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Int. J. Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2015

The spatial justice implications of telecommunication infrastructure: the socio-economic status of early national broadband network rollout in Australia Tooran Alizadeh Griffith School of Environment, Nathan Campus, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Qld 4111, Australia Email: [email protected] Abstract: Since the formation of the Australian National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co.) in April 2009, the NBN rollout has been gradually announced following a range of engineering and logistic criteria. However, the early rollout gives the release sites a regional competitive advantage against other localities that might have to wait up to a decade to receive similar infrastructure. This leads to an important question about the socio-economic status of the NBN release sites, and the potential impact of the upcoming broadband infrastructure on the social discrepancy across the nation. The answer to this question then leads to a second question about the degree to which the NBN or any telecommunication infrastructure for that matter should be incorporated in planning and policy development for spatial justice. In an attempt to explore these questions, this paper examines the ranking of the 60 earlier NBN release sites in the socio-economic indexes for area, and accessibility/remoteness index of Australia. Findings are in line with the recent research that emphasises the role of infrastructure in intensifying social divisions. Keywords: national broadband network; NBN; Australia; socio-economic status; rollout plan; telecommunication infrastructure; spatial justice. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Alizadeh, T. (2015) ‘The spatial justice implications of telecommunication infrastructure: the socio-economic status of early national broadband network rollout in Australia’, Int. J. Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp.278–296. Biographical notes: Tooran Alizadeh is a Lecturer in the School of Environment, Urban and Environmental Planning Discipline, Griffith University, Australia. Over the last few years, she has researched policy and planning implications of telecommunications with a focus on the Australian national broadband network (NBN), digital economic strategies and telework. She has investigated how telecommunication infrastructure relates to the wider current planning issues including debates around planning across borders, planning after petroleum and social justice. She also has several years of professional design and planning practice experience working on different scales of urban projects from strategic metropolitan planning to new town developments. This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Towards the socio-economic patterns of the national broadband network rollout in Australia’ presented at the State of Australian Cities National Conference, Sydney, Australia, 26–29 November.

Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

The spatial justice implications of telecommunication infrastructure

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Introduction: the NBN rollout plan

In response to the increasing concerns that Australia’s broadband and telecommunication infrastructure had not been well developed in comparison to other countries (Barr, 2008; Given, 2008; Middleton and Chang, 2008), the Australian Federal Labor Government, in 2009, approved the construction of Australia’s first national broadband network (NBN) (NBN Co. Ltd., 2010b). The Australian Labor Government on several occasions declared that the NBN will lead to a major structural reform of telecommunication industry across the nation, and will provide reliable, high speed broadband access to all Australians (DBCDE, 2010). Furthermore, underpinning the rollout of the NBN throughout Australia has been the acknowledgement that the infrastructure will provide regional and rural communities with better broadband access, thus closing the gap between the services available in these communities and those available in Australia’s major metropolitan centres (NBN Co. Ltd., 2012b, 2012c). Following the approval for the construction of the NBN, the Federal Labor Government announced the formation of the National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co.) in April 2009 (NBN Co. Ltd., 2010b). The NBN Co. is responsible for the design, construction and operation of the NBN. The company is also tasked with the subsequent rollout of the NBN infrastructure and technology which includes optic fibre, fixed wireless and next generation satellites (NBN Co. Ltd., 2009). The rollout began with the announcement that Tasmania was the launch state for the NBN (NBN Co. Ltd., 2010a). A three-stage rollout was planned for Tasmania with Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point being the first localities to receive the NBN services. The rollout of the NBN on mainland Australia started one year later in March 2010 when the NBN Co. announced the first five release sites as part of live trials of the network design and construction (NBN Co. Ltd., 2010c). These sites included Armidale, Coffs Harbour, Kiama, Townsville, and Willunga. The second stage of the mainland rollout, announced in July 2010, included 14 new locations and five sites adjacent to the existing first release sites (NBN Co. Ltd., 2011b). This was followed by the release of a 12 month national rollout schedule plan, announced by NBN Co. in October 2011, which would connect half a million premises (NBN Co. Ltd., 2011a). This schedule listed 60 locations in all Australian states and territories where the rollout would begin prior to September 2012 (Table 1). Additionally, in March 2012, NBN Co. announced that the NBN fibre rollout would be completed or underway in a third of the country over the next three years (NBN Co. Ltd., 2012c). This involved connecting 3.5 million premises in 1500 communities in every state and territory to the fibre optic component of the network. It was envisioned that the localities included in this updated schedule would be connected to the fibre-optic component before mid-2015, representing the first stage of the large-scale rollout of the NBN. However, the result of the Federal election in 2013 changed the fate of the NBN rollout (NBN Co. Ltd., 2013). The newly elected Coalition Federal Government decided to reassess the scale of the national fibre project, and put the first stage of the large-scale NBN rollout on hold. Connection dates have been scrapped for almost two-thirds of premises that were scheduled to connect to the NBN under the first phase of the nationwide fibre-to-the-premises rollout. As of October 2013, only 300,000 premises listed in the first large-scale rollout phase are still guaranteed to be connected directly to the fibre network in the coming months (Duke, 2013; Turner, 2013). The decision made by the newly elected Coalition Federal Government was not a surprise as the NBN was

