David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received letters from the honourable member for Melbourne and the honourable member for Moreton proposing that definite matters of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion today. As required by standing order 46, I have selected the matter which, in my opinion, is the most urgent and important; that is, that proposed by the honourable member for Melbourne, namely:

The Government’s failure to provide equal broadband service for regional Australia.

I therefore call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are certain things about the modern world that the Prime Minister just does not get: he does not get climate change, he certainly does not get cultural and racial diversity and most particularly he does not get broadband. Over the past months we have been seeing a very painful transition, a very slow evolution in the Prime Minister’s attitude to telecommunications and the modern world. Gradually before our eyes he has been dragged out of the world of the crystal set and the two cans with the bit of string in between into the world of modern telecommunications, but he has not quite got there yet. He has not quite evolved to a point where he really understands what broadband is, let alone what the government ought to be doing to ensure that all Australians, regional as well as metropolitan, have access to the decent high-speed broadband services that they both want and need.

You can see it at the dispatch box. You saw it again today. Every time the Prime Minister is questioned about this issue, you can see that he is uncomfortable. He fidgets, he reads his lines, there is no passion, there is no clarity and there is no coherence; it just is not his issue. He does not get it. He does not understand it. We saw it today when I asked a question on the government’s WiMAX network proposal. First he refused to answer the question. He simply refused to comment or to respond to the question. Then the Deputy Prime Minister passed him a bit of paper with some lines on it and that enabled him to say something about it. Of course, he then proceeded to talk about the comparison between the government’s proposal and our proposal and about exchanges. The trouble is, exchanges were the primary delivery mechanism for the old world. Under the government’s broadband proposal, it will be base stations and under our fibre proposal it will be nodes. Yet the Prime Minister’s mind is still stuck in the world of exchanges—a telling illustration of how he just does not get it on broadband, in the same way that he just does not get it on climate change and he does not get it on cultural diversity.

The Prime Minister’s view of broadband, of telecommunications, is back 20 or 30 years ago in the old world. He has come up with his new version of the bush telegraph but unfortunately it is not quite as efficient or effective as the traditional bush telegraph; it is simply a cobbled-together, second-rate, half-baked strategy that is designed to look as though they are doing something. The Prime Minister and the government do not understand that the world of telecommunications has changed irrevocably, but, most importantly, the Prime Minister does not understand that country Australia has changed also.

In the Prime Minister’s mind, country Australia is still the world of Dad and Dave. It is still the world of blokes with crumpled hats with corks on them and the handkerchief tied on the head, and women in those homemade cotton dresses. That is the Prime Minister’s view of country Australia. He does not understand that country Australia has changed dramatically. In his mind, country Australia is still as it was when he watched Dad and Dave on Channel 7 in the early 1970’s. Let me give you a synopsis of one of the Dad and Dave episodes to illustrate my point:

Life at Snake Gully has been updated with the arrival of television and a ladies hairdresser. Mum has acquired some modern appliances and Dad battles with the generation gap.

That is the country Australia that the Prime Minister understands. That is what he thinks is out there, beyond the North Shore of Sydney, when he thinks of country Australia. So in the mind of the Prime Minister he is knocking on Dad and Dave and Mum’s door with a shiny new appliance called broadband. Unfortunately, he does not understand what it is and he does not understand that it is a dud. He does not realise that what has been put forward by the government is a second-rate solution for people in country Australia.

His Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has the same problem. On The 7.30 Report last night when the minister was asked to extol the virtues of the government’s broadband proposal for country Australia her answer was, ‘You can take the laptop down to the shed and it’ll still work in the shed.’ Well, isn’t that fantastic? Those people in the tourism industry who are running major resorts and big hotels in regional Australia will be rapt to know they can take the laptop down to the shed! That will be critical to their businesses! The people running major wineries no doubt will be excited to know that they can have broadband in the shed, too! There is a mentality deep in this government about country Australia that is about 40 years out of date, and its broadband proposal is an illustration of that in technicolour.

The government strategy on this issue and on so many other issues is very simple: look like you are doing something. Whether it is climate change, the unfairness of Work Choices or the chronic underinvestment in education, where we have seen for years no vision, no leadership and no forward agenda, all they have is a bit of window-dressing, a bit of catch-up, a bit of responding to the political pressure that has slowly built up not because of the opposition but because of the content of the issues, because of the merit of the issues. Australia needs high-speed broadband to compete with the rest of the developed world and in our region. We need to tackle climate change. We need to lift our game on education. It is the natural pressure from those issues, coupled with advocacy not only by the Labor Party but by many others, that is putting pressure on the government. And their response on each occasion has been simple: look like you are doing something.

