[clug] [OT] Broadband clangers

[David Austin]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Robert Edwards <bob at cs.anu.edu.au> wrote:

<snippy snip snip>

> Once upon a time the constituency looked to their elected reps to
> show "leadership". These days our pollies just want to respond to
> the directions of the media moguls in the guise of responding to
> public sentiment. It's probably a good thing that the pollies don't
> try and "lead" anymore, but I wish we had a better way of communicating
> the public sentiment.

Ok, I'll bite!  I think we need more leadership not less.
The NBN (Labor version) is a pretty clear case of leadership for
good.  Left to the usual 3-year-horizon political process, there'd
be no way that such a project would be (politically) justifiable.
Similarly with mooted rail projects for the east coast.

On the other hand, the recent efforts at filtering/censorship are an example
of "leadership" gone wrong (though I hope that it's all been a cynical
exercise to curry Family First support).

David