The Minister for Information Technology and Communications, Senator Richard Alston, said in a statement released today the ACS results were derived from a survey of 889 of its members which attracted a response rate of only 6.7 percent.
"[This is] hardly the basis for any firm extrapolation," Alston said.
"...the fact is that, while the ICT labour market remains subdued relative to highs experienced during the tech boom, figures released by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations earlier this week show that there was a rise of 14,400 or 7.5 percent in the employment of ICT professionals over the year to November 2002," he said.
"In fact, the latest figures from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations show that unemployment of IT professionals averaged 3.8 percent in 2002".
Can someone remind Senator Alston, that ultimately he is a "Public Servant". This means in spite of his personal dislikes for the President of the ACS, he has a obligation to actually do something constructive in relation to his portfolio.
If the Senator can pull himself away from the TV, and would care to meet with some real people, then I can show him the 60-80 applicants for any one job, the highly talented and qualified people, that are delivering pizzas.
Sure, this doesn't show up in Government statistics for a very good set of reasons. 1. Many of these people have established companies in order to protect themselves in doing business. They remain as employees of their companies in spite of the company or the individual being unable to secure work. 2. Many of these people have worked hard, and paid lots of taxes along the way to establish a "nest egg", ergo, they fail the "Asset tests" for assistance, which means that they don't show up in the statistics, but rest assured Senator, they are real, and they are there.
I won't even touch on the rampant inefficiencies in the Public Service, and it's deployment of IT, that is too depressing a story...