Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

How pleased I am to see a good crowd in here to hear what I have to say; thank you for attending! I address the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. As has become the norm in this parliament, this is yet another assault on rural and regional Australia. It is an attack on a quarantined, guaranteed income put in place to ensure that rural Australia will be serviced long into the future—a guaranteed income of $400 million every three years going forward forever just stripped away and supposedly spent on a broadband network, but we do not know where. This income stream was to be the future of rural and regional Australia, the next wave of technology, to provide regional Australia with the tools to compete in this modern world.

Like the recent announcements on taxes for heavy transport in the form of enormous increases for registration and a rise in fuel excise, this once again proves that the government has little empathy for regional and rural Australia and sees us as the skinny kid on the beach to kick around. The government will of course claim a mandate for this move; it is after all a policy they took to the last election. But I believe I also have a mandate, and that is to oppose this bill. The issue of broadband rollout and the ongoing provision of technological services to rural and regional Australia was one of the central issues of my successful electoral campaign.

I repeatedly warned the electorate of the intention of the Labor Party to make a raid on rural Australia’s future, seizing the $2 billion fund put in place to ensure our ability to be serviced in the fast-changing world of telecommunications. I warned that the government’s proposal to extend a fibre-to-the-node network to 98 per cent of Australia is inappropriate and undeliverable.

Even now, as the Labor Party bring this legislation before the parliament, they still have no practical plan on how to achieve this rollout—12 months after the announcement of the government’s intentions and still no plan. What will happen is that the $2 billion will be spent in the planning phase and the beginning of the city rollout, all at the expense of our country businesses, students and families. On page 6 of the concluding comments for this bill, it says:

... the Bill leaves open the possibility that the original focus on telecommunications in rural, regional and remote Australia will be abandoned.

Let us have a look at the historical crocodile tears of the Labor Party on this issue. On page 3 of the Labor Party senators’ dissenting report on the T3 sale, which included the establishment of the telecommunication fund—and I point that this was way back when Labor professed to care about rural electorates—it says:

... the Howard Government has failed to ensure that telecommunications services in rural and regional Australia are up to scratch.

The Labor Party was clearly concerned about rural Australia then. The report goes on to say—again on page 3:

Labor Senators do not believe that the quantum of the Communications Fund will be adequate to address these problems.

Clear and welcome concern for rural Australia. So what would you expect this government to do to alleviate this problem on coming to power? Will they make sure this alleged shortfall is made up? Will they increase the fund? No. Their compassion and commitment to rural Australia leads them to abolish the fund, take the money away and spend it who knows where, on a nebulous rollout plan—almost certainly it will all be spent well before the issue of country broadband even gets on the agenda. After all, this scheme is not even due for completion until 2013. Regional Australia’s provision for an equitable broadband network will be well and truly gone long before then.

This really is a case of big brother raiding little brother’s piggy bank so he can take his girlfriend to the pictures. He knows he is strong enough to get away with it no matter what his little brother does, he knows it will make his girlfriend happy and he cannot see far enough into the future to see the downside. But there will be one, because when Christmas comes around little brother will not have enough money for his present. Even if he did, big brother would be the last person on his shopping list. So there will be an electoral backlash for this decision. Country electors will not be happy when they are left behind and they realise the cupboard is bare and the money all gone.

I refer to a quote by a former Prime Minister, Paul Keating. I do not make a habit of quoting Mr Keating but I think this one is worth it: ‘You should never stand between a state premier and a bucket of money.’ The Prime Minister was never a state premier, but we do know he was the next best thing to it, as the senior bureaucrat behind the throne during the Goss years in Queensland. He certainly learnt the behaviour pattern Mr Keating was referring to. He could not wait to get his hands on the money. He could not wait to get stuck into the cash that belongs to rural Australia to ensure they did not have to go back cap in hand to government every time the inevitable happens, every time there is a new technological innovation.

The purpose of the telecommunications fund was to provide an ongoing income stream for rural Australia ad infinitum, an estimated $400 million every three years going forward, forever. Where is Labor’s guarantee for the future? How will they ensure that rural Australia does not operate at a permanent disadvantage in this vital area of telecommunications in the future? The lack of information about the government’s proposals is telling. Where is the plan to deliver fibre to the node for 98 per cent of the nation? Can this be achieved in an electorate like Grey, which covers more than 900,000 square kilometres, where we have centres as distant as Ceduna and Penong way out on the west coast and Coober Pedy and Marla Bore in the north? Many of these remote communities are nowhere near phone exchanges, and the people living on farms are in the same situation. The nature of fibre to the node prescribes that you must live within four kilometres of an exchange. For large numbers of people in my electorate, that unfortunately is not the case. It just shows how out of touch this concept is with the reality on the ground.

What will happen in the future? I would like to take you back just a little. I was quite taken by the remarks of the member for Groom when he talked about the party line phone set-up he had when he was first married. I still remember when our district was one of the last in Australia to move to fully automated phone exchanges and underground phone lines. What luxury, moving to those beautiful round dials that went click, click, click and no longer picking up the receiver to see if someone else was on the line. It did have some advantages, though. Mrs Bentley could always tell you not to waste your time because the Baldocks had gone to bed or were away on holidays for a few days.

When we moved to automatic phones it was the height of technology. No-one could possibly imagine what could be done to improve the system—we had the max already. How wrong could we have been? We collectively had no idea of photocopiers or fax machines, of mobile phones, of computers and digital technology. It is an oft used quote, but I will use it again anyway. The head of IBM in 1943 famously said, ‘There is a world market for maybe five computers.’ An engineer in advanced computing systems with IBM in 1968 said of the microchip, ‘But what is it good for?’ We are only limited by our imagination. Unfortunately, in this case, the government are severely limited by their imagination. They think broadband is the automatic phone of the sixties, the last word in technological revolutions.

The question remains: how will we pay for the next wave? The passing of the bill to enable the T3 sale, establishing the telecommunications fund, was the opportunity to take the politics out of providing an essential service in a competitive market. It was a breakthrough, a long-term commitment to rural Australia. As it will stand if this bill is passed, the country will have to go cap in hand to the government every time we need an update. I strongly oppose this amendment bill as just another attack on rural Australia. It is ill thought out. It appears to me that the government has no plan to deal with the explosion of telecommunications which we will continue to see in the 21st century. We do not know yet what tomorrow offers. There has been talk about telecommunications networks running down powerlines. Do we know what the next step will be? Certainly my imagination is not enough to present that, but we do know it will happen. As certainly as night follows day and as certainly as the sun will come up tomorrow, we know that there will be the next jump. And we do know that there will not be a fund to pay for it.

While I recognised earlier in my speech that the government went to the electorate and told them what they were going to do with this issue, in opposing this bill I feel it is my responsibility to my electors to stand up and make their point. My electors in the vast electorate of Grey feel as though they are being shortchanged by this policy. We are going to have to concentrate, as we go forward, on how we bring the government back to the playing field where we can say we need that commitment from the government again. Is it going to wait until we achieve another Liberal government so that we can say, ‘We can look after the country again in the future’? I hope not. I hope that in fact we can achieve that now by opposing this bill and leaving the telecommunications fund in place.

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