Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think they had eight plans over 11 years, and no action. We all know that in 2007—I know the member for Kingston can remember campaigning in 2007 about the internet—the Liberal Party's failure on this policy was writ large and was there for all to see. We were just at the beginning of people's need for high-speed internet. That need, as we know, has only grown over that time.

Let us remember where we began before the National Broadband Network came to be and before this debate came to be. We had dealt with 11 years of inaction in a vital area of microeconomic reform and a vital area of the growing and emerging economy. For all the now Prime Minister's talk about and agility and innovation, his party shows none of that. Their history on this is appalling. When we got to government there was basically a sclerotic system based largely around Telstra, but Telstra did not have the incentive to invest in high-speed internet in places like Craigmore or Andrews Farm or anywhere else. We had a situation where in fact there were significant disincentives for them to invest and upgrade their facilities.

I can remember having a discussion with Telstra in which they basically told me they were not going to upgrade the exchange in Craigmore, a growing suburb, because there was no money in it for them—they would put in all the infrastructure, and pay for that, and then other carriers would monopolise their market. So during the Howard era we had significant disincentives for investment in internet infrastructure, in the then sclerotic copper network.

When Labor came to government we had a bold and agile policy of innovation when we said we were going to have 'fibre to the preference'.

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