Yesterday it all came together in the broadband announcement: cobbled together, a second-rate response, a careful calculation of electoral impact and the misinformation about Labor’s policies. Only a few months ago we had government members in here saying that there is no problem and that ‘people all around Australia are not telling us there is any broadband problem’. Notwithstanding OECD rankings that have us trailing the pack on any serious broadband measure, notwithstanding the opinions of people such as Rupert Murdoch, James Packer and David Kirk, and notwithstanding expert commentary from many other people, the government were saying, ‘Look, there’s really not an issue here.’ Now they are in complete panic mode, not because they fear for Australia’s future and not because they are worried about the future of your kids or your business but because they are worried about their political future.

Let us look at the WiMAX proposal that is at the forefront of their solution for regional Australia. Firstly, the government cannot tell us just how wide the radius of its impact will be. The communications minister said 50 kilometres and Optus said 20, and the Prime Minister today appeared to concede 20 kilometres. Secondly, they are claiming either that it will be up to 12 megabits per second or that it will be 12 megabits per second, or in the case of the Deputy Prime Minister today it will be over 12 megabits per second. The reality is that it will be in that zone only when usage is modest and is not congested, when the weather is good and when people are fortunate enough to have appropriate terrain, because hills and mountains and things like that get in the road of wireless signals.

So, in effect, the maximum offered by their system when it is not raining, when there is no congestion and when people do not have difficult terrain is the same as the minimum under Labor’s proposal. It duplicates Telstra’s 3G network, and is actually likely to be smaller than Telstra’s 3G network. The technology being used has only been deployed to fewer than a million users all around the world, so the likelihood of complications and difficulty is high and the price is still completely unclear. If fibre is delivered in the cities, most of those in regional Australia who get the WiMAX alternative will in effect have a second-rate, el cheapo alternative. The government are claiming that their $950 million worth of public money poured into this is good value and that Labor’s $4.7 billion worth of public money proposed for a near-universal, high-speed fibre network is a waste. There is a reason for the difference in the amounts: in telecommunications you get what you pay for. When you do it on the cheap you get a cheap outcome, and that is effectively what the government has done.

In not understanding the significance of broadband in regional Australia the government does not understand how crucial it is that business opportunities are opened up in regional Australia based on equal capability in broadband. Businesses being able to choose where to locate and being able to take advantage of cheaper land costs and less congestion in regional Australia will always ask themselves: can I get telecommunications services that are equal to the quality, scale and speed that I can get in metropolitan Australia? How are we going to encourage businesses to locate in regional Tasmania, the Hunter Valley, the Iron Triangle, North Queensland and Gippsland, and the Bunbury region in south-west Western Australia? These are all areas where significant new economic growth is occurring and where there are new opportunities for small businesses—not Dad and Dave out on the farm but a whole range of often very sophisticated economic activities. How on earth can we encourage businesses to take up those opportunities if they are going to get second-class broadband compared with what they would get in the cities? There is a quiet economic revolution going on in many parts of regional Australia, and the Prime Minister has no idea that it is happening. He simply does not get it.

Last week in a speech I referred to the prospect of Australia becoming the developed world’s night shift and to the fact that we will be able to do things, courtesy of high-speed broadband, for other developed countries because we will be in normal working hours when they are in the middle of the night. The communications minister responded by saying: ‘What are you talking about? It’s already happening.’ Well, I have got bad news for the government: it is only happening in very rare instances, because the telecommunications capability is simply not there. With the proposal that the government has put forward, I think about electorates such as the electorate of Lyons—it is in very hilly circumstances, the weather is not necessarily always fantastic and can be a bit troubling, there is rough terrain, and there are lots of small businesses. How are they going to get by with this proposal? I think that they will not have much of a chance.

The leaked email from the staffer for the communications minister said it all: ‘Maps provided for the cabinet.’ Were they maps of existing broadband coverage? Were they maps of economic regions? Were they maps of the less settled areas of Australia? No, they were maps of electorates. Now, I wonder, when you are dealing with a complicated telecommunications proposal and you are trying to solve a big national problem with broadband, why would cabinet be considering maps of electorates? I wonder why they were doing that. Of course, we all know the answer. We saw the answer in the balance of the email, where it listed the 40 priority electorates for getting the information out, which just happened to be 40 government-held seats—a significant proportion of them metropolitan seats, not regional seats—and they just happened to be the seats that are most under threat electorally. So it is nothing about doing the right thing by the nation. It is not about solving a huge national problem. It is simply about solving a political problem for the government.

