"It's a whopping amount of money," said another delegate, an accountant with an interest in technology. She said the economy is in good stead to handle the expenditure, but echoed concerns about return on investment.

"It's about time that we join the rest of the world," Jim Lawrence-Plant said. "We live in the Blue Mountains and we struggle to get 8Mbps. There are people that are entitled to Internet access that can't get it - they are lost in political rhetoric."

Efforts to convince the government to introduce an R18+ classification for video games have failed for more than 10 years. The gaming industry is seeking to introduce the rating to prevent the banning of games unsuitable for Australia's maximum MA15+ rating.

One delegate said video games can be too graphic, as he watched another player shoot through a level in popular war game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

"The consumer has more active participation in a game than a movie. Psychologists have said that can create real violence in a person -- it might be in 1 or 2 per cent and it might be dormant, but you can end up with something like [the 1996] Columbine [Massacre]," he said, but stopped short of deciding whether the rating was appropriate.