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part of the political debates since its introduction in 2009. More recently, the NBN became a very hot part of political debates before the 2013 Federal election as the two major Australian political parties have different approaches on how to deliver the national broadband regarding the technical details and the final roll-out speed. Table 1

Sixty earlier NBN release sites in Australian states and territories Location

South Australia

New South Wales

Tasmania

Aldinga Beach

Armidale

Deloraine

Modbury Port Augusta Port Elliot Prospect Seaford/McLaren Vale Stirling

Blacktown

George Town

Coffs Harbour

South Hobart

Dapto

Kingston Beach

Gosford

Launceston

Jamberoo

Midway Point

Kiama

Scottsdale

Strathalbyn

Lidcombe

Smithton

Yankalilla

Long Jetty

Somerset

Willunga

Penrith

Sorell

Richmond

St Helens

Riverstone

Triabunna

Sawtell Strathfield (Homebush) Wollongong Queensland

Western Australia

Victoria

Aspley

Applecross

Bacchus Marsh

Goodna

Geraldton

Ballarat Central

Nudgee

Mandurah

Brunswick

Toowoomba

Meadow Springs

Melbourne City

Townsville

Pinjarra

Melton

South Perth

South Morang

Victoria Park

Tullamarine

Townsville City Australian capital territory Gungahlin

Northern territory Casuarina Darwin

Up to now, the rollout of the NBN has been mostly based on a series of operational modules that each covers approximately 3,000 premises (NBN Co. Ltd., 2012a). There has been some speculations about the political agenda behind the earlier release site selection (King, 2011). However, the NBN Co. and the Australian Federal Government on different occasions presented a range of engineering and logistic criteria including the availability of existing core infrastructure to connect the access network to, and also


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access to the transit network and fibre access nodes (DBCDE, 2011; NBN Co. Ltd., 2012a). It has also been said that the earlier release sites were selected because they represented the diversity of situations that the NBN Co. will encounter across Australia in the volume rollout, and allowed the company to test and document different design and construction techniques (NBN Co. Ltd., 2010c). This paper avoids making any judgement about the recent political decisions around the rollout of the telecommunication infrastructure. Instead it welcomes the current estate of uncertainty around the NBN as an opportunity to pose and analyse the efforts put into the national project over the last few years. More importantly, the paper does not make any comment on the genuinity of the engineering selection criteria announced, as it is more interested to understand the socio-economic pattern underpinned for the rollout plan so far. In any plan for infrastructure provision, it is obvious that early rollout gives the release sites a regional competitive advantage against other localities that might have to wait up for several years to receive the same infrastructure. Nevertheless, as a result of the recent political turmoil around the NBN project, the 300,000 premises located in the early release sites might be the only ones that ever directly connect to the fibre network. While still undecided, the early announcements made by the newly elected Coalition Federal Government suggest that a mixed technology network will be adopted, and the roll-out speed could be significantly different for the rest of the country. This leads to an important question about the socio-economic status of the earlier NBN release sites, and whether they fairly represented the diversity included in the Australian society. The answer to the this question closely relates to recent urban debates that emphasise the socio-economic justice side of infrastructure formations, and then leads to a second question about the degree to which telecommunication infrastructure in general and the NBN specifically is presently, or should be, incorporated in planning and policy development for social equity and spatial justice. The paper does not seek a comprehensive resolution of the above questions; rather it proffers the more modest objective of throwing new light on the link between telecommunication infrastructure provision and socio-economic equity debates, and expending the methodological possibility to investigate this line of inquiry. The present paper supports the advancement of socially sensitive telecommunication research, and articulates its methodology through examining the 60 earlier NBN release sites (Table 1) to understand their relative position across the socio-economic spectrum. The discussions will hopefully provide an opportunity for planning to better engage with the telecommunication infrastructure both in Australia and beyond.

