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Copyright Macroplan Australia 2009 This work is currently in draft form. Accuracy is important to the intentions of this project however maps and images throughout this publication are for illustration purposes only and not intended for navigation.
Australia 2050 - Table of contents: Introduction - Australians Rock Part 1 New Challenges - A new Australia emerges 1.1 Innovation, Communication and Information Technology 1.2 Globalisation – Our new geography 1.3 Fast Growth and Fast Ageing – Our new demographics 1.4 Social Change – Our new lifestyles 1.5 Governance – Our new states Part 2 New Insights - Waves, cycles and timelines 2.1 .Waves and Cycles 2.2 Nation and City Building Era’s 2.3 Post War Reconstruction Wave 1945-1991 2.4 .Cycles
2.5 Globalisation Wave 1991-2050
Part 3. New Understanding - Growth & change 1939 to 20083.1 Population 3.2 Socio Economic 3.3 Economic 3.4 City and Regional Change 3.5 Housing Part 4. New Parameters - Where are we now4.1 Infrastructure 4.2 Productive Capacity – Food constraints 4.3 Human Resources 4.4 Environment Part 5. New Identity - A global perspective5.1 Trading Relationships 5.2 Social and Cultural Relationships 5.3 Competition and Opportunity Part 6 New Opportunities - 2050 Forecasts; Opportunities and Constraints6.1 Population – Human Resources 6.2 Social and cultural change 6.3 Economic 6.4 Proposed Infrastructure 6.5 Technology 6.6 New Productive Capacity 6.7 Information Technology 6.8 Communications 6.9 Environmental Part 7 New Directions - Our nation and city building agenda 7.1 New Objectives 7.2 New Tools 7.3 Opportunity Spectrum 7.4 Rights 7.5 Options and Ideas 7.6 Bottom Line Requirements 7.7 Private Sector 7.8 Federal Government 7.9 State Government 7.10 Local Government 7.11 Not for profit 7.12 Regulatory Frameworks 7.13 Policy Settings
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The following extract is from the book Australia 2050 by Brian Haratsis and the Macroplan Team: |
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1.1 Innovation, Communication and Information Technology (CIT) Since the 1950’s innovation (1) has shaped the face of Australia and some of the key changes for everyday Australians have included:
Innovation is easiest to measure in terms of productivity growth (2). The National Innovation Systems Review - 2008 (NISR) found that innovation in Australia intensified in the 1980’s after an extended period of decline in innovation performance in the 1970’s. The NISR also found that around 2002, Australian productivity went from growing faster than most countries in the OECD to considerably slower than the average and that, if the economic geography of global production had not encountered seismic shifts towards India and China, Australia would have seen the effect of our complacency reflected in falling living standards. Business and technological innovation are only a part of the innovation spectrum; Social Innovation, which focuses on new ways to meet existing, upcoming and unforseen social challenges, (3), has now developed into a worldwide organisation The Social Innovation Exchange (SIX). The Australian branch (ASIX) aims to create a platform for people and organisations to connect, communicate and then collaborate in the search for new ways to address such social inequality and disadvantage. There are many social innovations in Australia - ReachOut, The Royal Flying Doctor Services- and around the world - the Grameen Bank who offer Micro credit (4) the UK Open University, the Big Issue publications and many others. New forms of electronic social media have resulted in an intergenerational shift towards digital social networking. Chat rooms, SMS and mobile telephones have increasingly contributed to making institutions such as the Country Women’s Association and Service Clubs less important as social lubricants. Social innovation is contributing to major change in the structure of cities and the geography of our nation. More recently Communication and Information Technology (CIT) has changed the global geography of some of our labour markets such as overseas call centres now servicing English-speaking markets. Locally, mobile phones have significantly increased labour force mobility on the job while improving responsiveness. Broadband communications for fast data transfer has fostered new types of group problem solving both within and between organisations. The impact of CIT on international geography means low cost economies like India, China and the ASEAN (5) countries now have a more significant impact on our labour force due to low wage costs and lower production costs aided by new technologies that have increased efficiencies in trade, freight, logistics, design, machine tools and production lines using robotics. Design, development and production processes have been de-skilled and re-engineered. This facilitates and accelerates the transfer of jobs from developed to developing and undeveloped countries with industries such as motor vehicle and electrical goods production shifting to lower cost economies quickly. Innovation does not have to automatically result in major economic benefits for all countries. Communication innovation has also provided our labour force with more mobility and effected productivity improvements and has also led to developing new Industries in mobile phones, laptop computers and even entertainment such as video games and plasma screens. Increased efficiency and delivery of information has also increased the volume and velocity of transactions in Finance and on the Stock Exchange and led to significant growth in the finance sector. New global business developments like Ebay and Amazon have created opportunities for global businesses to emerge. Advances in mineral and energy resource recovery have led to advances in opportunities for faster and more extensive exploration for more remote oil, gas and mineral deposits.The Labour market servicing Australia has expanded internationally due to the Internet with remote programmers servicing software and Internet requirements for Australian companies.