Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It does not have to be sale proceeds; it can be government moneys, taxpayers’ money. There is $2 billion in the Communications Fund. There were commitments given by the government on the sale of Telstra about equity of access. We would all remember Peter Corish, the President of the National Farmers Federation, when he made these comments. Barnaby Joyce, a senator from Queensland, said on those comments that there would be equity of access to broadband and basic telephone services. He said that the sale could go through and there would be future proofing for any new technology. Well, look at the shemozzle that is developing with the conversion from CDMA to Next G. Where is the future proofing in relation to the provision of that equity?

On the changeover from CDMA to Next G—and I raised this with the Prime Minister last week—there is a term ‘equivalence of service’ that is being bandied about. It is a bit like ‘up to scratch’, which was bandied about previously in relation to the sale. I asked the Prime Minister to define what ‘equivalence of service’ means. I have since found that the definition of ‘equivalence of service’ between the two networks, Next G and the old CDMA, will be determined by a truck driving around for eight days assessing the reception in various locations to see whether there is equivalence of service. You would be very interested to know, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, that that truck will not be going anywhere near Tasmania, but I am told it will go to New England. Presumably they will draw some analogy from New England and transfer it to Tasmania to see whether Tasmanians have any equivalence of service. That truck will not be going to Western Australia or the Northern Territory either. You can imagine how far it will go in eight days in terms of equivalence of service.

I think most of us lived through the Keating induced arrangements for analog into CDMA. I know the government has made great sway of that over time, and I have too because I thought it was badly done. But we have to make sure that with these very important pieces of infrastructure, whether for the future technology of Next G or for broadband facilities across the nation, the government plays a role, because I think that with the CDMA-Next G changeover the government has very little power through the licensing arrangements to change the timetable, irrespective of any equivalence of service. So I would like the next speaker to explain, if he would, what he understands to be equivalence of service for country and city people. (Time expired)

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