Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Wentworth because, just as the member for Casey, the former shadow minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, gave me the most hilarious laughs during the federal election campaign with this policy—which remains, may I say, coalition policy today—the member for Wentworth has followed it up with an article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald where he quotes Deng Xiaoping, no less: ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom in broadband field’. He has taken inspiration from Deng Xiaoping. I do believe he is leading a Maoist insurgency against the Leader of the Opposition. We welcome that on this side. The other thing I would say, while we are quoting Deng Xiaoping, is that another one of his best quotes is ‘To get rich is glorious.’ He is hardly the man who is going to deliver accessible and affordable broadband for all when he takes inspiration from Deng Xiaoping.

One of the other things that is so hilarious about the article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning is the member for Wentworth’s assertion that Japan and Korea have shown no significant productivity benefits from having a fibre-to-the-home, high-speed broadband network. I think we should help him pack his Louis Vuitton case, put him on his Learjet and send him to Tokyo and Seoul to see exactly what productivity gains are being made there. And do not take it from me. Let us have a look at the International Telecommunication Union and their case study of Korea. They say, ‘Well, isn’t it amazing that Korea has managed to do so well’. In fact, they call Korea an economic miracle in growth thanks to ICT. This is despite the fact that Korea is not demographically suited to having the highest internet penetration in Asia. It is not demographically suited to have the best communications with other countries, because they have their own language. Yet they have such a high rate of productivity growth, and why is that? That is because of their investments over many decades in high-speed fibre broadband networks.

I continue to be amazed by those opposite who wade into this debate and think that it is a question of wireless versus fibre, that somehow fibre is not going to be able to deliver all the solutions that we need. As a short lesson, whilst a variety of technologies—as I have said in this place—will be employed in order to deliver high-speed broadband, they all require one thing. They require a backbone that will be sufficient to carry all the communications on it. I quote from the Broadband Commission who presented their case to the UN:

A high-capacity fibre optic packet transport backbone is the fundamental backbone infrastructure that countries need to deploy to support the growth in broadband services.

For those who are opposed to the NBN, who continually come in here and say that the government has picked one technology over another, this assertion is an absolute nonsense. As anyone will tell you—and this is known by those who go onto many of the blogs and technology websites where intelligent people have been contributing to this debate—the fibre based NBN backbone augments all other technologies because it is a technology neutral backbone. Nothing is faster than the speed of light. It alone has the capacity to achieve what is absolutely needed to deliver ubiquitous high-speed broadband all around the world.

You do not need to take this from me. Even at the Comms Alliance conference yesterday and on Tuesday, NBN Co., Telstra and Optus made the point that wireless broadband and fixed broadband are complements to rather than substitutes for each other. Optus went on to say that you might group HSDPA with ADSL and LTE with HFC as potential substitutes on a service-by-service basis, but there is no wireless technology that could be grouped with GPON which is the basis of the National Broadband Network. We have endorsement for what we are doing in this country from people like Eric Schmidt, the former CEO and now Executive Chairman of Google. What he has to say is truly instructive:

Let me start by saying Australia is leading the world in understanding the importance of fibre. Your new Prime Minister … has announced that … 93 per cent of Australians … will have gigabit or equivalent service using fibre. And the other 7 per cent will be handled through wireless services of a nature of LTE.

This is important. He goes on to say:

This is leadership. And again, from Australia, which I think is wonderful.

Eric Schmidt is one of the leading telco and communications experts in the world. It also amazes me that the Leader of the Opposition, both in here and publicly, seems to always have an opinion on a topic that he obviously knows nothing about. His latest effort over the break when he was talking about the NBN is a special:

It’s pretty obvious that the main usage for the NBN is going to be internet-based television, video entertainment and gaming.

For the Leader of the Opposition to claim that the NBN will be used only to watch TV and play games shows just how little he knows about the issue. A lot of people made comments on what he had to say and I could not have expressed it better than this person in a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald who captured it perfectly:

The complete failure of the Leader of the Opposition to grasp the potential of next-generation communications networks is appalling—and unbelievably embarrassing for Australia were he ever to become prime minister.

I could not have said it better myself. While we are on the issue of people who have a very limited understanding of technology, the member for Wentworth, during the break, was talking about his iPad in the Sydney Morning Herald and how good it was. He said he did not need a fixed line because he had wifi. Telco 101 will tell you that wifi is actually processed through a wireless router which is in turn connected to a fixed-line connection. For these people who obviously have no idea how the technology works to come in here and start lecturing us about how wireless should be the solution beggars belief.

I am glad that the member for Ryan is in the chamber, because I think listening to people is important and you often learn things from people in this place. I have been very interested over the last couple of months to hear the member for Ryan talk about a broadband delivery system happening in Brisbane thanks to Brisbane City Council. She said, ‘Why do we need the NBN when we have this fantastic partnership in Brisbane which is going through the sewers and delivering broadband far better than the NBN ever could?’ She brought it up again on Monday when she spoke in the debate on my private member’s motion. She said:

… the City of Brisbane is delivering this—

this being high-speed broadband—

to every household and every ratepayer in the city at no cost to the ratepayer and at no cost to the city.

I thought that was too good to be true—and guess what? It is. Yesterday you had only to look at the CommsDay headline ‘Brisbane flushes sewer broadband plans’:

Brisbane City Council has reportedly washed its hands of plans to install a broadband network through its sewer system ahead of the NBN rollout, abandoning its relationship with i3 Asia Pacific, the firm that was aiming to splash out $600 million on the scheme. According to the Brisbane Times, Lord Mayor Campbell Newman dumped the project.

For those opposite who have been holding up for so many months that this is a fantastic alternative broadband plan, I will let that speak for itself. Yet again we have had those opposite stand up and say, ‘No, we need to let the market in; the market needs to be able to deliver.’ The member for Wentworth talked about how 30 per cent of Australia enjoys access to a cable network. That is right: it is a coaxial cable that goes down the eastern seaboard. Do not worry about anyone else who cannot connect to it. By the way, as much as he would like to say that this is a substitute for fibre, I have another little technology lesson. Cable is the same as spectrum in terms of it being a shared resource. You will never get the capacity and speeds that you need for the uploads we need in the 21st century purely on cable.

Yet again, those opposite have come in here purely attached to their policy that is over six months old. They have not replaced it yet. Regardless of anything else that happens, their policy is to cancel the NBN. Again today we see another appalling attempt to deny young people, to deny regional Australia and to deny the future of young Australians. (Time expired)

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