Williams recently announced that he will only be minister until the next election, after which he's retiring from Parliament. Williams achieved a lot in his seven months in the job, at least compared with his predecessor, but Richard Alston didn't set a very high standard.
In business, if you had a department that never seemed to achieve anything, and the last two managers had resigned within seven months of each other, you'd start to think there was something not quite right about that department. But not achieving anything useful in the IT arena seems to be one of the Howard Government's policy goals, so perhaps they think Alston and Williams have done a bang-up job.
Williams has also been a lot more willing than his predecessor to deal with the IT media and get involved in debate, something we hope will continue with whoever succeeds him. But who will that be?
IT Shadow Minister Kate Lundy is an odd choice for IT Minister: she knows about IT and has strong opinions about how technology can be used to make Australia a better place.
Not achieving anything useful in the IT arena seems to be one of the Howard Government's policy goals, so perhaps they think Alston and Williams have done a bang-up job.
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But this is something that can be debated with the industry and the media, and if we know anything about Kate Lundy, it will be. Of course Labor has to win the election first, and even if it does, the party generally has so far not taken IT anywhere near as seriously as Lundy does.
If the Coalition wins, PM Howard (or PM Costello?) will have slim pickings trying to find a suitable IT Minister from the crop of politicos currently on the front bench. But if we cast the net a little wider, we're sure we can find a suitable minister somewhere. For instance:
Know of any other suitable candidates? Send your thoughts to edit@zdnet.com.au or Talkback below.
This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
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