(6) Deregulation of airlines and new developments in aviation have created new international gateways and routes with lower prices and more passengers. Containerisation in shipping has led to new, highly competitive ports and new Freight logistics processes. Aviation and shipping labour forces have become increasingly global as a result. While CIT has created opportunities for Australia to trade more widely with the rest of the world, Australia’s major trading partners have become more regional and include the ASEAN nations, China, Japan, the Pacific Rim and India. As Asia and India industrialise further, they become more able to take advantage of the opportunities and efficiencies created by CIT which are more difficult to ‘trap’ in a relatively high wage country like Australia. For example the banking and call centre industries have increasingly shifted jobs overseas.(7) The impacts of innovation derived from CIT plus the digitisation of industry are in their infancy. The global recession which began in 2008 is likely to accelerate these impacts as labour and production opportunities become increasingly important to competing globally. CIT will have a profound impact not only on the way we live and think but also the way we work. Ebay has become the first truly international marketplace, the Apple Iphone is the first fully integrated personal electronic device, Wikipedia is the first open source knowledge base. Our emerging electronic lives demand that we consider a new approach to planning for 2050 as the impact of web 3.0 begins to take effect. The evolving Web 3.0 is likely to become:
The web underpins a new geography for retailing, entertaining and accessing personal and professional services. It will fundamentally alter time management, human relations, the way we live as a democracy and a community and travel demand in ways that we have not yet considered. Australia in 2050 will be globally connected and integrated socially, and economically. We need to consider how to harness these changes to make Australia not only competitive globally and economically but also a better place to live, work and play. CIT: A Brave New World In 1990 Windows 3.0, the worlds first computer interface was produced that could be accessed by the average Joe; The Graphical User Interface (GUI) was born. The new era of computing, together with more affordable hardware and software and the emergence of the World Wide Web in 1991 created the basis for a whole new field of play. This new field is borderless with the development of the MOSAIC web browser. Released in 1993, MOSAIC became the basis for Netscape and Internet Explorer, both released around 1995. These user-friendly interfaces created the opportunity for new workflow platforms to emerge and allow for new forms of collaboration. “Work flow platforms are enabling us to do for the service industry what Ford did for manufacturing” (8) He also argues that the mid 1990’s was the genesis moment for the flattening of the world(9) but that the business web did not emerge until the 2000’s and that even in 2009, the implications of the business web are still not well understood. As the following table indicates, new methods of communication, new types of businesses, and new national and global business equations are emerging. Webs of world cooperation have developed such as the G20 to address the GFC, world trade, global warming and other planet wide issues. Australia is beginning to respond to the CIT revolution, particularly in relation to freight and logistics, albeit without the more sophisticated elements of supply chaining but in terms of off shoring and outsourcing, Australia is likely to be a net loser given our relatively high labour costs and relatively unsophisticated cable network. At a Nation building level we have not begun to think about the downstream implications of CIT. At a city building level, individual Internet use continues to increase. Between 2007 and 2008 internet use increased by 17% (10) laptop ownership rose by over 28% and the number of wireless area networks increased by over 65%. This is in parallel with a decline of desktop ownership by over 12%. With over 92% of Australians owning a mobile phone(11) and 93% connected to the Internet, Mobile, connected Australians are changing the way they interact with cities and their expectations of cities as places to live, network socially and do business. A study undertaken in 2007 (12) indicated a high level of awareness of mobile broadband services (such as 3g) in relation to mobile phone users but only 39% actually accessed internet services from the mobile phones. The study identified that consumers did intend to use more 3G services in the future. Business, household and individual production, consumption and socialisation patterns in the future will evolve quickly and radically in directions not yet imagined by a connected population and a global challenge to keep up with the pack.
