Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 21 November 2006 11:24
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Every year around this time the Australian Communications and Media Authority's annual telecommunications report is tabled in Parliament and seized on by the Minister as evidence of the multibillion dollar economic benefits of the Government's 1997 telecommunications reforms.
Here's what she said this week:
"The Australian economy is $15.2 billion larger due to Australian Government reforms to liberalise the telecommunications industry, according to an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report presented to Parliament today."
And in 2005:
"The Australian economy is $12.4 billion larger because of Government reforms to liberalise the telecommunications industry according to an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report presented to Parliament today by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan."
Last year Coonan left it at that, and devoted the rest of her press release to highlight statistics from the ACMA report. This year, she really got carried away.
"Since the Howard Government deregulated the telecommunications market in 1997, the Australian economy has grown by $15.2 billion, with flow-on effects worth $1.9 billion in terms of household consumption in 2005-06 alone. More than 17,550 jobs in the telecommunications sector were created in the last financial year alone and new investment of $660 million was also generated. The strong and sustainable economic benefits of telecommunications reform are clear."
Coonan made great use of last year's $12.4 billion figure, trotting it out repeatedly in any speech where it was remotely appropriate and will no doubt do the same with this year's enlarged result.
But these figures never get examined in any detail. So just where do they come from? The first thing to note is that they are cumulative; each year an estimate is made for that year and added on to the previous year's result. So any errors get perpetuated.
