Welcome to FraudBand

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Originally Posted by chiaroscuro

Everyone has an opinion on where taxes should be spent and for some, the NBN has a high priority. I'm not really across the economic advantages of the NBN, although I can see advantages for Australia, particularly in areas like remote area medical care. But I don't think its benefit should be assessed solely as "what does it do to help me?" but "what does it do to help society?".

Luke, I'm afraid I cannot see any advantage in remote area medical care with the NBN. At the end of the day, it is just a means of communication, and you will still need medically trained people with the necessary equipment and medications to physically administer treatment.

[Astro_Bot]

Originally Posted by Larryp

Luke, I'm afraid I cannot see any advantage in remote area medical care with the NBN. At the end of the day, it is just a means of communication, and you will still need medically trained people with the necessary equipment and medications to physically administer treatment.

There have been presentations on telemedicine and telesurgery in various media - Scientific American, Catalyst, New Scientist, etc.

You may still need a general purpose surgical assistant, resident, theatre nurse, and so on, physically on site, but a specialist (who you would never find in a remote locaility) can control complex procedures remotely over a reliable, high-bandwidth connection. It's more than surgery, though. Instant communication with a specialist, with 3D imaging and all medical sensing/testing immediately available to the specialist permits diagnosis as though the patient were in the room.

I'm not a medical expert, but I can see the value in that straight away.

[gary]

Originally Posted by Larryp

Luke, I'm afraid I cannot see any advantage in remote area medical care with the NBN. At the end of the day, it is just a means of communication, and you will still need medically trained people with the necessary equipment and medications to physically administer treatment.

Hi Laurie,

Currently if a patient requires the consultation of a specialist, perhaps for an ongoing
condition, either the patient or the specialist needs to travel some enormous distance.

As you can appreciate, most medical specialists reside in the larger cities
and their time is in incredibly high demand. Whilst they are in transit, their
time is effectively lost.

if the patient can reach a rural medical clinic the medical officer at the clinic
can perform diagnostics under the direction of the specialist.

A video that showcases that using the NBN is here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul2xP9S_BbA

For example, in the video, Dr Haikerwal, Head of Clinical Leadership and Engagement at NETHA,
talks about the treatment of stroke patients.

Originally Posted by Dr. Mukesh Haikerwal

You don't necessarily need high level, high end, expensive pieces of equipment.
You need a reasonable cost PC. A good high definition webcam. And good broadband.

It would clearly be foolish to ignore what these people are telling us.

Sometimes we all undergo some procedure or treatment and require the briefest of
consultations of a medical practitioner.

For example, you look and some of the stitches are coming out on the back of the
head from when you fell off the horse in the muster. "Show me", might ask the
clinician as you stream HD video from the farmhouse over your satellite
NBN connection. "They will be fine" answers the clinician. "Simply come into town
as planned next Tuesday and we will have nurse remove the remaining sutures".

I am sure all of us, at one time or the other, have walked into a GP's surgery
where the problem is self evident and apart from eyeballing you, they don't
even need to lay a finger or instrument on you.

These "micro consultations" no doubt form a sizable portion of the country's health
bill.

I know that if I was in some rural area and found myself in a situation where I
needed to provide first aid to someone who had undergone severe trauma, it would be
reassuring to be guided via HD video link by doctors say from the emergency
department of the RPA in Sydney whilst we waited for the Royal Flying Doctor
plane.

[chiaroscuro (Luke)]

The most obvious advantage is the ability to transfer medical imaging files like CT scans immediately for real time interpretation. Also , video-linking remote emergency departments and operating THEATRES to give reaLtime support to doctors doing unfamiliar procedures, resuscitation etc.. High speed broadband would definitely make that easier. At the moment, it's done by phone, with the risk of misinterpretation.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Luke and Gary, I will grant there are some medical uses for high speed broadband in remote areas-transfer of data and images could be quite useful. But as far as surgery being performed by staff unfamiliar with techniques, etc-it could lead to serious legal implications.
I have worked in the health industry since university days, and would not want to be around once the lawyers got hold of an unfavourable outcome.

[chiaroscuro (Luke)]

In places like the NT, it happens all the time, through necessity. There just isn't the medical expertise in remote areas.

[Terry B]

I'm a GP and have NBN at my surgery. It means I can download ct and ultrasound images very quickly rather than waiting for the hard copies. Not earth shattering but still useful in my rural area.

[Astro_Bot]

Here's an example of telesurgery from over a decade ago:

Transcontinental Robot-Assisted Remote Telesurgery: Feasibility and Potential Applications

Conclusions

Remote robot-assisted surgery appears feasible and safe. Teletransmission of active surgical manipulations has the potential to ensure availability of surgical expertise in remote locations for difficult or rare operations, and to improve surgical training worldwide.