CIT in Australia 1989 to 2008 One example of social change being driven by Internet use is GetUp.org. GetUp have taken advantage of the immense audience available through this medium and in just 2 years they have become the single largest independent political movement in Australia with over 300,000 members. Not surprising considering the first organisations to access the Internet commercially were environmental and human rights groups. How did we get here?In the mid-1970s a few Australian geeks and computer scientists were making occasional connections to the US Internet system (ARAPNET – primarily connections between US research centres within universities) via theinternational dial-up service offered by the Australian Overseas Telecommunications Commission but it wasn’t until 1989 that Australia's first commercial Internet services - Pegasus Networks Communications Pty Ltd, was launched making dial up Internet connections available to the public. By 1992, Pegasus had a national user base of several thousand users, mostly environment groups, human rights groups, local government and small businesses. Pegasus remained one of Australia's 3 largest ISPs until 1995, when bigger players like Telstra Big Pond recognised the economic potential and stepped up. Mail and news bulletin boards were already in use in Australian university and research communities in the mid-1980's, but primarily in the science and computer science fields. Librarians were the next to jump on board and in 1996 The Global Info Links Project was intiated; the first community scheme was launched in Ipswich with 100 local subscribers. Now the ISP market is Australia has been flooded with companies offering broadband at prices well below what most of us paid for dialup ten years ago and the potential for international trade and collaboration has increased to the point where very few businesses would choose not to have their own piece of cyber property in the form of a website or news feed. Twenty years from its launch commercially, the Internet has changed the social and economic landscape in Australia. It has changed the way we do business, the way we shop and keep in touch with friends and loved ones. Where are we now?Socially Sixty Three percent of homes across Australia had access to the Internet in 2006. While two-thirds of homes in major cities had Internet access, only 42% in very remote Australia had access. Broadband was used by 46% of homes in major cities and 24% in remote and regional Australia. More recent figures are not yet available but media reports and anecdotal evidence suggests that while broadband use in major cities has increased, the figures for remote and regional areas would have shown far less increase due to lack of suitable infrastructure. Hence in Australia the 2009 Rudd Labour Government has decided the Commonwealth Government will initially bank roll and implement the roll out of the 43 Billion National Broadband Network. Networking in Australia has developed from small community networks in the 90’s to massive individual social networks such as Facebook and MySpace in the 2000’s with huge potential for growth and new opportunities. The social network market in the Asia Pacific region grew by over 60% between 2007 and 2008. Today Facebook, the largest social networking site on the Internet, boasts almost 4 million Australian users – this equates to over a third of the entire social networking market in Australia. These users spend around 20 minutes each session with most logging in each day. As social network use has increased, traffic to search engines has decreased as users share information and communal groups within the networks provide leads to topics relevant to the users within. The decline in growth of over 10% in search engine use between 2007-08 can also be attributed to the fact that Internet users have already deemed search engines as the default method for finding information and their use has peaked. Use of email services has also dropped in 2007-08 as users communicate through instant messaging, news feeds and communication sites. Our own Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has done a lot to promote the use of instant communication sites with his use of Twitter as a means of keeping in touch with voters, promoting events and communicating with a broad audience. This kind of communication ties the Internet and telecommunications together and provides evidence that Internet industries are now looking for new ways to integrate with other “offline” technologies in order to meet the demands of users seeking more mobile options for communication and the need for constant connection with social and business networks. The rise of the blackberry platform in the US and similar technologies such as the I-phone in the Asia Pacific regions shows that users want to be able to have their cake and eat it to. Australians no longer want to be tied to their desks and computers but still want to remain a part of the networks they belong to no matter where they are. Social network users are not particularly loyal with many using multiple platforms for their networking activities. A professional in Melbourne may have a LinkedIn account for his professional connections but then also a MySpace account for his personal network while a musician might have a Facebook account for keeping in touch with family and then a second account with MySpace to promote his talents. Education is another area where the Internet has created new ways to conduct business and provide access to information. There are now hundreds of Registered Training Organisations across Australia who offer online training and research support. This has huge benefits for students from remote areas but the lack of broadband services means many are unable to take advantage of this growing area of education. While the Higher Bandwidth Incentive Scheme (HIBIS) provided for government funded satellite connection for remote areas the cost to the government has been huge and when looked at in comparison with broadband alternatives the funding would be better spent putting broadband infrastructure in place. A little foresight 5 years ago would mean Australia would now have the infrastructure in place to support the growing need for fast data transmission in remote areas. It has changed our perceptions and our expectations, our levels of patience and our willingness to persevere because we have instant gratification to our enquiries. 