Election 2010: What did Australia really care about?
BuzzNumbers is pleased to welcome Shaun Leung as the newest member of the BN team. Shaun’s come on board as a Marketing and Communications intern, and makes his debut blog post below. Welcome to the team, Shaun!
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Decision 2010 will be remembered when Labor dished up a gigantic platter of mix and matched policies while the Coalition enthusiastically rambled about “stopping the boats.” But what did Australians really care about?
Simply put, we wanted faster internet.
While the general media would have us believe that mining and immigration policies were the foremost issues, our monitoring on BuzzElections® tracked more than 10,240 conversations about the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN). All other topics were overshadowed; immigration generated a paltry 161 mentions in comparison.
Labor’s $43 billion NBN proposed to increase internet speeds up to 1Gps for 93% of Australians through fibre-optic cables. Meanwhile the Coalition’s cheaper $6 billion alternative merely sought to maximise the current (albeit outdated) telecommunications infrastructure. But in only offering 12Mps, the upgrade is akin to expanding a congested freeway with a cycleway.
The exponential growth of social media is here to stay and will continue to expand. Exploiting its rich multimedia and interactive content will allow firms and organisations to retain and attract current and future clientele. Australia will lose international competitiveness and relevance if we fail to lay the tarmac of tomorrow’s information superhighways – an extra bicycle lane simply cannot suffice.
Given the hung parliament over the last 17 days, Australia’s NBN future looked uncertain. However, a decision has finally been announced, with Labor managing to score a one seat majority in the parliament. Of particular note is independent MP for New England – Tony Windsor, who sided with Labor on the promise of National Broadband Network implementation.
Sounds like rural Australians want their Youtube videos too.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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