In the lead up to the 2013 Federal election, we discuss the possibilities on offer to produce a thriving Tasmania.
There are some terrible statistics in Tasmania, including high unemployment and low school retention rates.
But there’s also some very bright spots: the arts revival led by MONA, tourism and a big scientific research sector, with some of Australia’s most innovative thinkers.
Guests:
Saul Eslake, Chief Economist at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Australia
Christine Milne, Senator for Tasmania and Leader of the Australian Greens
Andrew Wilkie, Independent Member for Denison
• The Economist: How did Estonia become a leader in technology?
WHEN Estonia regained its independence in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, less than half its population had a telephone line and its only independent link to the outside world was a Finnish mobile phone concealed in the foreign minister’s garden. Two decades later, it is a world leader in technology. Estonian geeks developed the code behind Skype, Hotmail and Kazaa (an early file-sharing network). In 2007 it became the first country to allow online voting in a general election. It has among the world’s zippiest broadband speeds and holds the record for start-ups per person. Its 1.3m citizens pay for parking spaces with their mobile phones and have their health records stored in the digital cloud. Filing an annual tax return online, as 95% of Estonians do, takes about five minutes. How did the smallest Baltic state develop such a strong tech culture?
The foundation was laid in 1992 when Mart Laar, Estonia’s prime minister at the time, defibrillated the flat-lining economy. In less than two years his young government (average age: 35) gave Estonia a flat income-tax, free trade, sound money and privatisation. New businesses could be registered smoothly and without delays, an important spur for geeks lying in wait. Feeble infrastructure, a legacy of the Soviet era, meant that the political class began with a clean sheet. When Finland decided to upgrade to digital phone connections, it offered its archaic 1970s analogue telephone-exchange to Estonia for free. Estonia declined the proposal and built a digital system of its own. Similarly, the country went from having no land registry to creating a paperless one. “We just skipped certain things…Mosaic [the first popular web browser] had just come out and everyone was on a level playing field,” recalls Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president. Not saddled with legacy technology, the country’s young ministers put their faith in the internet.
A nationwide project to equip classrooms with computers followed and by 1998 all schools were online. In 2000, when the government declared internet access to be a human right, the web spread into the boondocks. Free Wi-Fi became commonplace. Rubber stamps, carbon paper and long queues gave way to “e-government”. The private sector followed: the sale of Skype to eBay in 2005, for $2.6 billion, created a new class of Estonian investors, who made tens of millions of euros from their shareholdings—and have been putting their experience, and their windfalls, to good use. Today Tehnopol, a business hub in Tallinn, the perky capital, houses more than 150 tech companies. Given the country’s tiny domestic market, start-ups have been forced to think global, says Taavet Hinrikus, Skype’s first employee and co-founder of TransferWise, a peer-to-peer money-transfer service whose customers are spread across Europe and America. According to the World Bank, over 14,000 new companies registered in Estonia in 2011, 40% more than during the same period in 2008. High-tech industries now account for about 15% of GDP.
How can other countries—that lack Estonia’s small size and its clean sheet—follow its example? “It’s sort of obnoxious to say, ‘Do what we did’,” says Mr Ilves. But he submits that Estonia’s success is not so much about ditching legacy technology as it is about shedding “legacy thinking”. Replicating a paper-based tax-filing procedure on a computer, for instance, is no good; having such forms pre-filled so that the taxpayer has only to check the calculations has made the system a success. Education is important, too: last year, in a public-private partnership, a programme called ProgeTiiger (“Programming Tiger”) was announced, to teach five-year-olds the basics of coding. “In the 80s every boy in high-school wanted to be a rock star,” says Mr Hinrikus. “Now everybody in high-school wants to be an entrepreneur.”
Read the full article, with full links, The Economist, here
• TT earlier … At Last: Breaking through the Tasmanian Paradigm
• phill Parsons, in Comments: It’s not just tech heads or micro businesses, Estonia also has a program to grow the electric car fleet, encouraging that by locating recharging stations where they are needed. They have grown their wind energy capacity hugely and plan to meet 20% of their energy needs from renewables by 2020. They are about to plan the next steps on the road to grow their renewable economy. Tasmania, by comparison cannot meet the sow stall requirements of Coles, unable to see the opportunities. In a changing world who do they think will buy cruelty-rich pork?
• Ben Quin, in Comments: In all the time since the Gordon below Franklin debate, Tasmania has not resolved the discordance between these two key legacies. Smelting of metals remains Tasmania’s most significant industry, still based on the vision inspired by Mount Lyell of cheap hydro-electricity driving industrial expansion. Where the industrial vision has become distorted is that Tasmanian hydro-electricity is no longer cheap or reliable. Some time ago, Sue Neales, then Chief Reporter for the Mercury, attempted to engage a public debate on the impact on Tasmania’s economy of bulk power supply agreements provided to Tasmania’s smelting industries. She was cut down vigorously and her core questions met with obfuscation. To create an enduring economic strategy for Tasmania, we must harmonise our industrial and environmental visions. Hydro-electricity is potentially Tasmania’s economic and environmental crown jewel.
• Meanwhile, an idea for Tassie? Youtube: Man invents machine to convert plastic into oil
• Nick McKim: Jobs Forum preview
• TFGA tells Jobs Forum government must support local industry
• Nick McKim: Constructive discussions over job creation
• ABC: Union anger over Aurora’s offshore power pole contract, here The union representing manufacturing workers believes Aurora Energy has given a contract to a New Zealand company over a Tasmanian supplier. The Manufacturing Workers Union says Aurora Energy plans to buy concrete power poles offshore and has overlooked a Launceston business. It comes a day after the Premier, Lara Giddings, agreed to review the awarding of government tenders to interstate or overseas companies. The procurement process was a hot topic at the jobs forum in Launceston.
• ABC: Decade high for Tasmanian jobless rate In trend terms, the jobless rate has increased to 8.4 per cent in July from an upwardly revised 8.2 per cent in June. Three hundred jobs have been lost, including 200 full-time positions. More than 21,000 Tasmanians are unemployed. … as Tony says we should be in special school: ABC: Pitch for Bass: Mr Abbott has this morning opened the election office for the Bass candidate, Andrew Nikolic. He told supporters he thinks the state should be a special economic zone. He blames the state’s economic woes on its minority government. “It’s always the same, Labor-Green government mean taxes go up, regulation goes up, economic activity goes down, and unemployment goes up,” said. He again promised the Coalition would not lock up the state’s forests and oceans.
• Christine Milne: Greens focus on small business
• Andrew Wilkie: Jobless rate a damning indictment of Labor-Greens, here
• Senator Peter Whish-Wilson: Abbott’s promises cover up risks to Tasmanian economy, here
• Peter Whish-Wilson: Rudd must come clean on risks to Tasmanian economy from Labor policies
