Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw everything. The proposal by Labor involves coverage for all of Australia: 98 per cent of Australians will have coverage of a minimum of 12 megabits per second. It is the government’s proposal that involves only five major cities getting fibre optic—nowhere in Tasmania—only five major cities getting the true broadband network and the rest of Australia having to put up with a cobbled together, bits and pieces operation which will not meet the test of comparison with what is going to be available, if they succeed, in metropolitan Australia.

Their claim that Labor’s position threatens the superannuation of soldiers is simply despicable. There is a legal obligation on the part of the government, with or without any Future Fund and with or without their policies or our policies, to fulfil its defined benefit superannuation obligations, and that legal obligation will be honoured no matter who is in government—no matter that they take $5 billion out of the Future Fund for higher education or that we use the Telstra shares to finance a broadband network. Their misuse and playing of political games with soldiers and police for this purpose is simply despicable. The total picture can be summed up with one word: desperation—a government that is out of touch, stuck in the past, out of ideas and desperate to win. (Time expired)

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