One year on, the same issues remain pressing

In 2011, the issues that I spoke about during my campaign remain as pressing as they always did.
   We still need better, wider and earlier consultation, whether we streamline current processes or create new ones for citizen engagement.
   We still need to build a city-wide wifi network, one which exists but needs a few top-level negotiations to make it work—with a real plan for expanding it to both lower socioeconomic areas and the eastern suburbs. It’ll create an infrastructure which will encourage more businesses built around teleworking, with a consequence of helping with traffic.
   It is a long-term plan, but just as roads were once the solution for 20th-century problems, the internet infrastructure is the solution for early 21st-century ones.
   Although, I must say, the ability for New Zealand to attract international investment for technological businesses has been hampered severely by central government and the copyright amendments.
   If you were an investor, you’d now think twice about investing in a country that has a presumption of guilt with an ill-defined concept of file-sharing. If you wanted a legislative minefield, there’s always the People’s Republic of China.
   If you were in the high-tech industry, you’d think twice if an MP equated the internet to Skynet, which, I might add, did not become self-aware on April 21, 2011. (Was this the reason for rushing the bill through under urgency, Mr Young?)
   I don’t know the government and the opposition’s motives, unless their will is to see New Zealand remain a low-wage, primary-products-focused economy bending to the whims of American lobby groups.
   New Zealand needs to capitalize on its creative advantage, Wellington even more so. We’re already behind the eight-ball on this, but our small population means we should be able to move more quickly.
   And start doing things that are right not just for three-year outlooks, but 30-year ones.


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