The offices of the Liberal party's Richard Alston, the ALP's Carmen Lawrence, the Democrats' Brian Greig, the Green's Kerry Nettle, and One Nation's Pauline Hanson have all agreed to participate in an online forum on IT policies and promises in the run up to the 2001 Federal Election.
While IT has become an increasingly mainstream issue over the last 12 months the parties have yet to officially release their election bent IT policies.
Judging on past experience, IT R&D, Government procurement and outsourcing, bridging the so-called digital divide, broadband access, CSIRO funding, tertiary education, the further privatisation of Telstra, online privacy and security will all feature in traditional bipartisan pork-barrelling efforts.
Although it is increasingly difficult to differentiate between the major parties on most platforms, the wildly divergent stances on Telstra, education, R&D and government IT procurement promise to make for interesting reading.
To find out what side of the IT fence our participants sit, send your questions to: Election Debate, and stay tuned early next week as the responses come rolling in.
Alston will get some political spokesperson, probably his Secretary, to answer the questions. I doubt we'll get anything substantial. If either the Libs or the Labour camps were really going to do something, we'd have seen it happen by now. No, really, both of them are typically just giving hot air. After the last 6 years of unfairness and the previous camps reign of arrogance, I don’t hold much for either party. I think the answer is elsewhere.