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Socio-spatial justice and critical infrastructure

A growing number of studies over the last two decades have outlined the motivation for a spatial approach as a novel focus for cross-disciplinary research in the social sciences (Goodchild et al., 2000). This emerging interest in spatially integrated social science is partially based on the debates around the spatial distribution of social and economic inequity (Harvey, 1996), and links to the discussions around ‘spatial justice’. The specific term ‘spatial justice’ has not been commonly used until very recently, and even today is absorbed into a number of related concepts such as territorial justice, environmental justice, the urbanisation of injustice, or even more broadly in the generic search for a just

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city (Soja, 2009). The modern approach to the question of just city usually starts with Rawls’s (1971) argument concerning the equality of opportunities. Rawls’ (2001) definition of justice also involves a proactive governance system to adjust the long-run trend of economic forces, and to prevent excessive concentrations of property and wealth. In other words, if Rawls’s conception of justice is applied to the city, fair distribution of benefits and mitigating disadvantage should be the aims of public policy. Thus, the criterion for evaluating policy measures, according to Rawls’ logic, is to insure that they most benefit the least well off (Fainstein, 2009). There is a growing literature around geographically uneven and underdevelopment of critical infrastructure provision as a framework that produces injustice. It is argued that the infrastructure unevenness rigidifies into more lasting structures of privilege and advantage. When it comes to critical infrastructure, it is important to acknowledge that the definition and scope, and as a result the major policy issues associated with critical infrastructure have evolved and expanded over the time. More specifically, in the mid-1990s the growing threat of international terrorism led to a fundamental change as public policy debates shifted from infrastructure adequacy to infrastructure protection (Gheorghe et al., 2006; Rinaldi et al., 2001). The strong focus on infrastructure protection and the notion of infrastructure at risk became a focal part of national security debates and closely linked to the conventional treatments around technical and engineering aspects of infrastructure provision and maintenance. It has been only over the last few years that a surge of interest in the social character of infrastructure formations has been witnessed (Kaika and Swyngedouw, 2000; Lorrain, 2001; Tarr and Dupuy, 1988). More specifically, a growing number of studies with a focus on transport (Bröcker et al., 2010; Dodson et al., 2003, 2007; Pennycook et al., 2001) and green spaces (Boone et al., 2009; Heynen et al., 2006) have raised the equity question around the socio-economic dimension of infrastructure provision and distribution. More recently, some studies have picked up on the notion of digital divide (Doctor, 1994) and investigated the spatial justice side of telecommunication infrastructure provision. For example, results from the USA show that the geographic characteristics of broadband accessibility remain uneven (Grubesic, 2004; Grubesic and Murray, 2004). These studies indicate that broadband availability in the USA is no longer simply a question of geography (i.e., urban vs. rural) (Glass et al., 2003; Rowe, 2003), but rather there exists a complex and dynamic interplay between geography, socioeconomic status, market forces, federal policy, and local government initiatives which shape the distinctive broadband regions (Grubesic, 2004). Perhaps the most significant problems with broadband accessibility in its current spatial form, are the ‘islands of inequity’ that have relatively high populations of impoverished minorities, are located on the outskirts of major metropolitan areas in outer-suburban communities, and are simultaneously victimised by the deregulated telecommunications market, and by local governments that are not promoting an equitable distribution of broadband services (Grubesic, 2006). The spatial justice side of telecommunication infrastructure is important for a number of reasons: First, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 renewed many national governments’ interest in infrastructure issues based on a new order in which there is now an international consensus about the utmost significance of telecommunication infrastructure in the listing of ‘vital’ or ‘critical’ infrastructure (Moteff et al., 2004). Second, there is a strong research focus to prepare critical infrastructure for specific large-scale treat mechanisms or events, both natural and man-made (Branscomb, 2006;