They relied on a fast, reliable, dedicated networking connection. To make telesurgery feasible on a larger scale means the whole broadband infrastructure needs to be fast and reliable.

[gary]

Originally Posted by Larryp

Luke and Gary, I will grant there are some medical uses for high speed broadband in remote areas-transfer of data and images could be quite useful. But as far as surgery being performed by staff unfamiliar with techniques, etc-it could lead to serious legal implications.
I have worked in the health industry since university days, and would not want to be around once the lawyers got hold of an unfavourable outcome.

Hi Laurie,

I think the video in the link showcases one good example of the types
of consultation that a fast broadband network could provide today.

Nobody will be proposing that they perform tele-surgery for the sake of tele-surgery
unless it makes sense to do that in a particular situation.

I don't know about you, but when I think of the total number of times I have walked into
a GP's office and the total number of times he has said, "You need surgery",
thankfully the ratio is very, very small.

Our collective tax bill for health is enormous. It's great to live in a country where
anyone can walk into a hospital and be treated.

But anything that we can do to make health service delivery more cost effective
can lead to better outcomes for us all.

The NBN is one way that can come about. It isn't paid for by tax, it is built by
equity funding. When people say "no" to it, they are simply denying other
Australians the benefits it can bring. There are no opportunity costs or
shuffling of national "priorities" required. There is nothing "selfish" about it
because it hasn't taken away from the opportunity to do anything else.

I can see a lot of people don't get it. With infinite patience there are those of
us collectively trying to explain. One can appreciate their skepticism but there is
hope yet that it will dawn on them that they really are just looking at a gift horse in
the mouth.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Gary

The NBN is one way that can come about. It isn't paid for by tax, it is built by
equity funding. When people say "no" to it, they are simply denying other
Australians the benefits it can bring. There are no opportunity costs or
shuffling of national "priorities" required.

Just for info, can you explain in more detail where the money will be made to pay it back at the end.
I understand the fact that tax dollars may not be reqd now to get it built,
but if it costs lets say 80 billion by the time its done,
where does that amount of money come from to pay it back???
Ie a lot of the revenue stream will be required to run maintain and update itl, so where is the free profit coming from to pay back the bond holders ( plus interest ).
To me, its just like putting the cost on a credit card,
ie it still comes out of our pockets ( one way or another )
in the end.

Andrew

[astroron (Ron)]

The Snowy Mountain Scheme and the Sydney Opera House were expensive White Elephants when first built, now we wouldn't be without them.
Cheers

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Hi Gary, I can see a fair bit of logic in your arguments, and I can see you have researched your subject well.
For my part, I do not know if NBN will be a good thing in the long term, or not.
From what I read in the newspaper today, Ziggy Switkowski is being courted to take over the running of NBN Co., since it is way over budget, well behind in roll-out and the uptake by potential customers is poor. This doesn't surprise me, since goverments are historically poor at building anything efficiently or profitably.
With such a poor client uptake, perhaps it is being overpriced, or perhaps some people are worried that since it is government owned, it will allow more government intrusion in their lives.
Can someone tell me if a similar project has been carried out in another country?

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Originally Posted by astroron

The Snowy Mountain Scheme and the Sydney Opera House were expensive White Elephants when first built, now we wouldn't be without them.
Cheers

Hi Ron
The Opera House is still an expensive white elephant-but it's an instantly recognisable world-wide symbol of Australia-and that makes it a worthwhile white elephant!

[Peter.M]

Originally Posted by casstony

Furthermore, you are deprived of retirement income because the 'have everything now' generation needs low interest rates to afford the loans for their overpriced and oversized new houses - all orchestrated by the politicians and bankers via supply of cheap money.

When I see statements like this on this site it immediately highlights the age difference between me and probably the majority of the community. I am 26 years old, I went to university after school and am in a modest paying job. If I choose to own a modest house for say $300000 my weekly repayments will be 70% of my wage. This house will be so far from my workplace that petrol will probably cost me the other 30% and that is before I pay any bills, registration, insurance, or eat anything. I don't deny that it was hard for your generation, but please don't belittle me into believing that I have it so easy.

