Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

It will be diverting, to say the least, to see how many automatic garage doors there are on very large rural properties. There might be a few. I suppose rural properties have the odd microwave oven and maybe a few other devices. My information is that that will not be an issue in relation to interference and spectrum. OPEL is able to utilise a class licence spectrum—the 5.8 gigahertz band—if licensed spectrum is not available commercially. This class licence spectrum band is utilised by the majority of wireless broadband providers in regional areas and is capable of supporting the high quality of services which OPEL will be implementing, including 12-megabit speeds.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, has provided advice that interference is in fact a minimal issue in rural areas at the point where OPEL would be using it because there are fewer operators—which is logical, when you think about it, but it is good that there is technical backup for my view. Even so, licensed spectrum would overcome some potential risks of interference from other users. OPEL has indicated that opportunities for purchasing licensed spectrum in the marketplace will be pursued as well as investigating using apparatus licenses where available.

It is very interesting that this government’s costed, fast broadband deliverable to 99 per cent the population—that can and will be delivered—stands in stark contrast to nothing but a back-of-the-envelope proposal put out by the Labor Party 89 days ago with nothing to support the fact that it cannot reach beyond 72 per cent of the population. I would be very interested to know where the Labor Party thinks it can actually run its build to. And where are the three million premises that are going to miss out under the Labor Party’s proposal? I am going to be calling upon the Labor Party to produce some information, some technical plans, some coverage maps—anything that could actually prove that the Labor Party can deliver a plan. Until they do that, every Australian is entitled to say that this is nothing more than pie-in-the-sky ‘fraudband’.