Connecting Up Conference
Keynote address
Adelaide
4 May 2004
It’s about people, not technology
It makes perfect sense that the current technological revolution is the mere beginning of a far reaching period of social change. Information and Communication Technology represents one of the most critical forms of social, cultural and economic empowerment.
How effectively modern, democratic governments manage [...]
telstra
Connecting Australia
Telstra’s Big Pond a Big Con for Competition
Telstra’s ADSL long-overdue price cuts mask their predatory pricing that will force ISPs competing against Telstra Big Pond to go broke.
In an extraordinary statement yesterday, (New prices stimulate broadband boom 26 Feb 2004), Telstra laid out their outrageous predatory pricing strategy. The Telstra statement said, in part:
“Telstra will adjust the pre-GST wholesale price for its [...]
Humiliating Backdown for Costello On Telstra IT Jobs
Peter Costello has been forced into a humiliating backdown over his comments regarding Telstra’s deal with IBM to send 450 Australian IT jobs to India.
On Wednesday, Mr Costello said, “I think that wherever possible those jobs ought to be located in Australia. Telstra ought to look at the situation carefully, they have to have a [...]
The most recent count of the waste of taxpayer’s money as a result of the Howard Government’s IT outsourcing debacle is closing in on $1 billion dollars.
Peter Costello must stop playing the blame game and come clean on the Howard Government’s involvement in Telstra’s deal with IBM to send 450 Australian IT Jobs to India. Peter Costello’s musings on Telstra keeping jobs in Australia disguise the fact that the Government gave Telstra the green light to proceed with these plans months [...]
Telstra’s 450 IT Jobs Slash Not in the National Interest
Reports today that Telstra has struck a deal with IBM to send 450 local IT jobs to India are of serious concern.
Telstra is majority publicly owned and still largely a monopoly. Its activities are at the heart of the Australian Information Technology sector. It makes around 90% of the profits in the Australian telecommunications sector. [...]
Besley commitment siphoned off to pay for Estens commitment
The Howard Government has cut $35 million from the Building Additional Regional Networks (BARN) fund.
BARN was a $70 million fund that was part of the Howard Government’s response to the Besley Inquiry into Regional Telecommunications, but in a cynical exercise the Howard Government has siphoned off half of the fund to flesh out their response [...]
Inexplicable security breach leads to rubbish dump hunt as ministerial emails go missing in wheelie bin debacle
A Senate Estimates Committee has heard that public servants and Telstra employees crawled over rubbish tips in search of computer files which included Ministerial emails that were ‘lost’ in a major security breach earlier this year.
The computer files were never recovered and are presumed by authorities to have been thrown out after being stored in [...]
Victims of Telstra email pain get a measly $12.50
The two-week rebate package Telstra is offering as compensation to victims of its email pain could be worth as little as $12.50 – half the monthly cost of a Telstra BigPond email account.
Telstra confirmed that at least 1.2 million BigPond customers and an additional 270,000 broadband customers were directly affected. However, this paltry amount is [...]
Telstra still deploying broadband-blocking technology
Telstra has admitted misleading a Senate Committee over its use of line-splitting technology which prevents hundreds of thousands of Australians from accessing a high speed internet service.
In August 7, Telstra gave misleading evidence to a Senate Committee in response to a direct question I asked, claiming that it was no longer deploying inferior line-splitting technology [...]
No sale for Telstra
Here is my speech in Parliament opposing the Howard Governments legislation to sell the rest of Telstra.
There was also a Senate Inquiry into this Bill: Report on the Provisions of the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 2003 – (PDF format) – Tabled 27 October 2003 – Submissions
Senator [...]
