About 14 years ago, my then employer replaced the dodgy old green screen terminals in the office with desktop pc’s running Windows, gave us all internet access and from there on in, the way I went about my work changed completely.

I am not a tech-head.

But it became immediately apparent to me back then that if I wished to remain relevant to the workforce for the remainder of my working life, what I would need to do was get across all this new-fangled technology and have a clue.

Which I did, and which I have.

But it does not appear to be apparent to the current leader of the federal opposition and many of his acolytes that if this country wishes to remain relevant to the ways of the world and how it will go about its business in the future, what it needs to do is stop thinking the future will be secured for an eternity if only we continue to invest all our high hopes in a small clutch of billionaire mining giants whose sole fucking talent is pulling rocks out of the fucking ground and selling them to fucking China who then make stuff and then fucking well sell it back to us.

We need to make some fucking stuff of our own.

For it appears to me that investing in technology for the future, things like research and development in the sciences and such, just might be a nifty way to go about proving that this country and its inhabitants are not an intellectually lazy but “lucky” bunch of instant shake ‘n’ bake fucktards whose greatest heroes are an old cunt who hit balls around a fucking paddock with a wooden paddle for a living and some dickhead who liked throwing himself on top of fucking reptiles and maybe, just maybe, we can aspire to be a little less average and ordinary than we really are.

It’s a big ask I know, as plans such as these involve things like … foresight, imagination, innovation, intelligence, the courage of …

…

…

Nah, fuck it.

I have two tin cans and some string.

And a bicycle.

She’ll be right.

As you were.

Tags: National broadband network, Tony Abbott