Finally, where you see the full desperation and panic is in the government’s description of Labor’s policy. In an op ed in the Australian today the communications minister describes Labor’s proposal, which is for 98 per cent of Australians. She says that our proposal ‘ignores regional areas’ and that it will pay one of our leading communications companies to build a fibre optic network in metropolitan areas in just five of our leading cities. There is actually a proposal on the table of that kind, but it is not our proposal; it is the government’s. Her statement is a bare-faced lie. Labor’s plan—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne will withdraw that comment.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. It is a bare-faced untruth. Labor’s plan involves—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne will withdraw ‘untruth’.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just did.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, you did not. I ask the member for Melbourne to withdraw.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw everything. The proposal by Labor involves coverage for all of Australia: 98 per cent of Australians will have coverage of a minimum of 12 megabits per second. It is the government’s proposal that involves only five major cities getting fibre optic—nowhere in Tasmania—only five major cities getting the true broadband network and the rest of Australia having to put up with a cobbled together, bits and pieces operation which will not meet the test of comparison with what is going to be available, if they succeed, in metropolitan Australia.

Their claim that Labor’s position threatens the superannuation of soldiers is simply despicable. There is a legal obligation on the part of the government, with or without any Future Fund and with or without their policies or our policies, to fulfil its defined benefit superannuation obligations, and that legal obligation will be honoured no matter who is in government—no matter that they take $5 billion out of the Future Fund for higher education or that we use the Telstra shares to finance a broadband network. Their misuse and playing of political games with soldiers and police for this purpose is simply despicable. The total picture can be summed up with one word: desperation—a government that is out of touch, stuck in the past, out of ideas and desperate to win. (Time expired)

Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My colleagues and I relish every opportunity to discuss, debate and contrast broadband policy: the government’s policy, as announced yesterday, Australia Connected, compared to the opposition’s two-page policy rendered only three or four weeks ago. I am the first to admit that the Labor Party had a degree of political momentum with its broadband policy proposal some weeks ago, but that was because anybody can put together a policy in a very scant form, lacking detail and proper costings, and without any technical feasibility. To an extent the media of this country swallowed it hook, line and sinker, whereas we had to bide our time because we were going to present a policy that would withstand any examination, total scrutiny and complete technical assessment, and we have done that. We now have Australia Connected, which ticks all the boxes, unlike the Labor Party’s policy, which is a two-pager and which has been decried by financial institutions, commentators and participants in the world of telecommunications.

It always bemuses members of the government when the Labor Party attempts to engage us on any regional and rural issue, whether it be regional and rural education, health or transport, given that the Labor Party does not have a policy on anything outside the capital cities. But I will leave that to one side for a debate on another day and concentrate on rural, regional and remote telecommunications policy. Well, the Labor Party had its chance—it had its chance over 13 years, especially—but, more particularly, those of us who have been here a bit longer than others will recall that in 1995 the Labor Party, in government, shut down the analog mobile phone network—

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Hartsuyker interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Cowper is out of his place and is highly disorderly.

Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

without any replacement! The Labor Party shut down the analog network to introduce the digital network, without any alternative technology capacity in regional and rural areas where the digital signal is weak and easily interrupted. When we came to government in 1996 this was a major challenge for us: to work with Telstra to install a new technological solution to the problem, which was unprecedented anywhere in the world. We managed to develop with the full assistance, cooperation and innovativeness—even ingeniousness—of Telstra the CDMA network. The CDMA network is now going to move to the Next G network, a new mobile network. The government are working to make sure that this is a smooth transition. We do not want to repeat the Labor Party’s callous disregard for regional Australia of 1995. We welcome, obviously, the 3G network introduction—it offers regional and rural people a new capacity and service—but you do not switch off the CDMA network until the 3G network provides the same or better coverage and services. That is the commitment we have elicited from Telstra, and we will hold Telstra to this promise.

Last year the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts directed ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, to undertake independent coverage audits of both networks as a key part of verifying Telstra’s public assurance. Those audits include city and regional areas, with a focus on rural and regional and remote areas. The government expects Telstra to keep its commitment to retain the CDMA network until its Next G network provides the same or better coverage and service, especially given that the estimated time to switch off the CDMA network is not far away, being 28 January 2008. Contrast that with Labor’s record in office. Labor disadvantaged regional and rural and remote Australians overnight, socially, economically and culturally, with complete disregard for their wellbeing or welfare.

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What nonsense!

Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kingsford Smith interrupts. He has been here five minutes. He should go back and search the records. It was a political issue of the time. The Labor government did not even try to defend itself. Michael Lee was the then minister for communications. He stood at this dispatch box day after day, befuddled and bemused and unable to answer questions as to what Australians outside the capital areas would do for mobile phone services when the Labor Party switched off the analog service.

