Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Deputy Prime Minister inform the House how the federal government is planning to secure Australia’s rural and regional telecommunications future? Is the minister aware of any threats to this investment in regional economic infrastructure?

Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kalgoorlie for his question. I recognise that he understands the need to have certainty as to the delivery of modern communications to rural and remote Australia, particularly to his electorate of Kalgoorlie. He also understands that you cannot pick winners, that you cannot pick technology and that there needs to be flexibility with technology to be able to get the penetration and get services to the people that live throughout rural and remote Australia. That is why the government decided when we did to invest $3.1 billion in the Connect Australia package, which has a number of components. The first component that it has got is the $600 million Broadband Connect infrastructure program. The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts will announce the winning tenderers for this program that will deliver the speeds that working families need on their broadband across rural and regional Australia. They do not have to wait until the next election and they do not have to wait until the Labor Party raids the Future Fund and the Labor Party completely steals the telecommunications fund; it is going to happen very shortly as a result of the policy put in place by the Liberal and National parties in the coalition government.

Following on from that, we have also recently announced a further $162.5 million for the Australian Broadband Guarantee—a guarantee that every Australian can access an affordable broadband service, regardless of where they live; and it is technology neutral. It does not pick winners as far as technology is concerned, because individual technologies do not work uniformly across Australia, particularly remote Australia.

But the most important aspect of the Connect Australia package when we announced it was the $2 billion perpetual communications fund. This is about ensuring that people living in rural and remote Australia—the seven million Australians who live outside of the metropolitan areas—have certainty that there will be funds available to provide them with technology that we do not even know about yet, which in 10 years time may come on stream and which the market will provide to the metropolitan areas and the viable markets in Australia but might not provide to regional Australia.

We recognise there would be a need to have a guaranteed funding stream to pay for that technology so that rural and regional Australia can keep up with the rest of the country, so we established the $2 billion perpetual communications fund, which is invested as we speak and has already earned about $150 million in interest. After the first three years, when it is first accessed, there will be in excess of $400 million in revenue that has been produced by that perpetual communications fund—leaving the $2 billion intact—that can be invested in new technology for regional and remote Australia. This is the plan that we put in place to guarantee that seven million Australians living outside of the metropolitan areas would not get left behind. This is our guarantee to future proof the bush as far as telecommunications are concerned.

The Labor Party announced in their policy yesterday that not only are they going to become burglars and burgle $2.7 billion out of the Future Fund that the Treasurer spoke about, but they are going to engage in grand theft and thieve $2 billion from those seven million people who live in regional Australia. When the Labor Party talk about investing $4.7 billion to cover the country in broadband, they should be reminded that it cost South Korea $50 billion to cover a country that is one-third the size of the new electorate of Flynn—$50 billion to do what the Labor Party is proposing to do.

With our policy of Connect Australia we want to future proof the bush. The Labor Party want to desert it. They want to conduct burglary on the Future Fund and they want to conduct grand theft on the perpetual communications fund and thieve $2 billion worth of certainty from seven million Australians in remote Australia.