ZDNet asked readers to specify which candidate they would vote for based solely on the IT promises of each. Responses remained close initially, but a Beazley-favouring divide became apparent towards the end of the week ZDNet ran the survey.
Results were based on more than 800 responses from ZDNet readers.
According to the results at the close of the survey, 52 percent of respondents said they would vote in favour of the less detailed Beazley pledge. Close behind, 384 readers, or 48 percent, said they would vote in favour of the Howard government's AU$2.9 billion -Backing Australia's Ability" scheme.
The Beazley Opposition slipped in first with promises to build a 100,000-student Internet-based university, dubbed University of Australia Online. Beazley was reluctant to reveal budgetary figures on UAO, but said the opposition planned to reveal more as election campaigning hit full stride towards the end of the year.
-Online education is not education on the cheap," he is reported to have said.
Less than one week later, the Howard Government unveiled its AU$2.9 billion, five-year IT pledge, to criticism that the government had moved to the aide of the IT industry five years too late. The small business community railed that the government's promise to soften the tax blow on research and development expenditure was still too heavily centred around big business.