Let us turn to current day policy. I thought the member for Melbourne let himself down with his personalised attacks on the Prime Minister. His was a lame attempt at humour, drawing on the Blue Hills radio program. If that is the best he can do for some five or six minutes of a 15-minute speech then the Labor Party, on this issue of telecommunications broadband policy, is even more troubled than is patently obvious. Notwithstanding the fact that the member for Melbourne proffered no real alternative to the government’s Australia Connected, we have an opportunity—and the members of the government will ensure that as many Australians as possible also have this opportunity—to compare the government’s broadband policy with the Labor Party’s proposal. It is not worthy of the title ‘policy’. How can a two-page statement amount to a policy? What we do know is that the Labor Party, in comparison to the government, is going to pay more and get less. With the government, there are no taxpayer funds involved—it is a private sector investment of approximately $850 million. With the Labor Party, it is a taxpayer investment of $4.7 billion. Even then, experts tell us that the proposal will not achieve what it undertakes to achieve. We know also that the Labor Party’s policy proposal has coverage of only 75 per cent of Australians, with the complete abandonment of the remaining 25 per cent of Australians—rural and regional residents. We can compare this to the government’s policy, which will achieve 99 per cent coverage, with the remaining one per cent receiving a generous subsidy to help connect to broadband. We leave no-one behind in the broadband debate. The Labor Party picks and chooses who amongst the Australian population it wants to support.

I was amazed that the member for Melbourne, in what little time he left himself after his derogatory comments of a personal kind about the Prime Minister, attacked the technology of the government’s Australia Connected policy, WiMAX. This is odd, given that the shadow minister for communications, Senator Conroy, at a conference on 2 May 2005, said this about wireless technology:

A more complex possibility created by emerging telecommunication technologies is the potential for efficiency gains presented by the utilisation of wireless virtual private networks in rural and regional areas. With access to a wireless broadband virtual private network, a farmer could design a farm that is completely connected up and allows him to monitor his property and control his machinery from the comfort of his home.

Then Senator Conroy went on to lament the absence of such a technology:

However, these possibilities can only be realised if rural and regional communities have access to the infrastructure used to deliver these services. Unfortunately, this infrastructure is not currently widely available in rural and regional Australia.

It most certainly will be available under this government. It is this government that is introducing the wireless technology that Senator Conroy, two years ago, could only dream of. He did not even commit to the technology—even though he cited it as being of invaluable benefit to rural and regional Australians—because it would be beyond the technical and financial capacity of the Australian government. The member for Melbourne describes the WiMAX technology that the government has adopted as a ‘second-rate’ and ‘half-baked’ technology, yet this same technology is proven throughout the world. Countries that are either adopting it now or planning its deployment are: Canada, the United States, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan—and the list goes on and on. So this is such a second-rate and half-baked technology that it is the current technology being used by countries throughout the world that have regard to distance and remote locations. But that is a foreign concept to the Labor Party, who can never see beyond the metropolitan areas for their policy, which will be funded $4.7 billion by the taxpayer and another approximately $4 billion, so they claim, from the private sector, and which will reach only metropolitan Australia. If you are going to make policy in a highly complex and technically challenging area on the run, this is what you end up with. You end up with a policy which totally lacks credibility and which does a grave disservice to the Australian people—if not a betrayal of the Australian people, who expect informed, considered and creditable policies from their major political parties. But do not take my word about the worth of the Labor Party’s proposal. Let me quote ABN-AMRO, a major financial institution, who declared that Labor’s proposal would:

… take the industry back 20 years to government provision, goldplating and restricted rollout.

ABN-AMRO said that Labor’s proposal:

… does not resolve access regulation issues but entrenches them and adds new inefficiencies.

What about Ross Gittins, the economic editor of the Sydney Morning Herald? On 26 March this year he dismissed the plan as ‘a waste of taxpayers’ money, no matter how it is funded’ and ‘a cynical bribe’. On 27 March this year the economics editor of the Australian Financial Review, Alan Mitchell, said that the Leader of the Opposition’s ‘political commitment to the high-speed broadband network has been made without serious evaluation of the likely costs and benefits’. Then we get Mark Clarity, a telecommunications analyst, saying that the ALP’s plan was ‘undershooting the mark’ and that:

… nothing in the Labor plan really addresses the backhaul issue. It doesn’t seem to be addressing … getting high-speed pipes into the regions so these access networks actually have something to connect to.

The Labor Party’s proposal has been derided. Yet the Labor Party have the hide or the cheek—or the overconfidence perhaps—to put up for discussion as a matter of public importance in the parliament the contrast between the regional impact of their proposal as against the government’s policy Australia Connected. Quite frankly, it is incredible to us that they would pitch an attack against the government. They have no credentials on this matter. The further we discuss and disseminate it in the Australian community the more people will come to realise and understand this. There are so many benefits from the Australia Connected proposal that we could sell it time and again—its coverage, the speed of the network and the new opportunities, economically and even socially, that it brings to rural Australians.

