Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in the parliament again on behalf of the people of Ryan. I will be speaking on a topic that I know the people of Ryan will be very interested in. I know that my friend here from South Australia, the member for Barker, will also be interested in this topic, which is broadband coverage. Labor continues to disappoint the Australian public and the people of Ryan. The Rudd government has been all about rhetoric—big, empty words—and in the end has not been able to deliver.

The people of the western suburbs of Brisbane know that the Rudd government was very good at spinning a solution to the broadband difficulties in their patch and that it promised to deliver coverage to some 98 per cent of households and businesses in this country. The election platform of the Rudd opposition in 2007 was to contribute some $4.7 billion to the building of an open access national broadband network. As part of this it said that some 98 per cent of households and businesses would be provided speeds of no less than 12 megabits per second. Labor promised that work on the network would commence before the end of 2008. Of course, we in this place know that the Labor government is all about big, fancy words; it is all spin and no substance, all talk and no action. I am sure the residents of the western suburbs of Brisbane—those who live in Bellbowrie, Moggill, Pullenvale, Karana Downs and even Kenmore Hills—my good friend and colleague the member for Barker and my Queensland colleague here the member for Herbert would share my view that the Rudd government continues to speak words but deliver absolutely nothing. I will quote a significant comment by Mr Malcolm Colless in the Australian of 12 August. He said:

The federal Government’s much-heralded plan to pump $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ money into a high-speed cable-based broadband network to all but 2 per cent of Australian homes and businesses is looking decidedly fuzzy.

That is right, and the people of Ryan would certainly know that everything this government seems to be doing is really all very fuzzy.

Yesterday the Prime Minister went to the National Press Club and delivered a speech about his thoughts on improving education and the future wellbeing of our children throughout the schools of this great country. He had to do that because, quite frankly, he has delivered nothing. His messages have been all about himself, about power and about micro management and not about the people of Australia, whom he gave high expectations to. I know that the people of the western suburbs of Brisbane will be fully aware of this, and I make it clear to the people whom I have the great pleasure of representing that Mr Rudd continues to disappoint the Australian people.

The bottom line is that Labor is now in government and Labor has to deliver. Labor policy has not come to the fore. At the moment the government has some vague plan for a national fibre-to-the-node network, but in some areas the fibre network will not be completed until 2014 at the earliest. That will not do anybody in the Ryan electorate in the western suburbs of Brisbane any good—that is, if they happen to be the victims of this Labor government’s spin.

The government’s scandalous decision to dishonour the agreement for the OPEL broadband network, which had $958 million—almost $1billion—in federal funding, is a particular blow to the people of rural, regional and remote Australia. Those in rural and regional Australia who supported Mr Rudd might want to question him about the authenticity of his policy, because quite frankly he is not delivering. Suburbs like Karana Downs in the Ryan electorate, which are almost classified semirural because of their distance from the centre of Brisbane, will certainly be very aware of Mr Rudd’s inability to put policy into action.

As the member for Ryan, I want to reassure the people of the western suburbs of Brisbane that I will be keeping the pressure on Mr Rudd. The bottom line is that Labor is now in government and has the treasury bench. It inherited a $22 billion surplus from the Howard government. It has the funds; it is time to deliver and to honour its commitment. (Time expired)