“Australia has another great dividing range. In the age of the information economy, modems - not mountains - separate the population�? (Manktelow, 2001 in McLaren and Zappala, 2003).
Internet ‘power users’ in Australia have similar attributes to those in other countries, they are predominately young, white, male, earning in excess of $75,000, employed, and living in metropolitan areas (Curtin, 2001). Those on low incomes; living in rural/remote areas; without tertiary education; whose first language is not English; with disabilities; aged over 55; or of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage are less likely to be online. The reasons for their exclusion include set-up and access costs, lack of physical access, lack of skills/training, illiteracy, disinterest/confidence or perceptions of irrelevance, and security concerns. Indigenous Australians are significantly affected by the digital divide. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 16% of the Indigenous population had used the Internet in the week preceding the 2001 Census, compared to 39% of the non-Indigenous population (in Curtin, 2001). Their lack of participation may be attributed in part to the lack of content produced for the Indigenous population, or the lack of sufficient telecommunications infrastructure in remote areas.
Studies conducted on the digital divide in Australia include (but are not limited to): Jennifer Curtin’s 2001 brief A Digital Divide in Rural and Regional Australia?; NATSEM’s 2000 report for Telstra on Sociodemographic Barriers to Telecommunications Use; and the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s report entitled: Access to electronic commerce and new service and information technologies for older Australians and people with a disability.
The Labor government took steps to improve Australia’s IT readiness in the mid 1990’s. In October 1994, then Prime Minister Paul Keating released the Labor government’s cultural policy statement Creative Nation (Petre and Harrington, 1996, p.15). A major feature of the statement was a commitment to new technology in multimedia, but Labor’s loss to the Liberals, led by John Howard, jeopardised its longevity. As society has become more reliant upon communications technology; the issue of the digital divide has recently received a resurgence in political attention, due in part to its implications for economic and social detriment. Government initiatives designed to alleviate the digital divide in Australia include: [1]Networking the Nation, a program designed to upgrade regional, rural and remote telecommunications, funded in part by the proceeds from the sale of Telstra, and involving the establishment of ‘community access centres’ in rural communities to provide access to banking, post, phone, fax, Internet, Medicare and Centrelink services online. An Education and Training Action Plan for the Information Economy initiative aims to improve information technology skills and distribute surplus state and Commonwealth government computers amongst ‘deserving’ schools (Curtin, 2001). The Howard Government’s Government Online Strategy aims to bring all appropriate government services online, demonstrating the Internet’s scope for political participation. In 2004 a [2] National Broadband Strategy was introduced by the federal government to ensure the wider availability of broadband services by providing subsidies for service providers. The Commonwealth has also renamed the National Office for the Information Economy, which is now known as the Australian Government Information Management Office [3](AGIMO). These various studies and initiatives show that the Federal Government is taking the issue of the digital divide seriously; and demonstrates the extreme significance of the Internet as a new media technology.
Curtin, J (2001)Australian Parliamentary Library 'A Digital Divide in Rural and Regional Australia?' Available: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/cib/2001-02/02cib01.htm Retrieved 01/09/05
McLaren, J. and Zappala, G. (2003) ‘The ‘Digital Divide’ Among Financially Disadvantged Families in Australia,’ First Monday: peer reviewed journal on the Internet Available: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/mclaren/index.html Retrieved 10/10/05
Petre, D. and Harrington, D. (1996) The Clever Country: Australia’s Digital Future, Sydney: Macmillan, p. 15. ISBN 0732908809
