Displaying items by tag: labor

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.

The president of the Australian Computer Society, Yohan Ramasundara, has said the Federal Government needs to take cyber security more seriously, claiming that it was seen as a "boutique issue" that was very often out-sourced or delegated to "a couple of techies in a backroom".

Australian Greens leader Senator Richard di Natale has laid into the Labor Party for letting the encryption law pass Parliament last year, saying this had taken place despite Labor standing with the Greens and making it clear they believed the law was bad legislation.

The Federal Government will try to push amendments to the encryption law on Wednesday to give anti-corruption bodies the right to use its powers, while Labor will try to get an amendment through to define a systemic weakness.

All 17 amendments proposed to the Federal Government's encryption law, which was passed by Parliament on 6 December last year, have been implemented, the Department of Home Affairs says in a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

The Federal Government's controversial encryption bill has been passed by Parliament without any amendments due to there being a lack of time for Labor to add any amendments in the Senate.

A rushed report from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has made 17 recommendations for amendments to the government's encryption bill which is expected to be pushed through Parliament on Thursday.

The Federal Government says Labor's initial suggestions about passing a cut-down version of the encryption bill were not acceptable, and a compromise announced on Tuesday had removed some of Labor's demands.

If the Australian Labor Party thinks the government's encryption bill will magically become good law if it only passes schedule one and only for anti-terror agencies right now, then it is sadly mistaken.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton says he wants the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to deal with the government's encryption bill "as quickly as possible", and accused Labor Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus of delaying things and "making excuses and massaging bills down to lowest common denominator".