Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to tell you a tale today of three communities in the west of my electorate. The first is Streaky Bay on the stunning west coast of South Australia's Eyre Peninsula. It is 730 kilometres from Adelaide and 300 kilometres north-west of Port Lincoln. The backbone of the economy is agriculture; they grow wheat, other grains and livestock. It has a vibrant fishing and aquaculture industry expressed in oyster and abalone production. It has an increasing tourist sector, beautiful islands, a spectacular coastline, including cliffs, sweeping beaches and a string of protected bays, seal and sea lion colonies, and growth in sea change population—I have spoken to people who have come from the other side of the world to buy real estate and to live and visit Streaky Bay. The population of the council area is 2,025 according to the 2006 census, and around 1,070 of those live within the township. In that part of the world, it is a substantial centre, and certainly a confident and growing town.

Just 140 kilometres down the road, also on Eyre Peninsula, is another excellent, vibrant community: Wudinna. Wudinna is the biggest town in the Wudinna District Council, and like many of my inland towns is an agricultural service centre. It has fantastic services for a community of this size: a 23-bed hospital, resident doctor and dentist, swimming pool, aged care and large farm service businesses. Wudinna is a good community to live in. It is highly motivated—just last year they unveiled the Big Farmer, a six-metre high single slab of granite. The local community raised $200,000 to commission and erect it. Wudinna is the southern gateway to a great South Australian secret: the fabulous Gawler Ranges. It is the heart of what they call 'granite country'. The population of the district, according to the ABS in 2009 was 1,333, with about 600 living in the town.

The third community is the town of Cummins on the lower Eyre Peninsula, heart of some of the most productive agricultural land in South Australia. It is the service centre for 4,402 residents even though the town only has a population of a little over 700. It is very fertile farming area and the district is closely settled, and the majority of the population lives outside the town. It owns and controls the Port Lincoln airport, has a hospital, doctor, large school and is one of the most prosperous towns in the South Australian grain belt.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you may well ask what the point is of telling the story of these three towns? Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, along with a number of similar communities in my electorate, they will miss out on the government's $50 billion National Broadband Network. Streaky Bay meets the minimum criteria of more than 1,000 residents—1,070—but it is conspicuously absent from the broadband maps. In fact, it is proposed that Streaky Bay will be serviced not by a wireless network but by satellite. Wudinna is below the 1,000-resident threshold but sits on top of two fibre optic cables, so there is no cost at all to build the associated backhaul, just the street rollout. As I said, both of these communities are to be serviced by satellite. Cummins, according to the NBN plan, will receive a wireless network but also sits on a fibre optic cable.

I have raised repeatedly the poor deal for rural Australia under the NBN. In short, these Australians get to pay their full share of the $50 billion cost—around $2,500 a head or $6,000 a family—but they will not receive the service the rest of Australia will receive of 100 megabits per second, rising to 1,000 megabits per second. At best, many of them will only access 12 megabits by the satellite service. Increasingly communities are switching to wireless networks which they are establishing for themselves because, essentially, they do not want to wait the six to eight years for it to happen. As a resident of Grey, who has actually survived on a satellite internet connection, I would have to say that while it works quite well one way, a two-way conversation is pretty stilted because of the latency factor that operates with getting the signal up and down to the satellite.

If the government is determined to push on with its $50 billion National Broadband Network it should take a responsible decision either to give regional Australia a comparable service or to take a serious look at the financial penalty it is inflicting on these smaller communities. Why should they? Because in the case of Streaky Bay, what is the deal? Can the government not do the numbers? There are 1,070 people who live there. And in the cases of Wudinna, Cummins and a number of other communities in similar circumstances, let us have a common sense decision.