Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Kingsford Smith interrupts. He has been here five minutes. He should go back and search the records. It was a political issue of the time. The Labor government did not even try to defend itself. Michael Lee was the then minister for communications. He stood at this dispatch box day after day, befuddled and bemused and unable to answer questions as to what Australians outside the capital areas would do for mobile phone services when the Labor Party switched off the analog service.

Let us turn to current day policy. I thought the member for Melbourne let himself down with his personalised attacks on the Prime Minister. His was a lame attempt at humour, drawing on the Blue Hills radio program. If that is the best he can do for some five or six minutes of a 15-minute speech then the Labor Party, on this issue of telecommunications broadband policy, is even more troubled than is patently obvious. Notwithstanding the fact that the member for Melbourne proffered no real alternative to the government’s Australia Connected, we have an opportunity—and the members of the government will ensure that as many Australians as possible also have this opportunity—to compare the government’s broadband policy with the Labor Party’s proposal. It is not worthy of the title ‘policy’. How can a two-page statement amount to a policy? What we do know is that the Labor Party, in comparison to the government, is going to pay more and get less. With the government, there are no taxpayer funds involved—it is a private sector investment of approximately $850 million. With the Labor Party, it is a taxpayer investment of $4.7 billion. Even then, experts tell us that the proposal will not achieve what it undertakes to achieve. We know also that the Labor Party’s policy proposal has coverage of only 75 per cent of Australians, with the complete abandonment of the remaining 25 per cent of Australians—rural and regional residents. We can compare this to the government’s policy, which will achieve 99 per cent coverage, with the remaining one per cent receiving a generous subsidy to help connect to broadband. We leave no-one behind in the broadband debate. The Labor Party picks and chooses who amongst the Australian population it wants to support.

I was amazed that the member for Melbourne, in what little time he left himself after his derogatory comments of a personal kind about the Prime Minister, attacked the technology of the government’s Australia Connected policy, WiMAX. This is odd, given that the shadow minister for communications, Senator Conroy, at a conference on 2 May 2005, said this about wireless technology:

A more complex possibility created by emerging telecommunication technologies is the potential for efficiency gains presented by the utilisation of wireless virtual private networks in rural and regional areas. With access to a wireless broadband virtual private network, a farmer could design a farm that is completely connected up and allows him to monitor his property and control his machinery from the comfort of his home.

Then Senator Conroy went on to lament the absence of such a technology:

However, these possibilities can only be realised if rural and regional communities have access to the infrastructure used to deliver these services. Unfortunately, this infrastructure is not currently widely available in rural and regional Australia.

It most certainly will be available under this government. It is this government that is introducing the wireless technology that Senator Conroy, two years ago, could only dream of. He did not even commit to the technology—even though he cited it as being of invaluable benefit to rural and regional Australians—because it would be beyond the technical and financial capacity of the Australian government. The member for Melbourne describes the WiMAX technology that the government has adopted as a ‘second-rate’ and ‘half-baked’ technology, yet this same technology is proven throughout the world. Countries that are either adopting it now or planning its deployment are: Canada, the United States, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan—and the list goes on and on. So this is such a second-rate and half-baked technology that it is the current technology being used by countries throughout the world that have regard to distance and remote locations. But that is a foreign concept to the Labor Party, who can never see beyond the metropolitan areas for their policy, which will be funded $4.7 billion by the taxpayer and another approximately $4 billion, so they claim, from the private sector, and which will reach only metropolitan Australia. If you are going to make policy in a highly complex and technically challenging area on the run, this is what you end up with. You end up with a policy which totally lacks credibility and which does a grave disservice to the Australian people—if not a betrayal of the Australian people, who expect informed, considered and creditable policies from their major political parties. But do not take my word about the worth of the Labor Party’s proposal. Let me quote ABN-AMRO, a major financial institution, who declared that Labor’s proposal would:

… take the industry back 20 years to government provision, goldplating and restricted rollout.

ABN-AMRO said that Labor’s proposal:

… does not resolve access regulation issues but entrenches them and adds new inefficiencies.

What about Ross Gittins, the economic editor of the Sydney Morning Herald? On 26 March this year he dismissed the plan as ‘a waste of taxpayers’ money, no matter how it is funded’ and ‘a cynical bribe’. On 27 March this year the economics editor of the Australian Financial Review, Alan Mitchell, said that the Leader of the Opposition’s ‘political commitment to the high-speed broadband network has been made without serious evaluation of the likely costs and benefits’. Then we get Mark Clarity, a telecommunications analyst, saying that the ALP’s plan was ‘undershooting the mark’ and that:

… nothing in the Labor plan really addresses the backhaul issue. It doesn’t seem to be addressing … getting high-speed pipes into the regions so these access networks actually have something to connect to.

The Labor Party’s proposal has been derided. Yet the Labor Party have the hide or the cheek—or the overconfidence perhaps—to put up for discussion as a matter of public importance in the parliament the contrast between the regional impact of their proposal as against the government’s policy Australia Connected. Quite frankly, it is incredible to us that they would pitch an attack against the government. They have no credentials on this matter. The further we discuss and disseminate it in the Australian community the more people will come to realise and understand this. There are so many benefits from the Australia Connected proposal that we could sell it time and again—its coverage, the speed of the network and the new opportunities, economically and even socially, that it brings to rural Australians.

The government has not come to this debate late in the piece. We have been rolling out broadband initiatives with hundreds of millions of dollars of funding since 2002. That is why the government can produce such a creditable and private sector financed proposal that has won already wide acclaim. I invite the member for Kingsford Smith, who is shortly to contribute to this debate, to do something that the member for Melbourne did not do. He could not produce the critics of this proposal. It has been 48 hours. If people wish to come out of the woodwork and give an opinion we would like to hear it. I am not saying there is going to be a 100 per cent appraisal, because the Labor Party will have its supporters or friends in certain organisations, but let us hear from the well-established and trusted independent commentators or arbitrators on these issues. Let us hear from the farm organisations. The member for Kingsford Smith might like to quote the NFF or the New South Wales Farmers Association. They are never backward in reminding the government of its deficiencies, even as we strive to overcome them.

This is a debate we welcome. We would be pleased if we had this broadband debate every day of the remainder of the parliament and every day outside of the parliament. In fact, we will initiate it so that we can achieve as high an engagement rate as possible. We have a great story to tell. We have waited a long time to get this comprehensive installation of high-speed and affordable broadband. It has been years in the making. For the Labor Party to roll up at the last minute, jump on the bandwagon and try to equate their two-page proposal with our fully costed and technically competent plan defies belief. But, please, keep doing it so that we have more opportunities to convince Australians of our credentials as opposed to yours. (Time expired)

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