Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Social and Community Affairs)) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Coonan, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Is the minister aware of recent comments by her colleague Senator Joyce: ‘If wireless is so good, why don’t they use it in the cities? Fibre to every corner of the country is the best outcome.’ Don’t Senator Joyce’s comments reinforce concerns that both he and Senator Nash first raised in the 2005 Page Research Centre report on telecommunications in non-metropolitan Australia? Didn’t that report recommend a feasibility study into the cost of laying fibre optics for a fibre-to-home broadband rollout in rural and regional Australia? Hasn’t the minister ignored the Page report for the last two years? What guarantee can the minister now give that we will not end up with first-class fibre broadband in five cities and second-class wireless broadband in the bush?