Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister agree with the findings from the government’s own Broadband Advisory Group that:

... next generation broadband could produce economic benefits of $12-30 billion per annum to Australia.

Prime Minister, given that high-speed broadband is needed to lift Australia’s productivity and economic growth beyond the mining boom, why has the government failed after so many years to deliver an effective national broadband network?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. There is no argument that broadband is an important element of Australia’s economic infrastructure. As to the suggestion that the government has not pursued the right strategy in relation to broadband, can I remind the House and, in particular, the Leader of the Opposition that Australia has the second fastest take-up rate of broadband in the OECD. Close to 90 per cent of Australian households and small businesses can already access fast multimegabit broadband speeds of between two megabits per second and eight megabits per second and we will continue to pursue policies that increase that.

The Leader of the Opposition has announced something in relation to this earlier today. I understand that this is essentially the same proposal as outlined by the member for Brand when he led the opposition, but what has been revealed today is that Labor intends to raid the Future Fund in order to pay for this. One of the great economic challenges Australia faces is the ageing of her population. One way of responding to that challenge, one way of protecting future generations from the crushing burden of a decline in the number of people in the workforce because of the ageing of the population, is to save for the future. That is what we have done through the Future Fund. What the man who sits opposite me proposes to do is to raid the savings of future generations and make the burden on their backs even worse than it would otherwise be.

On first blush, this appears to be an economically irresponsible way of funding a program and it also appears to be short-sighted. It has no regard for the future and no regard for the fact that of all the challenges this country faces none is greater than the ageing of her population. It is an undeniable fact that the demographic trends of this country are going to mean that in 30 or 40 years time there will be fewer people in the workforce supporting a larger number of retired people. In those circumstances, raiding the Future Fund is recklessly indifferent to the welfare of future generations of Australians.