The proportion of Australian households with home access to computers and the Internet continues to rise, but adults are still slow to embrace online spending.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, they prefer the familiarity of EFTPOS, ATM and phone transactions.
The survey of 3,200 people, carried out last August and published today, found that 3.7 million Australian households (57 percent) have access to a home computer and 2.4 million households, or 34 percent, have home Internet access.
In the 12 months prior to August 2000, 9.1 million adults, or 66 percent of adults used a computer and 6.6 million adults, 48 percent, accessed the Internet.
However, "only six percent of all Australian adults, or 780,000, purchased or ordered goods and services for their own private use via the Internet," during that time, according to the ABS.
Furthermore, only eight percent of Australian adults used the Net to pay bills or transfer funds in the three months to August 2000.
This is a striking comparison to the 49 percent of Australians who paid bills or transferred funds via the phone, the 66 percent who used EFTPOS for such transactions and 73 percent who used ATM facilities, the ABS said.
The Bureau's survey also found that few Australian adults - only 10 percent - used the Net to access government services in the 12 months, to August 2000.
As income increased, the likelihood that an adult was either a computer user or an Internet user increased also, the ABS said.
"Both at home and at work there were large differences in the likelihood that adults with incomes under AU$40,000 had used a computer or accessed the Internet compared to adults with incomes of AU$40,000 or more."
The ABS survey also found that almost all children, 95 percent, aged 5 to 14 years had used a computer and almost half, 47 percent, had accessed the Internet.
"The likelihood that a child was an Internet user increased markedly with age," the ABS said.