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Gheorghe, 2004; Haimes and Longstaff, 2002). However, a complementary perspective in the literature argues that a reorientation of critical infrastructure research to include slow evolving events is necessary; and calls for new investment in management, planning, and monitoring approaches that can deal with slow and evolving shortcomings (Calida and Katina, 2012). This emerging perspective refers to punctuated equilibria-type phenomenon (Gould and Eldredge, 1977) and suggests that a treat to critical infrastructure may also result from slowly evolving, gradual, and undetectable shortcomings that could accumulate into significant crisis over-time. It calls for early warning and identification of slow and evolving issues including socio-economic shortcomings such as intensifying social divisions. Last but certainly not least, previous studies – using complex mathematical models, such as Nash game theory and/or oligopolies modelling theory – have examined the impact of provision on public infrastructure on private economic activities, and demonstrated the indirect/induced benefits for the local economic development across different cities and regions (Meléndez et al., 2006). It has been noted, both empirically as well as theoretically, that the neglect of the provision of public infrastructure within the growth accounting framework results in productivity slowdown (Conrad and Seitz, 1994). It is still early days to use mathematical models to capture the full impact of telecommunication infrastructure across different Australian cities and regions. Yet, the following mostly takes a social justice approach and examines if all Australian regions and cities have been offered ‘equality of opportunity’ in the earlier NBN rollout.

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Socio-economic dimension of the NBN rollout

Socio-economic research argues that public infrastructure is a powerful driver of business productivity, economic growth and social prosperity (Aschauer, 1989; Button et al., 1995; Gramlich, 1994; Seitz, 1995). More recently, planning literature has shown growing interest in broadband technology as the key telecommunication infrastructure, and also as the backbone of the emerging knowledge economy (Eskelinena et al., 2008; Ford and Koutsky, 2005). Over the last decade, several countries including the UK (Galloway, 2007), Korea (Kelly et al., 2003; Speta, 2004), Germany (Katz et al., 2010), and Spain (Gerrand, 2006) have undertaken substantial direct government investment in broadband infrastructure, often treating it like other areas of public infrastructure. A few others such as the USA (Ford and Koutsky, 2005) and Finland (Eskelinena et al., 2008) have established a number of support and subsidy plans, and taken regulatory actions, including universal service programs, to increase the speed and the coverage area of their otherwise market-based broadband plans. Different governments’ direct and indirect involvement with telecommunication infrastructure is often justified by reference to social equity grounds (Faulhaber and Hogendorn, 2000; McMahon and Salant, 2001); and is based on assumptions that the new technology-based infrastructure will facilitate their long-term economic development (Alizadeh et al., 2011; Martin, 1999; Willson et al., 2009). These assumptions are founded in part on the literature generated over the last ten to 15 years, describing the potential economic and social benefits of such infrastructure including increases in gross output, employment, and aggregate consumption at national, regional and local levels (Ford and Koutsky, 2005; Lee et al., 2005; Martin and Rogers, 1995). For example, in a recent study Katz et al. (2010) examined the impact of currently undergoing broadband

