Page 889 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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environment, not only in study itself but in the promotion of universities to potential students from around the world.
Just as with NICTA, the ACT government’s investment in study Canberra is a commitment we have made because of the enormous potential it creates. Study Canberra is a unity ticket of government and universities working together in the digital space because of the benefits for both parties in further growing Canberra’s university sector.
More broadly in our business sector, the evidence is absolutely clear on the role of digital technology in skills and jobs growth. Further analysis by Deloitte in 2013 found that Australian small businesses with high digital engagement earn twice as much revenue per employee and are four times more likely to be hiring more staff.
So we know that job growth comes from new businesses. We also know that most organisations want to experience the technology and use it hands on before they commit to implementing it. Canberra businesses typically want to get their digital information from workshops and they want to experience it and have it targeted to their needs.
This evidence underpins the government’s decision to provide funding for business workshops under the digital Canberra action plan. Delivered in partnership with the Canberra Business Council, the government will be running workshops which target the key digital skills for businesses in the ACT. Our workshops will help replace the federal government’s lapsing digital enterprise program.
Unfortunately, as we know, the federal government has also chosen to reduce the capability of the national broadband network, moving from fibre to the home to fibre to the node. I note an article today published in iTWire.com that announced that the federal government has of today issued new instructions to NBN Co to scrap federal Labor’s fibre-to-the-premise rollout and instead use a mix of new and existing broadband technologies which, if the government can be believed, will be rolled out faster than Labor’s original plan but will be nowhere near as fast for its users.
For a small business, a critical issue for competitiveness in a digital economy is the availability of affordable, reliable and very fast broadband, not just for downloading but also for uploading. The ACT government has made representations to NBN Co and direct to the relevant Senate select committee on the need for the rollout of NBN in the ACT to progress as fast as possible. All the ingredients are here to be the great NBN success story and exemplar of high speed connectivity, with 50 per cent uptake of the NBN in Gungahlin and with the digital Canberra survey showing that our businesses have the highest use of fibre by small businesses, at 14 per cent, the top use of telework in Australia, at 50 per cent, and far and away the highest proportion using social media in Australia.
We have been pleased to see NBN Co start work in Civic in recent days. However, I acknowledge that this rollout is less than we were promised by NBN Co in 2013 when we were told that the rollout of the national broadband network in the ACT would commence across the entire ACT by the end of 2015. There are significant areas of
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