Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Despite the overblown rhetoric in opposition, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, have undoubtedly become the ‘net negatives’ on broadband. Their vague and deeply flawed national broadband tender process has stalled, and they are unable to point to a single broadband initiative of their own. We heard about the election promises. Now we are being told that they were not actually promises; they were ambitions. Clearly there is going to be some cobbling together of an outcome that will no doubt look very different from the election hype.

There is no clear articulation from the Rudd government or from Minister Conroy about just what kind of clear public policy outcomes they expect to achieve and what the must-haves are of the national broadband tender process. Minister Conroy seems to be in a witness protection program: not prepared to pop up and answer any questions or engage in any of the policy debate around broadband, claiming he is somehow involved in a commercial negotiation. How odd when the tender process has not even commenced and the stop-clock timetable has not even been started.

Instead, what we see is the current Rudd government claiming credit for the previous Howard government’s initiatives, to try and point out that they are doing something about broadband. How ironic to see Senator Conroy on the Yorke Peninsula claiming credit and associating himself with the WiMAX wireless network there—a platform and a technology he ridiculed mercilessly in opposition. The OPEL project that he cancelled was in part driven by and inclusive of the WiMAX wireless network, as well as many thousands of kilometres of fibre backbone. That OPEL project would have delivered benefit for some 800,000 to 900,000 underserviced premises in rural, remote and regional Australia. Instead, that has been cancelled, the plug has been pulled on those communities and there is no alternative plan available for them.

Also amid the confusion, the private sector has understandably frozen new fixed-line broadband investment. My office has been contacted by many communities across Australia illustrating how the confusion of the Rudd government’s broadband plans and the uncertainty about what it might look like into the future are standing in the way of them getting broadband services today. Springfield in Queensland could have had fibre to the home rolled out, but Senator Conroy is standing in the way of that initiative, as the confusion, the doubt and the fog impede others from implementing much needed investment and infrastructure. High-growth areas like the city of Casey in Victoria, the Gold Coast, the city of Swan in Perth and Johns River on the New South Wales North Coast cannot get ADSL services. They are being told that is because of the national broadband network process, the confusion that surrounds it and the inability or unwillingness of the Labor government to articulate clearly what the public policy goals are, what the must-haves will be and what the future framework to facilitate this much needed investment and to deliver improved services now would look like.