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infrastructure investments (The German National Broadband Strategy) on the German economy, in particular on employment and output. The study estimated that a total investment of close to 36 billion Euros would generate a total of 968,000 incremental jobs, and results in 170.9 billion Euros of additional GDP (0.60% GDP growth). Their findings, based on the huge economic returns, represented broadband as a high priority stimulus programme that the German Government needs to rely on to improve the current economic outlook and create a solid foundation for future growth. The present paper acknowledges that it is extremely complex to establish beyond doubt that the telecommunication infrastructure per se results in a change in an economic indicator (Lee et al., 2005; Strategic Networks Group, 2003). Although the research findings in this area should be qualified as ‘preliminary evidence’, broadband deployment is already considered as an important policy issue for many governments seeking to address social divisions. For example, in August 2011, the Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications on behalf of the Parliament of Australia tabled its report on the potential of the NBN to enhance economic and regional development and social and community activity (Parliament of Australia, 2011). The report set forward a number of recommendations for the Australian Government including developing targeted programs for those currently disadvantaged by the digital divide. Moreover, throughout the report there was a great emphasis on the significant role of the NBN to ensure greater equity across Australia’s communities in regard to access to government services through e-government, e-health, and e-education particularly in regional and rural areas, and for people who are geographically isolated. In order to understand the ways in which the NBN rollout plan so far is going to affect the current socio-economic divisions across the nation, the following uses two well-established sets of indexes and assigns a socio-economic index score and a remoteness index score to each of the 60 earlier NBN release sites. This will hopefully develop a basic understanding of the socio-economic patterns of the NBN rollout so far, and set forward a socio-economically sensitive methodology that has the potential of investigating the future stages of large-scale rollout, with respect to the possible technical changes including varied roll-out speed that may be proposed by the Coalition Federal Government.

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Socio-economic index for areas

The Australian Bureau of Statistics Census-based socio-economic indexes for area (SEIFA) scores are the most widely used general measure of socio-economic status nationwide. This paper uses the 2006 SEIFA as its main analytical dataset to critically examine the selection process and criteria of the early NBN rollout sites (2011 SEIFA was not yet released at the time that decisions were made for the selection of the early release sites). The 2006 SEIFA is a suite of four summary measures that have been created from 2006 Census information. The indexes can be used to explore different aspects of socio-economic conditions by geographic areas. For each index, every geographic area in Australia is given a SEIFA score which shows how that area is compared with other areas in Australia (ABS, 2006a, 2006b). The four indexes in SEIFA 2006 are:


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•

Index of relative socio-economic disadvantage: uses a broad definition of relative socio-economic disadvantage in terms of people’s access to material and social resources, and is derived from Census variables like low income, low educational attainment, unemployment, and dwellings without motor vehicles.

•

Index of relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage: encompasses the entire socio-economic spectrum, a continuum of advantage (high values) to disadvantage (low values), and is derived from Census variables related to both advantage and disadvantage.

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Index of economic resources: focuses on financial aspects of advantage and disadvantage, using Census variables relating to residents’ incomes, housing expenditure and assets.

•

Index of education and occupation: includes Census variables exclusively relating to the educational attainment, employment and vocational skills. A low score indicates that an area has a high proportion of people without qualifications, without jobs, and/or with low skilled jobs.

While there has been some criticism of the SEIFA indexes in the past, they have proved over time to be a good overall measure of socio-economic status and the only nation-wide measure available at a small area level (Kennedy and Firman, 2004). However, in many areas there are likely to be small sub-groups of populations which have characteristics that may be quite different from the overall population they live among. Thus, the concept of the ecological fallacy, that is making assumptions about individuals or minority populations from the characteristics of the overall population of an area is a common problem (Baker and Adhikari, 2007). Having said this, a number of studies over the last few years have shown that there are important theoretical and practical lessons to be gained in the field of spatially sensitive social scientific research. For example, Dodson et al. (2003, 2007) combing the SEIFA indexes with transport data-sets examined the links between social status and infrastructure provision with a focus on transport disadvantage. Their main empirical finding was the identification of a strong socio-spatial pattern for those vulnerable to transport disadvantage in terms of both their location within the urban structure and also their spatial and temporal access to public transport services. Following a similar line of investigation and in order to further promote policy relevant empirical social inquiry, this paper attempts to understand the social dimensions of telecommunication infrastructure provision with a focus on the earlier NBN rollout plans. To do so, the distribution of SEIFA across the 60 earlier NBN release sites in the Australian states and territories was examined. Postal areas (POAs) were used as the primary geographical entity for analysis because the NBN Co. has been releasing rollout plans according to suburbs names and postcodes. Moreover, following the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ recommendation (ABS, 2006b), the SEIFA indexes have been used to group areas into quartiles, and then these quartiles been used as the basis for analysis, using boxplots as a simple method of visually comparing distributions. Boxplots present the median, upper and lower quartiles, and also the range of the distribution. Figure 1 represents and compares the distribution of relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage across all areas in the Australian states and territories vs. the NBN release sites in each state and territory, using the index of relative advantage and disadvantage at the POA level. Looking at the NBN release sites across Australian states