20 years ago you made a call and if you missed your contact you expected a call back within a week…”ish”. Now we send an email and when we don’t get a response within 24 hours we are surprised, within two days we are starting to wonder if they got it and by day 3 we pick up the phone. Those born before 1970 can pinpoint the day a special letter arrived, whether it was a postcard from a distant penfriend or the year 12 school results, yet how many born after this date can remember the day they got great news in an email? We no longer judge customer service in terms of friendly staff and a great product, it now hinges on speed of response and instant solutions. Something about Our intrinsic culture is evolving as we swim to catch the next wave of economic change, clad in regulations that offer the equivalent safety of a pair of budgie smugglers and a swipe of zinc cream from sunburn. Economically Australian businesses are using new technologies to drive productivity improvements with eighty-one per cent of Australian businesses using the internet to conduct financial transactions and lodge information with government organisations. Around one third of businesses use online ordering tools,(14) enabling their employees to work from home or are using the internet to research business improvements yet total business income derived from activity on the internet is still only three per cent due to a number of factors including lack of experienced local ICT staff, lack of support for innovation and development in ICT and a failure to identify emerging markets early enough to able to compete globally. Internet use by Australian business needs to be a major consideration when planning for future infrastructure needs and while Australia is among the top 10% of countries(15) for connectivity numbers we fall well short of international comparisons in terms of speed and we lack the infrastructure to provide access to affordable high speed Internet services in remote areas. The development and growth of specifically targeted networking sites such as LinkedIn for professionals and Club Penguin for children shows that new markets are emerging to create new, unique enterprises as users seek to connect with like minded groups or groups that can provide the support and information that is relevant to their individual needs. As the Internet continues to influence growth and innovation in Australian business the demands of this immense beast are projected to increase by over 50% in the next 5 years. The intention was for the private sector to build a network for 98% of Australians, providing minimum speeds of 12Mbps and to have it all online by the end of 2008. In 2009 the Rudd Government announced it would create a public company to spend about 43 billion (8-9 billion Federal Government) on a fibre optic cable network to 90% of premises and deliver speeds of up to 100MB per second.(16) The network is now expected to take a number of years to complete and in the meantime Telstra have introduced new services to meet the obvious need. This includes speeding up development of its NextG network, extending the reach and speeds of its hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) cable and the launch of their new ADSL2+ network providing speeds of up to 20Mbps to customers across the country. While these issues affect the Internet inside Australia, our connection to the rest of the world has been seriously under funded and once again the costs have been left to private enterprise. In 2008, Pipe Networks announced plans for a 1.92Tbps (Terra Bytes Per Second) cable from Sydney to Guam, which would provide more opportunity for high speed access to the international Internet. The whole project almost failed when Pipe Networks was unable to find sufficient funding, In the end a supplier and one major customer shelled out so the cable could go ahead. How does the Internet affect the way we do business in Australia? The world is moving faster and Australia’s competitiveness in the area of data transmission and access to new trends and markets will have a profound effect on our future involvement in the global economy. Australian business has embraced the Internet with a minimum of 60% across all industries having access and using the Internet in the course of daily business.
Many industries are now being shaped and changed by their availability to supply products to consumers who are outside their regions, through the Internet. We no longer sell just to the local market, we are globally exposed and we need to be competitive to stay in the game. According to the Neilson-Online report released in November 2008, 87% of property buyers use the Internet for research before purchasing property. This has had an unforeseen effect on the real estate industry in Australia because buyers are now able to access more information on property trends, location values and private vendor sales. Buyers no longer ask an agent what is available in their area, they find out for themselves, introducing new forms of competition between sellers. There are some interesting statistics that seem to indicate that demographic and geographic factors are starting to shape the way we use social networking sites. Studying these trends creates the opportunity for more targeted marketing for businesses engaging in e-commerce or promoting their services online and this has led to another new industry aimed at monitoring trends and reporting on demographic/socio change. This fledgling industry is set to grow quickly in 2009 and will radically change the way advertising and online promotions are conducted. Broadband has enabled the growth of home-based businesses and offers increased flexibility to employees in terms of where they work—at the office, at home or on the road. This is also a significant factor in attracting larger businesses away from metropolitan areas and into regional areas. A phenomenal percentage of our population are users of social networking sites when all is said and done and Australian business is starting to recognise the potential for profit. While the majority of users are registered in order to utilise these services for contact with friends and family, there are also new opportunities for entrepreneurs who use them for