More selective reporting of OECD stats

Stuart Corner
Monday, 16 July 2007 18:02

Opinion and Analysis

I am no doubt starting to sound like a cracked record, but the selective use of OECD broadband data by our politicians to bolster their party's position is really starting to rankle.

Communications minister, Senator Helen Coonan, has seized on the just released OECD Communications Outlook to boast that "The OECD report demonstrated Australia’s strong comparative international performance, which in most indicators shows Australia as performing in the middle to upper range, above the OECD average."

In support of this statement, Coonan claims that "Australia has the third highest internet penetration in the world, behind only Switzerland and Sweden." True, but the OECD also said: "Some countries have a high percentage of total Internet subscribers using dial-up connections (Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, New Zealand, Poland and Greece). Which makes us somewhat behind our peers.

The she boasted that  "Among Australia’s broadband plans is the sixth cheapest broadband plan in the OECD on the basis of per megabit pricing." We are talking speed here, not download quotas. And yes, that is true but the spread for all countries is so large that this is of little significance. The same graph from which Coonan obtained this figure "Range of broadband prices per Mbit/s, October 2006, USD PPP" also shows Australia having the fourth most expensive broadband plan!

After quoting a couple more statistics selectively, Coonan said: "This is an outstanding achievement considering the particular challenges of providing telecommunications access at fair prices over a vast continent with a small population."

Then she concluded: "It is important to remember that no one comparative table or data set can be legitimately used as the measure of the situation of the industry or the experience of consumers in OECD countries: Australia’s performance must be considered as a whole using a range of indicators.”

For once I agree. Wholeheartedly. Unfortunately that statement made a mockery of everything else she had just said.