Buy Australian: Online Orders Surge As Retailers Lag - Online Shopping Australia

The number of online orders to Australian businesses increased by almost a third during the 2010-11 financial year.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics research released on Tuesday showed that local businesses received online orders worth $189 billion in the 12 months to June 30, 2011, an increase of $46 billion, or 32 per cent, on the previous corresponding period.

However, the data also showed that only 28 per cent of business said they had received orders via the internet, a mere 13 per cent increase on the previous year.

In contrast, more than half of businesses in Australia, 51 per cent, reported placing orders for goods and services on the internet in last financial year, up nine per cent in the previous year, ABS data showed.

In another troubling sign, just below 40 per cent of business reported ‘‘some form of innovative activity’’ in 2010-11, the ABS said, with 66 per cent of large businesses reporting activities to boost efficiency and lower costs. Only 30 per cent of companies with four employees or less reported the same, the ABS said.

The gap between businesses receiving orders online and those placing them highlighted the demand for changes by local industries and the constraints that many businesses in Australia work under. The slow pace of innovation in Australia has held back the nation’s overall productivity, an area of concern for the central bank and economists.

RBA forecasts of economic growth routinely factor in improvements in productivity to achieve the expansion, yet productivity in Australia has lagged in recent years.

RBA governor Glenn Stevens recently urged politicians to follow the suggestions of the productivity commission in order to boost the the efficiencies and lower the cost in the economy.

Australia’s economy, while expanding by 1.3 per cent in the first quarter, has been riven by disparities in performance between mining and non-mining states and industries.

Macquarie senior economist Brian Radican said that internet usage in Australia is lower than in the comparable economies of the US or UK.

Yet, the distances in Australia suggest that the internet usage for commerce could have a larger benefit locally.

“A deeper embrace of its use by Australian business could arguably have a bigger benefit here than it would in other regions,” he said.

Across all sectors 40 to 43 per cent of businesses had a website.
But while 97 per cent of large business had a website, only a third of small businesses reported having one.

“If firms can drive some of the costs out of businesses, they can produce more for less,” he said.
However, Mr Radican cautioned that Australia’s weaker productivity was also driven by industrial relations challenges and other factors.

Google: Government Requests to Censor Content 'Alarming'

Google has received more than 1000 requests from authorities to take down content from its search results or YouTube video in the last six months of 2011, the company said on Monday, denouncing what it said was an alarming trend.

In its twice-yearly Transparency Report, the world's largest web search engine said the requests were aimed at having some 12,000 items overall removed, about a quarter more than during the first half of last year.

"Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different," Dorothy Chou, the search engine's senior policy analyst, said in a blogpost. "We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not."

Many of those requests targeted political speech, keeping up a trend Google said it has noticed since it started releasing its Transparency Report in 2010.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," said Chou. (http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/more-transparency-into-government.html)

In the second half of last year, Google complied with around 65 per cent of court orders and 47 per cent of informal requests to remove content, it said.

The censorship report offers an overview of which officials have asked Google to delete content and why.

In one case, Spanish regulators asked Google to remove 270 links to blogs and newspaper articles criticising public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors.

So far Google has not complied. In March, Spain's highest court asked the European Court of Justice to examine whether requests by citizens to have content removed were lawful.

In some countries, Google says it has no choice but to submit to these requests, because certain types of political speech are unlawful.

In Germany, the company removes videos from YouTube with Nazi references because these are banned.

Chou said that in Thailand videos featuring the monarch with a seat over his head have been removed for insulting the monarchy. The country has some of the world's toughest "lese- majeste" laws.

In Canada, Google was asked by officials to get rid of a YouTube video showing a citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. But in that instance the company refused.

Google and many other online providers maintain that they cannot lawfully remove any content for which they are merely the host and not the producer, a principle enshrined in EU law on eCommerce since 2000.

In January 2012 the European Union's executive Commission announced it would introduce clearer guidelines on handling such requests, outlining under which circumstances it would be legal to have content removed from the Web and when it would curb free speech and fundamental rights.

The Commission has launched a public consultation called "a clean and open internet" and has asked companies how many requests they get to take down content, from whom and for what reason.

Among examples of material that should be taken down EU regulators cite racist content, child abuse or spam. The rules are expected to be announced before the end of the year.

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