generating income, and event organizers/promoters who use the networks to promote causes and events. The Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) report titled: Forecasting productivity growth - 2004 to 2024, (17) suggests that ICT will remain the main technological driver of productivity growth in Australia over the next 20 years. For policy makers, this highlights the issue of ensuring an appropriate level of investment in ICT infrastructure, education, training and related research and development if Australia is to realise her potential returns. Our perception of the world around us has changed from a local awareness and a global interest to a global integration and involvement. The old Australian model of a few Cities to a limited number of countries through our international ports and airports won’t work in a future that does not rely on physical presence to deliver services. The future model will be many to many Communities, many to many regions and many to many cities. Telecommunications and convergenceCoverage There has been a lot of controversy in the last few years about the coverage of mobile phone networks in remote areas. Consumers have complained they are unable to access mobile signals in remote areas while large Telco’s (primarily Telstra) insist they have us covered form “The mountains to the sea” This might be true if regional and costal areas of NSW and Victoria had coverage but try driving from Sydney to Melbourne without your phone dropping out and no matter which brand of phone or service you use you will find this claim is simply not true. For more remote areas the story is even worse. Darwin to Katherine in the Northern Territory is a distance of only 400km (small fries in a country the size of ours) yet there is no service beyond 20km outside the Darwin regional area until arriving in Katherine. Head from Katherine to Alice Springs and you might get coverage at Three Ways and Tennant Creek (depending on your carrier) but from there on you are on your own. We live in a digital age where information is available in an instant yet for many living away from major cities and towns they might as well be back in the dark ages in terms of connectedness and competitiveness in a global market. In order to support development above the Tropic of Capricorn and away from the already overcrowded east coast areas we need to provide the same services enjoyed in these areas. Who would want to start a business in a remote area if they couldn’t access basic Internet or mobile phone networks? Indigenous communities in remote areas have come under the spotlight with the recent “Intervention” (18) and have been criticised for their lack of education and adherence to societal norms yet they survive in environments with little or no connection to the outside world. How can we criticise their lack of development if we do not provide the services that are crucial to this development? The future of Australia’s engagement globally hinges on communication and access to information. This is widely recognised and is one of the driving forces behind the Rudd Governments Clever Networks, National Broadband Network and other projects intended to help Australian business take hold of the future in a digital economy. The lack of proper understanding of where we have come from and how far we have to go is a major factor in our current failure to meet existing needs and planning to meet future needs. The National Telecommunications Planning Unit in the early 1970s had more foresight than we do now when they were established to identify the need for “planning new services for markets that do not exist, complex technologies that are rapidly changing and a socio‐economic environment which it is widely agreed, is becoming unstable and turbulent.” (19) Conclusion Australia is adopting new technologies but is not yet seizing global opportunities, nor is it seizing the opportunity to develop as a Nation. The excitement and potential of the CIT challenge seems to be completely lost on our Nation and to our city builders. The scale of the opportunities is most aptly captured by Thomas Friedman ‘The convergence of the ten (world) flatteners had created a whole new platform. It is a Global Web enabled platform for multiple forms of collaboration. This platform includes individuals, groups, companies, and universities anywhere in the world to collaborate for the purposes of innovation, production, education, research, entertainment, and alas, war making, like no creative platform ever before. This platform now operates without regard to geography, distance, time, and in the near future, even language. Going forward, this platform is going to be at the centre of everything. Wealth and power will increasingly accrue to those companies, countries, individuals and groups who get three basic things right; the infrastructure to connect with this flat world platform, the education to get more people innovating on, working off and tapping into this platform, and finally the governance to get the best out of this platform and cushion its worst side effects.’ (20) 1.1 Innovation, Communication and Information Technology (CIT) 1.2 Globalisation - Our New Geography For more information or to pre-order your copy of Australia 2050, email mel@Australia50.com |
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (20) FYI: Google search engineers claim to have found over 1 Trillion unique URLS (Web Pages) – worldwidewebsize.com There were 22.5 Billion pages on the indexable web in 2009 Use of mobile phones to send or receive emails is predicted to increase in Australia by over 50% Netbooks utilise web browsers to access messaging and email services, Social Networking, Word processing software and to save documents to servers online. An ISP is an Internet Service Provider Broadband can deliver Internet speeds of 100MB while dial up only reaches speeds of around 56KB The increased speed of broadband means video, music and large files can not only be accessed quickly but they are of a higher quality. Social Networks develop by connecting individuals with similar interests. Electronic Social Networks can initiate new networks, expand existing networks and intensify existing levels of communication. The outcomes have major implications for Nation and city building.
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