The government has not come to this debate late in the piece. We have been rolling out broadband initiatives with hundreds of millions of dollars of funding since 2002. That is why the government can produce such a creditable and private sector financed proposal that has won already wide acclaim. I invite the member for Kingsford Smith, who is shortly to contribute to this debate, to do something that the member for Melbourne did not do. He could not produce the critics of this proposal. It has been 48 hours. If people wish to come out of the woodwork and give an opinion we would like to hear it. I am not saying there is going to be a 100 per cent appraisal, because the Labor Party will have its supporters or friends in certain organisations, but let us hear from the well-established and trusted independent commentators or arbitrators on these issues. Let us hear from the farm organisations. The member for Kingsford Smith might like to quote the NFF or the New South Wales Farmers Association. They are never backward in reminding the government of its deficiencies, even as we strive to overcome them.

This is a debate we welcome. We would be pleased if we had this broadband debate every day of the remainder of the parliament and every day outside of the parliament. In fact, we will initiate it so that we can achieve as high an engagement rate as possible. We have a great story to tell. We have waited a long time to get this comprehensive installation of high-speed and affordable broadband. It has been years in the making. For the Labor Party to roll up at the last minute, jump on the bandwagon and try to equate their two-page proposal with our fully costed and technically competent plan defies belief. But, please, keep doing it so that we have more opportunities to convince Australians of our credentials as opposed to yours. (Time expired)

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Isn’t it great to see some competition for the regional vote? I think the broadband debate and some of the debates on water and climate change are starting to embrace the issues that are very important to country people. I was interested to hear the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry—I see that he is leaving the chamber—cite the National Farmers Federation as a source of knowledge on this issue. I think their behaviour during the telecommunications debate has been disgraceful. The duplicity of the former president, Peter Corish, on this issue is something that will go down in the history of the farming community and country Australians.

Infrastructure is obviously critical to country Australians, particularly telecommunications infrastructure. As I have said a number of times in this chamber, telecommunications is the one piece of infrastructure that negates distance and location as being a disadvantage to living in the country. We talk about railway lines and roads—and they are important—but telecommunications, broadband particularly, is the infrastructure of this century. We need to look past the politics involved in this issue and get it right. There are a number of things happening here. It is not just a city-country issue. It is also about where this nation places itself globally in terms of telecommunications. The game that is being played at the moment in trying to capture the minds of the Australian public on this issue is a little pitiful. We should get this right. If it does cost money and it does use up some of the Communications Fund and some of the Future Fund to put it in place and get it right, that is what the Australian public would expect and demand of any government, or potential government, into the future.

The government says it is going to guarantee high-speed broadband services to 99 per cent of the population and I am told that there are a series of maps available on the spread of that communication. Given some of the concerns, particularly about wireless but also satellite, regarding location, geography et cetera and atmospheric conditions, one of the things the government could do is outline—and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources will do so today; I am told he is very informed on this issue—who the one per cent are—

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Baldwin interjecting

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it is you—a man of great knowledge on this issue, revered in the Hunter as a technological giant. One thing that the parliamentary secretary, the Prime Minister or the minister may like to do is to tell the people of Australia who the one per cent are. Who are the one per cent who are going to miss out? Who are they and where do they live? What that would effectively do—and I think there is a challenge to the government here—is put in place a guarantee to the other 99 per cent that they will receive high-speed broadband.

Anybody with any sanity in this place knows that there are going to be terrain problems and atmospheric problems. Not only people in very remote areas, where you would expect that satellite is the only form of communication, but people in all of our electorates in the country are going to have difficulty receiving this service. So is the government guaranteeing service to 99 per cent of the population? Rather than go through who they are, it would be a lot easier just to nominate the one per cent who are going to miss out and then guarantee the service to the others. I bet the government is not prepared to do that.

We have got an issue in this parliament that relates particularly to the National Party. Deputy Speaker Causley, you may have been at the conference in Singleton over the weekend. The theme of that conference was to break the city-country divide. I listened to the state leader with some interest because I agreed with most of what he was saying. The very next day, there was an announcement at the federal level that entrenched that divide. No matter what anybody says on this particular issue, there is a divide here.

The government is suggesting an optical fibre arrangement for our cities. It is suggesting that some country people will get ADSL2+. Tamworth and Armidale in my electorate will receive that infrastructure; others—the majority—will receive wireless. Everybody knows—including the Prime Minister, who has stated it here—that that will be at a lower internet speed. When Telstra was sold, a guarantee was given to Senator Barnaby Joyce and to the former President of the National Farmers Federation, Peter Corish—that duplicitous person I spoke of a moment ago. On the sale of Telstra, they said that there would be a basic guarantee—they said that it would be in writing but nobody has ever seen it—that the government would deliver equity of service and parity of pricing to country people on broadband services and telephone services. This great announcement of yesterday is supposedly the follow-through from that commitment.

What is wrong with that commitment? Obviously it is not an equitable arrangement. City people are going to get a service that has higher internet speeds than that of country people. They are—and I am not kidding—going to receive less of a service in country Australia than in city Australia. The government broke its commitment to the Australian people when it talked Senator Joyce into supporting the legislation.

