing more than paid advertising nowadays.

    Will chip in a few bucks after payday – Australian IT and us actual professional IT Workers need our voice heard as well!

  35. Welcome back!

    Pledged, well worth the $ if it shows to you, and the world, that people care.

  36. I just upped my pledge to a $100 and plastered it to FB and twitter, lets get this thing done!!

    • Same as they always have, stealing perfectly good O2 from more deserving mammals.

Comments are closed.