Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This speech is for the benefit of the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, in the hope that she and the rest of the government will snap out of their complacency and bring Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure out of the Dark Ages. On 8 August this year, the day that Telstra announced that its plan for fibre broadband had fallen apart, the minister went on The 7.30 Report to claim that she had received no complaints about broadband in Australia. Allow me to introduce the minister to Craig Smith of Rockhampton. Here is what Mr Smith had to say about broadband in an email to me on 8 August:

In January this year we moved to Rockhampton after six years living in the remote and isolated town of Cloncurry.

We made the decision to move as our daughter’s education is of paramount importance to us as we wish her to have every opportunity available to her when she leaves school.

After moving I contacted Telstra regarding broadband. I was astonished when told that I lived too far from the Parkhurst exchange to guarantee service.

We reside at Norman Gardens—

a very nice suburb—

that is 3 and a half kilometres from the exchange. I could have been knocked over with a feather.

Here we are spending half a million dollars on a house, top rate for school fees and all the extra costs of living in a metropolitan regional area such as high rates, water fees, home and car insurance is higher etc. and I was being treated like I lived in the sticks.

Now our daughter is in the top percentage of grade fours in Australia and over the next couple of years will be doing projects and assignments that will require a fast and reliable broadband Internet access.

I now read today that Telstra will be sold even without the guarantee of upgraded broadband. You can guess what we are telling all and sundry about buying in this area.

Well, it should not be Mr Smith and his family who have to move on; it should be the minister, for failing Australian families and businesses who deserve better than Third World levels of internet access and speed. It will come as no surprise to Mr Smith, or the other people in my electorate who have contacted me over their inability to access high-speed broadband, when I point out how far Australia is falling behind the rest of the world in terms of access and speed.

You can take your pick of statistics. The OECD surveyed 30 countries and ranked Australia 17th for the take-up of 256 kbps broadband. The World Economic Forum ranks Australia 25th in the world in terms of internet bandwidth. And the World Bank found that Australia’s average ADSL speed of barely one mbps is one of the slowest in the world compared to countries like Britain, the US, Germany, France and Canada. I think that the people in my electorate would agree with James Packer’s recent description of Australia’s broadband position as ‘embarrassing’.

I think the Smiths are entitled to pursue their dreams for their young daughter, knowing that their government shares their hopes and ambitions for all Australians both now and into the future and knowing that their government is committed to providing the vital infrastructure if Australia is to compete on an equal footing with the rest of the world. The Labor Party share their ambitions and a Labor government will make them a reality. We want Australians to have world-class telecommunications infrastructure so they can compete with the best in the world, not the 18th or the 26th, which is the level to which our outdated IT infrastructure is fast consigning us.

That is why Labor has announced a plan to roll out a fibre-to-the-node broadband network across the country: a network that will deliver a broadband system with speeds 25 times faster than what is available in Australia today. We cannot afford for Australia to fall further behind in this important area. While families like the Smiths are investing in their kids’ future they need a government doing the same thing and investing in the infrastructure that will equip all Australian kids for the future.

While I am on the topic of Telstra, I would also like to raise very briefly another issue in a rural part of my electorate, out in the Banana Shire, in the towns of Wowan and Dululu. The people in those towns have been in contact with a company called Clear Networks to provide them with broadband access through the Broadband Connect program.

Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is in my electorate.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is true, actually. The company has sent an email to my state colleague, Mr Jim Pearce, saying that there is a real hold-up thanks to the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and saying that they have been unable to fulfil services to the towns of Wowan and Dululu at this point. I raise this to say to the people of Wowan and Dululu that I will be following this up with the minister for communications to make sure that they get the services that they have been speaking to Clear Networks about for some months now. (Time expired)