It is contrary to what the National Party did over the weekend in their great expose of how they are going to spend the next four years eradicating the divide between city and country. It did not take four years—it took one day. In one day they have entrenched that—and they are proud of it. They are proud that country people will receive a lesser service than their city cousins. I think that is a disgraceful act.

There are a number of issues that I would like to cover quickly. One is a probity and a process issue. The government asked a number of bidders to bid on the provision of internet services to country Australia. The announcement yesterday was of the winning bidder, Opel. As I understand it, what the government did not do is announce to the other bidders that it would add another $358 million to the original bid offer. I think that is something that needs to be closely looked at. How can the government issue a contract when it has asked a number of bidders to bid and when it has then changed the numbers? Somebody might be able to explain that to me, but I am told that the other bidders were not aware of the $358 million. So how could they, in a competitive bid process, guarantee what the winning bidder could when 50 per cent of the money was not there? That is an issue that needs addressing.

Yesterday the member for Calare asked a question of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister said that country people ‘will have the same access to broadband speeds as is now available in metropolitan areas’. If the Prime Minister is satisfied that the speeds in metropolitan areas are sufficient now and that that is good enough for country people, why are we increasing the speeds in the city? If that is sufficient for people in the country, why is it not sufficient for people in the city? The guarantee of equity of access that was given in terms of broadband and telephone services has been ignored by this government. (Time expired)

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for New England probably has not been involved in submitting too many tenders, but I can tell you that I have won more tenders with alternatives to the specifications than by just blindly following the specs. You need to be a bit creative.

We have heard our opponents over there talking about fibre to the node. It is great technology. We heard the member for Melbourne talk about there being no need for exchanges, but, if you have a node, you have to have two ends of a cable—and one end actually starts at an exchange. I have not seen any exchanges being demolished as broadband has been rolled out. Providing fibre to the node to 98 per cent of Australians is totally ludicrous. It is unaffordable in this country, as it is in many other countries. It is expensive. The $4.7 billion that the ALP have put up in their policy is probably about a quarter of what the real cost would be.

Fibre to the node is probably great for the cities. I am four kilometres from the Berkeley Vale telephone exchange, and there is no way in the world that I would ever expect to get a fibre cable into my house. Even if it were fibre to the node, the nearest node would probably be three kilometres away and the rest would be overhead cable, as it is today. I would not expect that to happen any time soon. If you want to have really good high-speed broadband, fibre to the home is really what you need. That happens in a number of American cities, but I am quite sure the ALP are not actually proposing that. So we still need cables from nodes to connect to houses.

The other day the member for Hotham was talking about the government having a bandaid solution that is flawed. I do not think he has read the solution put forward by OPEL. The member for Hotham said:

Wireless does have a role to play in connecting mobile consumers, but it must be used to compliment a fixed line broadband network.

I think the member for Hotham ought to have a look at what we do these days—and have been doing for many years—with wireless. We have TV, radio and pay TV—which is delivered by satellite in many cases—delivered by cable. Our major power transmission lines are controlled by wireless. It is microwave technology. We also have microwave technology as the backbone for communications systems. One company is running a backbone internet from Cairns, through Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, to Adelaide—again wireless. We have mobile phones—a huge application of wireless. We have IP networks coming up in houses, schools and businesses. So wireless is certainly not a second-rate technology. It just shows that Labor does not understand the technology.

As Barry Cohen, a former member of the Whitlam government, once said: ‘The problem with Labor is that they are ex-union, ex-staffers and ex-lawyers. How can they be expected to make technology? They haven’t really been involved in the real world.’ Let us have a look at Labor’s record on communications. There was the mobile phone fiasco, which the minister mentioned earlier. We also had AMPS, which was a system that was developed in the USA for long range and rural. Australia had a similar need, but Labor dumped AMPS and adopted GSM. Why did they adopt GSM? It was a European system, and there were GSM technology companies in Australia, in Sydney and Melbourne, with large union membership. So why wouldn’t the unions want to maintain the technology that employed more of their existing members? It took the Howard government to come into office and introduce CDMA. That was American technology. Even today we see that Telstra’s Next G is a wideband form of CDMA. Labor have no technical backing for their proposal. They have cobbled it together. The Deputy Prime Minister labelled it ‘fraudband’—and that is exactly what it is.

The other issue we need to look at is: what is Telstra doing? We have ADSL2+ capability in many exchanges, but they are not enabled. Customers of mine tell me that Telstra says, ‘We won’t enable those exchanges until we have a competitor come in and install their equipment in those exchanges.’ So we have Sol Trujillo out there trying to blackmail the government, trying to stand them up and trying to be a bully boy. It would appear that he has got into bed with Labor somewhere along the line on their proposal, because he has been waffling on about fibre to the node. We already have capability in this country to run ADSL2+. When OPEL get started, we will just see how long it is before Telstra realise that they are not going to have a monopoly in this field and that they really have a competitor.

