Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a big issue, Member for Throsby. Thank you for your support. I am looking forward to seeing further progress on this matter in the coming weeks. I wanted to take the time to reflect on another development that stems from the improved access to broadband. As much as the emergence of the digital economy is opening up commercial and employment opportunities, other industries will confront issues as a result of access to broadband. The committee heard evidence that flagged the impact on Australia's postal sector. The spread of the internet off a platform with access to super-fast broadband is impacting on postal operations worldwide. Businesses, especially those who have traditionally been large users of postal services, are actively replacing physical forms of communication with electronic ones. The subsequent contraction in letter volumes is the single biggest challenge confronting the business model of traditional postal operations, forcing many to restructure.

Conversely, as much as the internet is leading to fewer letters, it is also leading to a growth in parcel delivery off the back of consumer purchases via the net. In Australia, our postal service experienced volume growth for most of the last decade until 2008, when the GFC fully hit. Over the last two years, the trends that have been evident for some time in overseas markets have emerged here, with mail volumes falling in both 2009 and 2010. Domestic letter volumes fell by 4.1 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively, over those periods and revenues grew only slightly. These factors have led to postal operators exploring new ways of diversifying their operations. For example, in the UK the government and the postal service are working to reposition that service over four years via modernisation of the network. However, while the UK has a large population and a smaller land mass than Australia, Australia's population growth is spread over a very large area. Considering the demand for postal services in regional Australia, along with the employment it requires, this will be an issue for policymakers here.

While Australia Post has embarked on organisational restructuring, committing $20 million over three years to prepare its 40,000 employees, there is a need to retrain the workforce and to help them deal with the industry transformation that will be occurring. I believe strongly that we do need greater structural assistance for Australia Post to help it to deal with the issues it faces.

Finally, I want to reflect on the minority report that bookends this report—minority by logic, evidence and support. While there were three opposition MPs on the committee, it appears that one member—the member for Bradfield—has really driven this minority report. You only need to see the number of times he has inserted himself into Hansard in the report to get a sense of that. Some of the arguments were pleading for evidence or reality to support them. We had the same tired arguments about cost-benefit analysis. I mentioned that the Deloitte report says $50 billion of economic worth is generated by the internet in this country, but that was then derided by the opposition because it did not fit a convenient argument that they are peddling. They ran the same old argument that no-one supports fibre to the premises, even though the ACCC reckons that this is the best competitive model and it provides greater benefit than fibre to the node. They also had some astounding claims. Here is one standout quote from the minority report: 'There is no overwhelming demand for high-speed fibre-to-the-home broadband. On the contrary, demand is weak and interest is low.' In this day and age, they think that there is no demand for high-speed internet in Australian homes. And, they reckon, we should have inquired about the benefit of the NBN before we announced it. We should have inquired about whether or not we should have an NBN, but they tried 19 times to improve broadband in this country and were unable to get their act together. They reckon that we do not need 100 megabits per second, so do they think that relying on copper will deliver higher speeds than we have now? Really, it comes down to a choice between whether you continue to roll out copper or you go to fibre, which will inherently allow for higher speeds.

They reckon that because people do not know the full potential of the NBN we should not invest in broadband. They also argue that hospitals and businesses have access to high-speed broadband and that should be enough to satisfy the public—an insane argument. Then there is the worn-out argument that claims the net cannot be accessed because of high prices, and they reckon that people cannot spend money on broadband, as evidenced by the member for Wentworth today. Absurd.

I represent electorate that has a broad range of households of varying levels of wealth. To demonstrate how weak that argument was from the member for Wentworth, which claimed that people do not or cannot use the net because of costs, let me contrast this with the take-up of subscription TV. Depending on the package you take with subscription TV, the cost roughly compares to the prices that exist out there for broadband packages. In Chifley, I am told that access to subscription TV is up to nearly 50 per cent of households. There is not a cost barrier preventing people taking up subscription TV or broadband, because a lot of those households are already there. In fact, the uptake of subscription TV is actually lower than that of broadband. Cost is not the barrier but access to the network is. I have spoken in this place of suburbs like Woodcroft and Doonside that are screaming to get internet access and cannot do so because they cannot get access to ADSL, and wireless is too slow and weighed down by consumer numbers. They would love hearing the coalition's claim there is no overwhelming demand for high-speed, fibre-to-the-home broadband.

I commend the report and congratulate the opposition on their consistency. They were unable to deliver broadband in their time and are now absolutely determined to wreck the chance of others to get access to technology that their constituents enjoy. We had today this elitist argument from the member for Wentworth whose constituents enjoy high-speed broadband access. He worked so hard to stop people on the Central Coast, on the South Coast, in the Illawarra and in Western Sydney to gain access to high-speed broadband because he thought they should not get access to broadband, while his constituents currently enjoy it. I commend the report to the House.

See this speech in context