Election 04: Lining up the IT Policies

AUSTRALIA -- The Democrats are taking open source legislation to the Senate, the Greens are calling for a buy back of Telstra shares and both major parties have recognised the need for low-cost broadband right across the country.

If you are looking at IT Policy as an indicator in the forthcoming election, line them up against each other and be prepared to be surprised.

In the following list we have identified the policy areas of each of the leading parties that relate to ICTs. For instance, the Democrats have three separate policy documents whereas the Greens bring many of the same issues together under a single policy paper. Both Labor and Liberal provide election policies only. Not surprising for Labor, but we were unable to find the current standing IT policies of the Liberal party.

• Australian Greens: Information Policy
• Australian Democrats Policies: Access to Information and Censorship Policy, Media And Broadcasting Policy, Telecommunications And Postal Services Policy
• Australian Labor Party: E-AUSTRALIA: Labor's National Information Policy, Labor's Plan for Broadcasting, Labor's Plan For Telecommunications
• Australian Liberal Party: Supporting Community Broadcasting, Supporting Access to Broadband, Information Technology

Note it is not possible to provide a direct link to any of the Democrat's policies. The Greens provide a HTML version with additional features (email page, print page and add page to Favorites) whilst Labor offers both HTML and PDF versions with the Liberals offering both PDF and plain text.

It would be interesting to provide a critique of each, identifying whether the UN WSIS has any influence in the development of these policies, specific mention of gender, privacy and governance for example. If you know of any such work, let us know by adding a "comment" to this article.

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