VK5CQ
Member
Posts: 160
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« on: April 06, 2013, 05:19:19 PM » |
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Australia's FCC-counterpart is:
- Australian Communications & Media Authority
Soon after Radio Amateurs in neighboring New Zealand were authorized higher transmit power, ACMA -finally- got the idea, that Australia's Hams should have similar privileges...
However, ACMA could not see itself to "trust" AU's Hams to use high transmit power, ie, without "training wheels" attached, in the form of a "trial" of unspecified duration AFAIK), and without a clear indication of what might lead ACMA to (someday, maybe) -include- that privilege into at least the Advanced Class licensees' Conditions list.
By contrast, New Zealand's Radio Amateurs were deemed to be sufficiently responsible & technically competent to merit automatic granting of Higher Power privileges, ie, en masse (presumably, if their license class was high enough).
No trial period... but wait, there's another nuisance to endure, only in Australia:
Perhaps to effectively -reduce- the number of AU Ham's who would have the privilege to use the new Higher Power transmit privilege, Australia's regulator required an insulting Application to be in their "trial."
Adding cost to the undue insult of a "With Your Leave, Your Highness" Application requirement...
Being "overcharged" AU$ 60 per year, by ACMA, for their Amateur license alone (while US & CA's hams enjoy Cost-Free licenses)...
Aussie Hams well & truly deserve at -least- some improved additional value to be dropped into the equation.
But no... it was not to be... Instead:
ACMA required any Advanced Class Ham, wanting to "trial" the new higher power levels, to pay a "Poll Tax" - in the form of an Application Fee - to support an undue "make work" administrative check - by ACMA - on each applying Ham...?
(Their more -trusted- mates, across the Tasman, got High Transmit Power privileges as a cost-free "Value-Add" to their license privileges.
I recently learned - via ABC's Radio National, or a sibbling service - that NZ's colonial history was "fairer" on one point:
The British in New Zealand negotiated -treaties- with the land's indigenous peoples; there was -not- imaginary "Terrus Nullus" myth in NZ, as was used to justify pushing Australian aborig- inees from their lands, as more settlers arrived or moved across AU.
"Past is Prologue" - by which I mean to suggest that New Zealand seems to have a Tradition of Fairness.
If you doubt me, on this point, I would mention & compare the ways NZ & AU treated earlier waves of Asylum-seekers ("boat people" or "queue-jumpers" in AU), in recent decades.
While NZ earned the respect of decent people by settling their Asylums-seekers out in their communities, where they could work & help pay their ways, in what might become their new country...
AU build costly "detention centers" with un- friendly razor-wire fencing & undue restric- tions on meetings between Aussies & their Asylum-seeker arrivals... contracted with foreign "prison operators" to run them... & - later - watched reports of rampant suicide- attempts, destruction of facilities, & children growing up in psychologically-dangerous, prison-like environments, eg, so that - in then PM John Howard's words:
- "We [could] decide who will come to AU."
(I shudder when I recall -false- reports of "children overboard" in AU's media, during earlier, but still recent, periods in AU's history... I'm sure many Aussies do, too.)
I feel these governments' "cultural" differ- ences explain the contrasting actions of AU's Amateur Radio regimes - over time - in contrast to NZ's apparently more Amateur- friendly radio communications regulators.
So, while -all- eligible New Zealand Amateurs -now- enjoy High Transmit Power privileges, if they choose to use them...
Last we heard, only 230 Australian Hams had accepted ACMA's unduly -insulting- offer, ie, to pay a "Poll-Tax" & complete a "May it Please the ACMA" Application for "Training Wheels" for High Transmit Power privileges, in the hope that - someday - ACMA will have found some reason to justify granting Australia's Hams the same "Value-Add" that NZ's Amateurs got by a stronger, friendlier Tradition of Fairness.
(Why haven't more of AU's Ham's applied...?
Perhaps the logic is: Let the "early adopters" open the door for the, rest of us, to the Higher Transmit Power privilege, assuming it might be added to ALL Advanced Class license holders' privilege list.)
May such a Tradition "infiltrate" & "take-over" ACMA & other departments of AU's Gov't soon, so we in AU can begin to stand a little taller as Radio Amateurs, rather than fearing that our gov't is sufficiently unsupportive of our Hobby & World Fraternity that it would rather tax/charge & harass AU's part of it out of existence, eg, by:
- treating Aussie Hams with prejudice, ie, instead of respect, eg, when belatedly up- dating Amateur license privileges, in light of more generous World Best practice;
- retaining excessive License fees & raising them all too frequently (in recent years);
- showing disdain to Radio Amateurs, eg, by permanently -halving- multi-million $ License fees of -commercial- TV broad- casters, in the light of excessive Ham License fees (compared to cost-free US & - recently - Canadian Amateur fees);
- labeling elements of License fees unduly as taxes, thereby making them difficult to negotiate downward;
- reducing frequency allocations unduly;
- maintaining undue & leftover restrictions (eg, banning "auto-patches" & "phone-inter- connects," enacted long-ago to protect its telco monopoly, of that dark era);
"Past is Prologue" ...but only -until- we Hams begin to "push-back" on undue fees, "make- work" apply-for-trial nonsense, & insist that AU's Radio Amateurs are afforded a World Best Practice approach to privileges, and not less.
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