budget

What’s in the 2009 budget for ICT?

ICT fared strongly in the 2009 budget with a number of portfolios announcing initiatives to complement the Government’s investment in a national broadband network.  This was the theme of my recent presentation to CeBIT ’09: policies that will really optimise the economic and social platform the nbn will provide in the future. I was particularly [...]

Razor gang’s High Court caveat

Labor senator Kate Lundy told The Australian she was concerned the Rudd Government’s razor gang would trim further funding from the High Court’s budget next year.

Culture on the chopping block

The Labor senator Kate Lundy urged the Government to adopt the report’s findings.

Funding cut hurts arts, institutions

Labor senator and committee member Kate Lundy last night accepted that the Government had not foreseen the impact of the cuts on small departments.

Manufacturing Must Get Attention in the Budget

Now is the time to invest in essential skills, innovation and freight infrastructure for Australian manufacturing.   Australian manufacturing is ailing under this Government. Between 2000 and 2004, 50,000 jobs have disappeared in manufacturing. Recent figures have shown that manufacturing growth continues to decline, now reaching record lows.   The trend in manufacturing exports is [...]

Training Australians First: Budget should include completion bonus for apprenticeships in the ACT

The Howard Government should introduce a $2,000 Trade Completion Bonus for Canberra’s traditional apprentices in the upcoming Federal Budget. A Trade Completion Bonus is something the Howard Government can do immediately to help businesses in the ACT and surrounding region to get the skilled workers they need. Skill shortages have ravaged ACT industries with traditional [...]

Budget fails to deliver to the ACT: Humphries left with egg on face

John Howard’s local Canberra mouth-piece has even more egg on his face with the Federal Budget doing very little for very few. This budget is about satisfying John Howard’s political needs, not the needs of ordinary Australians – and certainly not Canberrans. The truth about the 2004 Federal Budget is that: Around 75 per cent [...]

ICT gets nothing from the 2003 budget

Yesterday’s budget shows that the Coalition has no vision for the ICT sector and is not interested in creating high-wage, high-skilled jobs for the future. There was not even any reference to any of the recommendations contained in either the Framework for the Future report, or the Broadband Advisory Group Report, which is further evidence [...]

Alston wants Australia to be the global village idiot

A policy outcome which Senator Alston’s department described as a ‘competitive and sustainable advantage in the global information economy’ was cut by $11.5 million in this week’s Budget”, the Shadow Minister Assisting on Information Technology, Senator Lundy, said today. “This indicates just how visionless the Coalition is,” Senator Lundy said. “The $11.5 million cut to [...]

Not even scraps from the Budget table for young people

This year’s Federal Budget provides absolutely nothing new for young people, Senator Kate Lundy, Shadow Minister for Youth Affairs, said today. “Not even scraps from the table. All the Government could come up with is snippets of old news and re-badged funding,” Senator Lundy said. “John Howard’s Federal Budget 2000 announced the following vision for [...]