Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Minister for Workforce Participation) Share this | Hansard source

When I became the member for Murray in 1996, like other members, perhaps, I had all these calls to my electorate office from my constituents complaining about mobile phones not working or there being no coverage and about ancient exchanges where you could not get a fax to work. In 2006, all that has changed. We have had the most phenomenal—I would call it a revolution—upgrading of telecommunications right across Australia, especially in rural and regional Australia. Thank goodness the Howard government was elected in 1996, otherwise it would have taken us longer to catch up as we were so far behind the eight ball. I doubt that even 15 years of effort would have brought us to where we are today. As the member for Scullin said, we were in a 20-year lag. We have now caught up substantially.

Australia in particular continues to record very strong broadband take-up. The member for Scullin is most concerned about broadband. During the 12 months to December 2005, the number of broadband subscribers increased 85 per cent to 2.8 million. This is the most amazing increase of 1.3 million subscribers from December 2004. Most recently Telstra celebrated its one millionth broadband customer. That is the most extraordinary uptake. If we, in a country as large as ours, do not have the world’s best telecommunications then we will never be the clever country that we can be and are fast becoming.

The latest OECD figures show that our broadband penetration has moved amazingly from 21st to 17th place overall. Australia is the fifth fastest growing broadband market in the OECD. As at December 2005, 5.7 million Australians had access to broadband at home. Regional uptake of broadband increased by 137 per cent—twice as fast as the metropolitan uptake. The member for Scullin is most concerned about the outer suburbs. I agree that, in the past, they have been the poor relations. But no more. In the 12 months to December 2005, regional areas had a 137 per cent uptake and metropolitan areas had a 63 per cent uptake. I have to confess that we had problems before 1996. Telecommunications across Australia were not adequate. We were hamstrung and stymied. It was a joke. Before 1996, you could not run a home business using IT in Australia. But now you can.

Labor has produced a broadband plan. It says that, in government, it would spend millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to subsidise broadband in metropolitan markets—including Sydney and Melbourne, where it has happened commercially anyway. We were a bit concerned that, within a week of introducing Labor’s broadband plan, Senator Conroy was not sure about the total cost of the proposed new network. He said that would be worked out later.

We share the member for Scullin’s concern about all Australians having access to the world’s best broadband and other telecommunications systems, whatever they might be—and we are not even aware at this moment of what they will be in the future. It is our government’s intention to prepare the telecommunications market in Australia to be the most competitive possible, and that is why we are progressing down this path. We have had the most extraordinary uptake of broadband, and may it continue. Certainly my electorate is applauding the day the Howard government got into power and could do this.

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