Tanner hands-on for mobile revolution

If it were up to federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner the iPhone would be as ubiquitous as the television. However, as the man responsible for making sure the nation's financial position remains as buoyant as possible, he knows that forking out big dollars for new technology is not always the most sound approach

"The iPhone and the equivalents that emerge are going to take over the world," he says.

"The capacity for people to do high-level communications processes from anywhere with these little gadgets is going to have an extraordinary impact on our society and our economy.

Describing himself as the Commonwealth's combination chief financial officer and chief operations officer, he is a long way from the parliamentary backbenches, where catching the occasional nap is not unheard of.

"Whether it's accounting, owning assets, procedures of government or even purchasing, I'm across it all. That means when I'm in Cabinet meetings I can't drift off and think it doesn't concern me any more, because now everything concerns me," he says.

Australia may be heading into an economic downturn, just how bad is it going to get for the tech sector?

There are clear signs of a slowdown but we had got to a point a year or so ago where the Australian economy was growing at an unsustainable rate and inflationary pressures were building. The failure of the previous government to invest in infrastructure was a major factor in that.

In the ICT sector, we are still well behind many comparable nations in broadband. We need to be careful not to talk ourselves into a downturn. There are signs that the economy is slowing but at the same time employment figures are still pretty healthy.

We are facing a chronic skills shortage in the public and private IT sectors. What do you think needs to be done to address it?

We've done a couple of things in the public sector. We've increased the number of apprenticeships and cadetships in an effort to give people opportunities and exposure to IT-related work.

There is a bigger issue here. The level of investment in skills in this country has been languishing for some time, so we are making that one of our crucial commitments to address. The issue spreads across most sectors of the economy but there is no question there are significant issues in the ICT sector.

Because of the endless process of outsourcing there are legitimate concerns about where we will replenish out workforce in 10 years.

It is very important for us to increase our investment in the technically related educational processes and institutions.

We already have some projects in the works but it's going to be a long haul.

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