Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Territories, Local Government and Major Projects) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for O'Connor for this very important question. He is an extremely strong advocate for the needs of his constituents when it comes to communications in remote areas. He has a huge electorate, which covers very long distances, as I saw on my visit to his electorate on 20 May, when we went from Albany through to Cranbrook, to Williams and to Perth. That was a good insight into the scale of his electorate, and, of course, many electorates represented by members on this side of the House will benefit very markedly from the long-term satellite service.

As the member correctly states in his question, on 1 October the first NBN satellite successfully launched from the Arianespace facility in French Guiana, heading for geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometres. This is an enormously important step. Satellite is a key technology for serving regional and remote Australia, and there has never been any political contention on that. All the technical advice has been consistent on that point. But what we saw from the other side of the House was a comprehensive mismanagement of the interim satellite service, leading to enormous frustration in regional and remote Australia. The previous government claimed that its interim satellite service could serve 250,000 premises. In fact, it only purchased enough transponder capacity to serve 48,000 premises. And the previous government failed to ensure that NBN had the technical and contractual tools required to manage the amount of data which retail service providers promised to supply end customers.

The long-term satellite service, by contrast, has been well managed by NBN, and we see that higher speeds than the interim satellite service will be available once commercial service commences—25 megabits per second peak speed down, five megabits per second peak speed up, markedly higher download capacity and 101 spot beams covering all of Australia—plus, I am pleased to note as minister for territories, Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and Cocos Island.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

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