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

I thank the member for her question and acknowledge her longstanding advocacy for her community to receive the best-quality broadband. Labor, of course, founded the NBN with the purpose of providing fast, reliable and affordable broadband for all Australians. That's why we're investing $2.4 billion over four years to give an additional 1½ million premises full fibre access, including almost 17½ thousand in the member for Corangamite's electorate alone. Our investment will also expand full fibre access to more than 660,000 additional regional homes and businesses that currently rely on copper wire. This will boost the reliability of services and the productivity of those businesses, and that supports remote work and learning and access to important services like telehealth.

The Albanese government understands the productivity benefits that are unleashed by the highest-quality technologies. Unfortunately, those benefits could not reach their full potential due to the poor technology choices made by the former government. It is just over a decade since the coalition launched its disastrous broadband policy that promised a second-rate multitechnology mix for $29 billion, which blew out to $58 billion, a doubling of costs.

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