The language within the two articles “Turnbull’s fragmented NBN dooms Australia to repeat the mistakes of the past” published by ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ on September 4^th and “NBN’s glimmer of hope” by Mark Gregory, published by ‘Business Spectator’ show the audience the power that politicians and the government have over simple issues by valuing the cultural representations of Australia such as equality and using local workers to manufacture and install products instead of larger national or international giants.

Australian society highly values local work over international and national efforts, Gregory’s article reveals to the audience through and uses dramatic, negative language such as ‘terminate’ and ‘failure’ (Business Spectator, 2013) to position readers to view the national contractors in a negative light. Comparatively to this is when Gregory talks about the local contractors using words such as ‘experienced’ and phrases such as “one wearing a camel back to remain hydrated in the extreme heat” show the audience the ingenuity and detail that these local contractors bring to the job, and revealing to us that local contractors can be just as good if not better than larger company giants.

On the contrary to valuing local workers is the Sydney Morning Herald’s article which is written to position the audience to see equality within our society via the use of highly dramatised quotes such as “hotch potch broadband infrastructure and monopolistic quagmire created by decades of market failure and regulatory impotence – an environment which empowered the monster that is Telstra” (Sydney Morning Herald, 2013) to position the audience to see that the government, primarily that the coalition are to blame for the shaky infrastructure of our copper networks. With this is a quote about Malcolm Turnbull saying “he’s open to the idea of letting competing telcos build different parts of the NBN – allowing them to cherry-pick the profitable suburbs while making it harder for NBN Co to sustain the network in less profitable areas” (Sydney Morning Herald, 2013) showing to the audience the inequality that the coalition government brings to Australian citizens by using dramatic words such as ‘cherry-pick’  to reinforce the ideas and issues that appear with Turnbull’s policy, also showing the values of competition within the businesses competing to try and get the better parts of the NBN and therefore get a better profit. The article also uses the author’s opinion saying “Turnbull’s plan is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place” (Sydney Morning Herald, 2013) by using this quote and the negative language and tone that it contains, the audience is positioned to see that the coalition’s National Broadband Network scheme is a horrible idea for todays society to have to suffer with.

The values of Australia’s cultural representations that present within these two articles are that of contradictory statements yet combine together in another way to show us that we should have equal amounts of local contractors and national contractors within our society and not over amounts of either. Though is also shows us that we always seem to have someone to blame for our problems no matter who they are and what prevalence they have to the situation.

References:

Gregory, M 2013 NBN’s glimmer of hope, Business Spectator, accessed 4 September 2013, http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/9/5/technology/nbns-glimmer-hope

Turnbull’s fragmented NBN dooms Australia to repeat the mistakes of the past, 2013 Sydney Morning Herald, accessed 4 September 2013, http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/blogs/gadgets-on-the-go/turnbulls-fragmented-nbn-dooms-australia-to-repeat-the-mistakes-of-the-past-20130904-2t4cr.html