Telstra's chief executive officer, Ziggy Switkowski, has paid tribute to Richard Alston following the Minister for Information Technology, Communications and the Arts' resignation from cabinet.

-The Senator has been an outstanding minister," he said, adding that the -great shape" of the Australian telecommunications industry reflects the government's policy settings.

Switkowski also said he was assuming the government's continuing support for the full privatisation of Telstra, but deflected further questions on the subject, saying they should be addressed to the government.

The Telstra chief executive was speaking at an event held to mark the 80th anniversary of Telstra Research Laboratories (TRL), originally the Research Section of the Australian Post Office.

Senator Alston was scheduled to unveil a 'virtual plaque' commemorating the occasion, but stepped down from his cabinet position earlier in the day and his place was taken by Senator Alan Eggleston, Government Deputy Whip and chair of the Senate committee on IT, Communications and the Arts.

Eggleston noted -the enormous contribution" Alston has made, describing him as -the greatest communications minister this country has ever seen."

-The government is keen to sell off the 51 percent of Telstra that we still own," he added.

As a result of today's cabinet shuffle, Daryl Williams will become Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

Doug Campbell, group managing director of Telstra Technology described the anniversary as -a very significant milestone... for research in Australia" and noted -Telstra's continued commitment to creating the future in Australia."

No explicit mention was made of ongoing or increased funding for TRL, but Hugh Bradlow, Telstra's CTO and MD of TRL, told ZDNet Australia that the constraint is not funding but opportunities and capability.

More recent TRL achievements include the first fully automatic electronic exchange to switch live calls in Australia, the system behind '13' phone numbers (a -temporary solution" developed in 1988 because vendors couldn't provide an economic system, but still in use today), and headsets for hearing-impaired mobile phone users. In 2002, TRL's AI team won the internationally recognised Knowledge Discovery and Data Cup for its work. -Our AI group is a real success story," said Bradlow.

TRL is typically engaged in 80 projects over 25 fields of activity at any one time, Bradlow said. -Technology creates an opportunity to innovate," he said, pointing to current projects including an SMS in-house directory search tool, a system for sending machine-readable transportation or event tickets to mobile phones in the form of a two-dimensional barcode, and tools to facilitate the early introduction of natural language speech recognition interfaces.

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