Displaying items by tag: labor

A joint parliamentary committee has proposed that an amendment to the laws governing critical infrastructure be split up into two, in order to pass what it says are "urgent reforms".

The federal Labor Party has offered subsidies on electric vehicles, cutting import taxes and fringe-benefit taxes on all non-luxury vehicles that cost below $77,500. The Victorian Labor Party, meanwhile, has announced an annual tax of about $300 on EVs.

As the rest of the developed world looks to electric vehicles to help cut their output of greenhouse gases, Australia is firmly in the backseat, looking to the past and attempting to strangle a nascent industry.

A Senate panel has recommended that Australia's new Online Safety Bill be passed, less than three weeks after it began to examine the bill in-committee and after just one public hearing.

A total of $78 million in bonuses was paid to employees of NBN Co, the company that is rolling out Australia's national broadband network, in the 2020 financial year, when the country went into recession.

A Senate panel chaired by Tasmanian Labor Senator Helen Polley has said it considers the proposed authorisation of coercive search powers for the Australian Federal Police and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission in a current bill — the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020 — could unduly trespass on personal rights and liberties.

Australia exceeded its generation of renewable energy in 2020 by 11% compared to the previous year, according to figures from the Clean Energy Regulator.

Digital platforms Google and Facebook have managed to change a number of terms in the news media code, which has been given the name News Media and Digital Platforms Bargaining Code, with the government giving ground on the interval for informing publishers of algorithm changes.

The NBN Co, the body rolling out Australia's national broadband network, has taken on another $1.2 billion of debt at 1% over five years.

In what seems to be a rather strange reversal of roles, the Labor Government in Victoria has announced a tax on electric cars and hybrid plug-in vehicles from July 2021 while a Federal Liberal MP, Trent Zimmerman, has penned an op-ed castigating both Victoria and South Australia for their plans to tax EVs.

Fibre to the premises will be available to about 75% of homes on the NBN, making a total of eight million in all, by the end of 2023, with the NBN Co to spend about $3.5 billion to upgrade connections, according to an announcement made on Wednesday.

Labor shadow communications minister Michelle Rowland says the announcement made by NBN Co on Tuesday, about spending up to $700 million on creating 240 Business Fibre Zones, including a presence in 85 regional centres, shows that the Liberal party does not have a clue about either technology or economics.

Australia has the best communications technology available for government and private entities to ensure that measures taken within the country are broadcast widely, especially if they could affect the security of its citizens overseas.

Selling the NBN Co to a private entity as a monopoly would be the worst way to ensure that the network is upgraded, a network expert says, adding that if the definition of insanity is to do the same thing repeatedly and expect different results, then privatising NBN Co as a monopoly would definitely qualify.

The Federal Government needs to draft a statement of expectation as to what it expects to happen to the national broadband network next, after the network rollout is officially over at the end of the month, veteran telecommunications analyst Paul Budde says, adding that otherwise Australia will continue to languish in the broadband wilderness.

If the ongoing bushfire crisis has taught Australians one thing, it is that the use of petrol and diesel vehicles will have to be minimised in the future in order to avoid pumping more carbon into the atmosphere and making the problem worse.

The Coalition Government made the right choice back in 2013 to adopt a multi-technology mix for rolling out the national broadband network, ditching a Labor plan to have fibre to 93% of homes and service the rest through fixed wireless and satellite, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher says.

The Victorian Government will ban the use of mobile phones during school hours in state schools from the beginning of the school year in 2020, with the state's Education Minister James Merlino saying the ban is aimed at stopping cyber-bullying.

The Australian Labor Party's obsession with neo-liberal economics has doomed the national broadband network right from the time it set up a separate company, NBN Co, in 2009 to build a country-wide network that would be unfit for purpose. Thursday's patchwork approach by NBN Co to filling up the cracks is just the latest indication of this.

Australia's digital economy has grown by slightly more than $14 billion between the years 2012-13 and 2016-17, a report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics says.