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and territories shows that, with the exception of Tasmania, their median scores are higher than the median scores for all areas in each state and territory. The NBN release sites also have narrower ranges of scores in comparison to all areas in each state and territory. Moreover, their minimum scores are equivalent or more than the lower quartile scores for all areas in each state and territory but Tasmania and South Australia. A very similar pattern is observed when the upper quartile values are compared between the release sites and all areas in each state and territory (with the exception of New South Wales and Tasmania). Putting these points together, it is evident that the release sites are very different from the most disadvantaged areas in vast majority of Australian states and territories. Having said that, it is also important to understand that the maximum scores for the release sites in the majority of states and territories (with the exception of Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory and South Australia) are well below that for all areas which suggests that the utmost advantaged areas are not necessarily among those that get the NBN sooner than others. Figure 1

Index of relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, distribution by state/territory for all areas (ALL) vs. release sites (RS)

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The underrepresentation of the most disadvantaged areas in the earlier NBN rollout plans is better illustrated in Figure 2 that represents and compares the distribution of relative socio-economic disadvantage across all areas in the Australian states and territories vs. the NBN release sites in each state and territory, using the Index of Relative Disadvantage. It is evident that the minimum scores for the NBN release sites across all states and territories are much higher than that in all areas. The trend is more obvious with Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory in which the minimum scores for the NBN release sites are equivalent or higher than the lower quartile scores for all areas. This basically suggests that the most disadvantaged areas have not benefited from the earlier provision of the telecommunication infrastructure so far and could potentially lag further behind because of the late rollout.

The spatial justice implications of telecommunication infrastructure Figure 2

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Index of relative socio-economic disadvantage, distribution by state/territory for all areas (ALL) vs. release sites (RS)


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A combination of Figure 1 and Figure 2 suggests that the NBN rollout so far has provided some opportunities for a number of communities mostly at the middle range of socio-economic spectrum to take advantage of early provision of the upcoming infrastructure. Yet, closer examination warns that the most disadvantaged communities have not been among the winners. The case of Northern Territory, for example, shows that in both earlier discussed indexes the median scores of the NBN release sites are even higher than the upper quartile scores of all areas. This suggests that in a territory that contains some of the most disadvantage communities of the nation, the ones that have enjoyed the early rollout so far are amongst the better-off ones. In order to have a better understanding of the socio-economic patterns of the earlier NBN rollout, Figure 3 and Figure 4 represent and compare the distribution of Economic Resources, and Education and Occupation across all areas in the Australian states and territories vs. the NBN release sites in each state and territory, using the Index of Economic Resources, and the Index of Education and Occupation. These two indexes are specifically important as they focus on peoples’ access to economic resources, and skills and qualifications. Figure 3 shows a narrower range of access to economic resources among the NBN release sites mostly focused around the middle of the range for all areas. This basically means that in the majority of states and territories the earlier release sites include local communities that are quite similar in their average (with a tendency towards high) access to the economic sources. Figure 4, on the other hand, shows that the earlier NBN release sites are not so similar when it comes to education and occupation as the distribution ranges are quite wide with the exception of Northern Territory and Queensland. Tasmania and then South Australia and Victoria have the widest range of scores which shows that they all contain some areas with highly qualified and skilled people as well as some with mostly underqualified and low-skill population. Nevertheless, a comparison between the distributions of all areas vs. the release sites across the Index of Education and Occupation shows that the minimum scores for the release sites across all states and territories are higher than those

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for all areas. Such a trend is observed far stronger in Northern Territory in which the two NBN release sites sit at the very high end of the distribution line for all areas. This once again suggests that while some less advantaged communities in regard to education and occupation might benefit from the earlier provision of the infrastructure and become more competitive through e-education opportunities, the utmost lowest-SEIFA communities have not yet been offered the same chance. Figure 3