Mr Les Wozniczka, the CEO of Futuris—the company that owns Elders—said that 80 per cent of the funds that they are employing are actually for fibre back-haul because, if you are going to run ADSL2 in exchanges and you are going to have WiMAX towers, you need a good, reliable fibre back-haul. It is a long-term scaleable proposal. Initially, they will be looking at 12 megabytes, going to 20 megabytes. In the longer term it can extend to 50 and 70 megabytes. Telstra are talking about similar figures with Next G as the technology improves and develops over the years. The opposition have not even spoken to Elders. So where do they get their solutions from? The member for Hunter really let the cat out of the bag when he was asked whether his region would miss out. He said:

Well those things are yet to be tested; we will roll out fibre to the node right throughout the Hunter region. Obviously there may be some people excluded from that. We haven’t … don’t have the technical backing to make those final conclusions.

So we have a half-baked proposal from Labor, which the member for Hunter enunciated. So then we look at Labor’s other claims. How are they going to do it? Where is it going to be? What is it going to be composed of? What is the cost? We have heard that it is going to be 2013 before the plan is implemented.

If we look at the history of the government’s performance in telecommunications, we see that, since 2001, 4.3 million homes and small businesses have been connected to broadband. The price has dropped over 65 per cent over that period. In regional Australia, 1.3 million connections have been made available with $500 million of subsidies. Broadband Connect was introduced in July 2006 and we also have the Australian Broadband Guarantee program. The member for New England was a bit concerned about the one per cent who will not be connected either through ADSL or the WiMAX system, but we have satellite. Satellite is not a new technology; it has been around for many years. If you drive around the cities and the towns, you can see satellite antennas bringing in pay TV. The same technology can be used to bring in broadband—in fact, it is being used.

There are also areas of competition. The government believe in competition. Telstra itself provides many competitive products. It has fibre, ADSL, Next G and satellite. In the area of Dobell and on the Central Coast, we have two wireless providers. One is a company called Cirrus. Cirrus, in conjunction with Motorola, are installing WiMAX. We have another company, Central Coast Internet, and they are using a different wireless technology. The capabilities of these two networks are quite different. We have spoken to Central Coast Internet and Cirrus about providing wireless communication into some black spot programs. They have a solution that will fit a little group in Wyoming of about 100 users. They will not be able to get WiMAX because of the terrain, but the technology used by Central Coast Internet can be adapted into that area. So it is not a case of one solution that fits all. It is not just fibre to the node; that is just one part of the solution. There are whole ranges of technologies that can be used to provide wireless, fixed line, satellite and broadband in many other areas. Labor need to do their homework, get their policy out and provide some detail. Let’s see what you’ve got and let’s do some real costing. Their $4.7 billion is an absolute joke, and to raid the Future Fund to provide that service is, as the Treasurer said, just one little chink in the armour to break down the whole application of the Future Fund.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday we saw just how out of touch this government is with the needs of regional and rural Australians, and we have heard it again today in this MPI debate. Families and businesses in regional Australia have been crying out for high-speed broadband for a long time. For 11 years regional Australia has had to endure broadband speeds that are slower than those of our metropolitan centres, and yesterday the Howard government basically guaranteed that this would continue—by cementing a two-tiered system across the nation. Yesterday’s announcement is the 18th time the Prime Minister has claimed that he is going to fix Australia’s broadband problems. If, as we are so often asked by the Prime Minister, we are to judge him on his record, we should not get too excited about his latest attempts to provide a high-speed broadband service. Communities throughout my electorate and regional Australia have been crying out to access just ADSL broadband, let alone any of the technology that can provide faster speeds.

Businesses in my district have had to relocate to Melbourne because they could not access even ADSL broadband. Students have struggled to study online without access to fast and affordable broadband, and businesses in our district have failed to grasp economic opportunities because of it. Yesterday’s attempt unfortunately underlines the fact that John Howard is not focused on providing regional and rural Australia with permanent infrastructure that will guarantee the fastest and most affordable internet access possible; rather, he is focused on the cheapest and fastest political fix. It did not even take 24 hours before members of his own government were criticising the policy. The Prime Minister’s plan relegates millions of Australians to a second-class service. Unfortunately, many of these Australians are in my electorate of Ballarat. Once again, regional Australia is the poorer cousin to the cities. If the Prime Minister thinks that regional and rural communities will thank him for giving them access to a wireless network which is untried and unreliable, while at the same time he is rolling out fibre to the node in the cities, he is gravely mistaken and even more out of touch than I thought. Equally outrageous is that the Liberal Party has been able to dud regional Australia without a murmur from the National Party. The National Party rolled over on the sale of Telstra and now they have rolled over on high-speed broadband for regional communities.