[astroron (Ron)]

[QUOTE=Larryp;1014039]Hi Ron
The Opera House is still an expensive white elephant-but it's an instantly recognisable world-wide symbol of Australia-and that makes it a worthwhile white elephant![/QUOTE

Larry, It has probably paid for it's self many times over by the amount of tourist it has encouraged to come to Sydney, as well as other parts of Australia.
Cheers

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Funny, regardless of what you think of it as a whole, I wonder how many of the home experts in this thread have used their current connections (that they are very happy with) to actually scrutinise the information available on the NBN website

Just a thought because if you haven't, I am sure there is plenty on there to interest most of you either way

As is often the case with emotive issue (which it shouldn't be) lots of basless and misguided comments are made particularly when one bases these largely on political loyalty grounds....and No, I would heave been very happy had Tony and Malcolm announced they were going to do it differently but make it better and perhaps even more powerful

Mike

[Bassnut (Fred)]

This has been a very interesting thread. I wasn't keen on NBN just on the cost alone, but I must say I've changed my mind now, mainly due to Gary's missives, most impressive, thanks Gary

[rat156]

Originally Posted by Peter.M

When I see statements like this on this site it immediately highlights the age difference between me and probably the majority of the community. I am 26 years old, I went to university after school and am in a modest paying job. If I choose to own a modest house for say $300000 my weekly repayments will be 70% of my wage. This house will be so far from my workplace that petrol will probably cost me the other 30% and that is before I pay any bills, registration, insurance, or eat anything. I don't deny that it was hard for your generation, but please don't belittle me into believing that I have it so easy.

Well, you think you had it tough (though you're probably not old enough to understand the reference either).

When I got married, we had just bought the house we still live in, we borrowed a modest $70k (total price was $75k) for a 12.5 sq house on a 972 sq m block in Werribee, which is 35 km from the city. At the time my wife worked in Highett, at least 100 km round trip, I worked in Parkville, about 70 km round trip. Interest rates were 18.5%, we had a 30 year loan, the repayments on which took about 80% of our combined income, the rest went on bills and food, which was almost exclusively home brand and the cheapest cuts of meat. At one stage our loan got put out to 35 years because the bank couldn't put the payments up as we wouldn't have been able to afford them. This is what happens to your economy in a recession, something the Government that is responsible for trying to implement the NBN (trying to remain partly on-topic) managed to pretty much avoid by spending on infrastructure and running the economy into deficit. Something the new Government will continue to do (Tony's own admission on Sunday), without the infrastructure spend (I couldn't find any big infrastructure spend in the LNP policy).

There really isn't a lot of difference between your situation and ours, except for one huge difference, the interest rate. Housing prices have been driven up as a consequence of the lower interest rate available for mortgages, but even at $300k vs $75k you are actually heaps better off (and you end up with a $300k investment). Oh, your house is almost certainly at least double the size, if not triple the size of ours.

So, although you don't have it easy by any stretch, it's still not as hard as it has been.

My mother-in-law will tell you about what happened in the Great Depression, they really had it tough.

Count your blessings.

Cheers
Stuart

[Peter.M]

Originally Posted by rat156

Well, you think you had it tough (though you're probably not old enough to understand the reference either).

When I got married, we had just bought the house we still live in, we borrowed a modest $70k (total price was $75k) for a 12.5 sq house on a 972 sq m block in Werribee, which is 35 km from the city. At the time my wife worked in Highett, at least 100 km round trip, I worked in Parkville, about 70 km round trip. Interest rates were 18.5%, we had a 30 year loan, the repayments on which took about 80% of our combined income, the rest went on bills and food, which was almost exclusively home brand and the cheapest cuts of meat. At one stage our loan got put out to 35 years because the bank couldn't put the payments up as we wouldn't have been able to afford them. This is what happens to your economy in a recession, something the Government that is responsible for trying to implement the NBN (trying to remain partly on-topic) managed to pretty much avoid by spending on infrastructure and running the economy into deficit. Something the new Government will continue to do (Tony's own admission on Sunday), without the infrastructure spend (I couldn't find any big infrastructure spend in the LNP policy).

There really isn't a lot of difference between your situation and ours, except for one huge difference, the interest rate. Housing prices have been driven up as a consequence of the lower interest rate available for mortgages, but even at $300k vs $75k you are actually heaps better off (and you end up with a $300k investment). Oh, your house is almost certainly at least double the size, if not triple the size of ours.

So, although you don't have it easy by any stretch, it's still not as hard as it has been.

My mother-in-law will tell you about what happened in the Great Depression, they really had it tough.

Count your blessings.

Cheers
Stuart

I will not turn this into a fight over who had it harder, but to say that you have a 75k investment vs a 300k investment is silly. Your house value now is the number we should be comparing, unless your saying that you bought a property for 75 grand and it has not appreciated in any way.

I am not arguing that we have it good, because we do. But participating in this community it seems like some older generations would rather just tell me how easy my lazy, freeloading generation have it to make themselves feel better.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Peter.M

it seems like some older generations would rather just tell me how easy my lazy, freeloading generation have it to make themselves feel better.

Yup...where is Doug anyway?