Index of economic resources, distribution by state/territory for all areas (ALL) vs. release sites (RS)


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Index of education and occupation, distribution by state/territory for all areas (ALL) vs. release sites (RS)


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This translates to the scary truth that the most distressed localities at the bottom of the SEIFA indexes could fall behind even further – in both short-term and mid-term - as a result of a later NBN rollout, if the same pattern was to be followed in the large scale rollout phases. This means that the NBN rollout plan without accounting for the socioeconomic status of the release sites could potentially intensify the existing social divisions in the Australian context at least in the short-term and mid-term.

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Accessibility/remoteness index of Australia

There have been increasing concerns over a number of years about the difficulties faced by Australians living in rural and remote areas in accessing health, welfare and other services that most Australians take for granted. More recently, telecommunications infrastructure is perceived as the lynchpin for achieving socio-economic development (Bandias and Vemuri, 2005). It has been suggested that without appropriate development of telecommunication infrastructure, the disparities already experienced by rural and remote communities will be further exacerbated as the reliance of services over computer-mediated networks increases. This line of thinking has been also supported by the Australian Federal Government. For example, in August 2011, the Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications on behalf of the Parliament of Australia put a great emphasis on the significant role of the NBN to ensure greater equity across Australia’s communities particularly in regional and rural areas, and for people who are geographically isolated (Parliament of Australia, 2011). Australian Government has been interested in finding out about the concept of remoteness as an important dimension of policy development across the nation, long before the NBN was introduced. In 1997, the Commonwealth Department of Health & Aged Care (DH&AC) commissioned a project designed to measure and classify remoteness in a physical, geographic way. The outcome of that project was the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA), developed by the National Key Centre for Social Applications of GIS (GISCA) (ABS, 2001a). The ARIA is an index of remoteness derived from measures of road distance between populated localities and service centres. These road network distance measures are then used to generate a remoteness score for any location in Australia (Raicu et al., 2011). Since its development, ARIA is increasingly being used by government agencies as a definition of remoteness and is emerging as a defacto standard. More recently, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) addressed the concept of remoteness, with a view to including it in its classification of areas. The ABS work, also undertaken with GISCA, used ARIA as the underlying methodology for the determination of remoteness. The new classification, described by the ABS as a ‘remoteness structure’, is referred to as ARIA+, and is an update and refinement of the original ARIA (Glover and Tennant, 2003). The purpose of the Remoteness Structure is to provide a classification for the release of statistics that inform policy development by classifying Australia into large regional categories that share common characteristics of remoteness. The categories are (ABS, 2001b): •

major cities of Australia: with an average ARIA index value of 0 to 0.2

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inner regional Australia: with an average ARIA index value greater than 0.2 and less than or equal to 2.4

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outer regional Australia: with an average ARIA index value greater than 2.4 and less than or equal to 5.92

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remote Australia: with an average ARIA index value greater than 5.92 and less than or equal to 10.53

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very remote Australia: with an average ARIA index value greater than 10.53

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migratory: composed of off-shore, shipping and migratory areas.

Department of Health and Aged Care (DHAC, 2001) indicates that, as an index of remoteness that covers the whole of Australia, ARIA+ provides a measure of remoteness (or accessibility to services) that is suitable for a broad range of applications including community service planning, demographic analysis and resource allocation. Following a similar line of thinking, in addition to the spatial-socio-economic analysis already offered in the present paper, the distribution of ARIA scores across the NBN release sites in the Australian states and territories has been examined. The results are presented in Figure 5, and show that so far remote Australia, and very remote Australia has not had any share of the early rollout. However, early rollout is likely to provide some opportunities for a number of localities in inner regional Australia, and outer regional Australia to benefit from the provision of the telecommunication infrastructure, be more competitive in the new economy, and perhaps use it as a driver of growth to address some of the difficulties that Australian regions located outside the major cities have experienced over the years. The fact that a similar opportunity has not been so far offered to remote and very remote localities could potentially intensify the existing concerns about the limitations linked to remoteness in Australia. Figure 5