The question that the Prime Minister will not be able to answer for the millions of families and businesses in regional areas is: if wireless technology is so good, then why doesn’t he connect his two homes—Kirribilli and the Lodge—his office and his department to a wireless network and cut the cable? Why doesn’t he connect Parliament House to wireless technology and cut the cable? The answer is: he will not do that because it is technology which is inferior to fibre to the node. If it is good enough for Parliament House, if it is good enough for the Prime Minister in Kirribilli House, it is good enough for regional Australia. If the Prime Minister thinks this will be acceptable to regional communities, it only highlights what an outdated view he has of regional and rural Australia. The internet is not something that only people in the cities use. People and businesses in regional and rural Australia use the internet—and they do not use it just to send a few emails every now and again. They use it in more innovative and sophisticated ways than we could have imagined even a year ago. Yesterday the Prime Minister demonstrated not only that his government has only quick political fixes to serious problems but also that he has limited knowledge about broadband technology and regional and rural Australia. Yesterday in question time the Prime Minister claimed that five communities in the Ballarat electorate would be able to access OPEL ADSL2+ under his government’s whiz-bang broadband policy. He said:

The map—

this map which I have here, which the Prime Minister held up in question time—

shows that one, two, three, four, five areas in the electorate of Ballarat are going to get the benefit, starting this year—starting almost immediately.

Out of the five communities the Prime Minister claimed would be able to access OPEL ADSL2+, only three are, in fact, in the electorate of Ballarat. The other two are in the electorates of McEwen and Calwell, and two of the three areas already have high-speed broadband access and would notice little, if any, difference with the Prime Minister’s proposal. I do not know who put these maps together, but I am pretty sure that the kids at Bacchus Marsh Preschool could have done a better job, because Bacchus Marsh—a town of some 8,000 people—is left off this map altogether. The problem with ADSL2 is that there is no guarantee that it will be able to deliver the speeds that the Howard government claims it will. (Time expired)

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians understand the limitations of distance and the possibilities of innovations. They are all part and parcel of living in the most sparsely populated country on the planet. I have always argued that we need to have a mix of technologies—not just fibre—to deliver sound broadband services throughout the nation, with quality solutions for each sector of need. In the same way that we need road, rail, ports and airports as transport infrastructure, so we need varied broadband solutions for communications. The coalition’s $1.9 billion Australia Connected program puts Labor’s proposal to shame on two fronts. Firstly, we will roll out broadband technology to regional areas further and faster than Labor ever promised to do and, secondly, we are going to do it in an economically responsible way. We are not going to raid the Communications Fund as a wanton, policy-devoid Labor Party would do. We are not going to neglect the three million households and small businesses that Labor was prepared to sweep under the carpet under its proposal—three million Australians quietly ignored. And we are going to have our network up by 2009, not four years later, in 2013. Let us get one thing straight: Labor does not care much about broadband or the bush. In the past, Labor has shown such disregard for regional Australia that it described the government’s $3.1 billion Connect Australia package as ‘one of the National Party’s slush funds’.

I pose this question: are they likely to run fibre to the farm? That is something that I would like to see. It would make Korea’s $50 billion outlay look like a Sunday school picnic. Labor has not even bothered to talk to Optus or Elders. Imagine that: the people who are rolling this out have not even been spoken to. This conglomerate proposes to invest $917 million in building a new network. The OPEL network has been designed from the grassroots to meet the specific needs of rural and regional users and it will have open access to other providers and ISPs, several of whom I have in my electorate. They will be able to buy services at a wholesale price. Eighty per cent of OPEL’s funds will go towards improving back-haul routes with major congestion and addressing monopoly pricing issues, which have always been the bane of the bush. But the member for Melbourne in leading this debate today sought to rubbish WiMAX technology, which is being rolled out to 100 million Americans. Funny that.

Labor are not interested in the bush. In fact, a shadow minister, the member for Hunter, admitted that the opposition had not even bothered to test their own plans to find out who would miss out. I think his words were something like this: ‘We don’t have the technical backing to make those final conclusions.’ Not good enough. Labor’s grand plan is to make the bush expendable. Clearly, the government’s policy is superior to Labor’s, and the NFF has said as much:

The choice of Wimax wireless technology, supplementing the additional ADSL2 + technology, to deliver services … is vitally important, but also provides the opportunity for scalable high speed broadband into the future. The services, combined with other technologies such as satellite, will deliver high speed broadband across the entire nation – including to farmers in the remotest parts of Australia. … The extra $358 million commitment—$958 million in all—by Government represents a major positive for regional Australia.

The government proposes a four-part solution: more optic fibre to the capital cities and leading provincials; 426 ADSL2+ upgraded exchanges upgrades, delivering 40 times the current speed; 1,361 WiMAX points of presence, providing 40 times the speed— (Time expired)

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for the discussion has concluded.