Senator Kate Lundy, shadow minister for information technology, has accused the portfolio's incumbent, Senator Richard Alston, of ineptitude in carrying out his ministerial responsibilities.
Lundy said that Alston's recent decision to establish two information technology advisory groups indicates that the minister is asking to be told what do.
"While Labor welcomes, at last, the prospect of some informed opinion in Senator Alston's ear, one wonders how an expert panel can be expected to make up for six years of ineptitude from an IT minister who continues to demonstrate a lack of understanding of information technology issues," the shadow minister said.
Currently in the process of reviewing its own ICT policies in the wake of its defeat at the last Federal election, Lundy said Labor want to engage in a "war of ideas" on how to devise better ways to reach IT industry goals.
"We're certainly not in a position to outline Labor's policy," she said. "We had our policy credentials on the table at the last election but we're now at a point in the cycle where we're reviewing them," she added.
Despite repeatedly being contacted by ZDNet Australia, Senator Alston's office was unable to provide comment on the criticisms.
Yesterday, Alston announced the formation of two advisory bodies - a broadband advisory group and a steering committee to help the minister create a framework developing Australia's information and communication technology (ICT) sector.
Earlier this month Senator Lundy accused Senator Alston of abandoning Australian small and medium sized enterprises, in failing to deliver an ICT framework that would help them compete for government contracts.
At that time she said that deferring the framework's development to the then unformed steering committee would disadvantage SMEs in favour of multinational IT companies.
The eleven-member ICT steering committee is composed of eight representatives from the commercial sector and three from research and academic backgrounds. Companies named in association with commercial sector representatives include IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ericsson AsiaPacificLab, Siemens, Allen & Buckeridge, global IT consulting firm Accenture, and Hewlett-Packard.
Lundy said she saw the two committees as "filler" taking the place of gaps in the Federal Government's IT policy.
Alston's broadband advisory group has attracted criticism from industry figures. Among industry concerns is the omission of Telstra wholesale customers from the group, and that its composition lends credence to a "misconception" that broadband take-up is dependent on applications.