ARIA, distribution by state/territory for the NBN release sites

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Conclusions

The present paper starts with an overview of the socio-spatial literature in which ‘equality of opportunity’ has been introduced as one of the hallmarks of justice in cities and regions. It then refers to the current definition of critical infrastructure that puts a very strong emphasis on telecommunication as a foundation of the new economy. It argues that, in the Australian context, early NBN rollout gives the release sites a regional competitive advantage against other localities that might have to wait up to several years to receive the telecommunication infrastructure. The paper also briefly refers to the recent political turmoil around the NBN project, which means the 300,000 premises located in the early release sites might be the only ones that ever directly connect to the fibre network. A mixed technology network could be adopted in the rest of the country with a significantly lower roll-out speed. In order to understand the ways in which the NBN rollout plan so far is going to affect the current socio-economic divisions across the nation, the paper examines the ranking of the 60 earlier NBN release sites in the SEIFA, and ARIA. This develops a basic understanding of the socio-economic patterns of the NBN rollout so far, and sets forward a socio-economically sensitive methodology that has the potential of investigating the upcoming stages of large-scale rollout with respect to varied roll-out speed that could well and truly be part of the new Federal Government’s plan. The findings show that early rollout is likely to provide some opportunities for a number of localities in inner regional Australia, and outer regional Australia mostly within the mid range of SEIFA to benefit from the provision of the telecommunication infrastructure, be more competitive in the new economy, and perhaps use it as a driver of growth to address some of the difficulties that Australian regions located outside the major cities have experienced over the years. Nevertheless, the results translates to the scary truth that the most distressed and mostly isolated localities at the bottom of the SEIFA indexes could fall behind even further as a result of a later NBN rollout, if the same pattern was to be followed in the large scale rollout phases. This means that the NBN rollout plan without accounting for the socio-economic status of the release sites could potentially intensify the existing social divisions in the Australian context at least in the short-term and mid-term. The paper has started with two very important questions about the socio-economic status of the selected sites. The first question was whether they fairly represent the diversity included in the Australian society. The second one closely related to recent urban debates that emphasise the socio-economic justice side of infrastructure formations, and questioned about the degree to which the NBN is presently, or should be, incorporated in planning and policy development for social equity and spatial justice. On the first question, while the analysis of the earlier rollout sites is not comprehensive and broad enough to offer a conclusive answer on the implication of the broadband for the whole nation, the findings reveal a scary truth about the NBN: the early roll-out was not set to benefit the least well-off. In other words, if Rawls’s (1971, 2001) conception of justice was applied to the NBN rollout, the early distribution pattern would have been very different. Following Rawls’s logic, the answer to the second question is a resounding yes. The NBN provides a range of socio-economic opportunities, and fair distribution of its benefits should be included in any serious public policy debates around social equity and spatial justice. More importantly, further discussions about the spatial justice implications of the NBN provides a wide range of opportunities that not only

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enriches our understanding of the specific role of telecommunication infrastructure, they can uncover significant new insights and extend into more effective actions to achieve greater spatially informed and just policy actions in the wider area of infrastructure provision. While the present paper supports the advancement of socially sensitive NBN research, it is cognisant of the critique that has been made of social analyses that are overly reliant on the use of ABS statistics, particularly Census categories (Gibson et al., 1996). Clearly there is substantial room for methodological refinement and support of better scholarly connections between social systems and telecommunication infrastructure analysis. The inclusion of data on the quality of current telecommunication services (other than NBN) might help to illustrate a more sophisticated understanding of the conceptual concerns outlined above. Perhaps an interesting (and a logical) extension is also to use 2011 SEIFA to test whether the socio-economic status of the early rollout sites have changed since the rollout of the NBN (though change is unlikely due to the NBN given the early stage of the construction). However, the major advancement needed here is that further research should account for the large-scale rollout plans, with respect to their potentially varied roll-out speed, in order to be able to offer conclusive results. Such investigation will then need to be incorporated in planning and policy development for social equity and spatial justice. It is only then that all Australian communities will get a fair chance of benefiting from the socio-economic opportunities embedded with the telecommunication infrastructure.

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