The more you dig, the more it’s obvious that communications minister Helen Coonan is completely out of her depth.
On the ABC’s The Insiders on 25 March, the Raccoonan said: “If you just look back a couple of years ago no-one had even heard about broadband.”
No, Senator, I think it’s only you who hadn’t heard of it. The rest of us had it connected to our homes and offices.
Even 12 years ago there was Paul Keating’s Broadband Services Expert Group. Their final report included recommendations like:
With the spread of broadband infrastructure, broadband links be provided to all schools, libraries, medical and community centres by the year 2001.
And:
Telecommunications carriers and broadband network operators be required to inform government annually of their strategies for upgrading their networks, including the expected level of digitisation of existing network services, and the expected extent of broadband network coverage. This requirement should be reviewed by the year 2000.
Hat tip to Prof Roger Clarke for bringing this one to my attention.
[P.S. If you haven’t already done so, please vote in my poll about Coonan. If you’re reading this in the RSS feed, you’ll have to go to my website for that.]