Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

All of this bluff and bluster from Senator Conroy is simply trying to hide the fact that Senator Coonan, on behalf of the Howard government, has announced a broadband access program that is far superior, far more detailed, costed and technologically savvy than the shallow announcement by Labor some three months ago. The fact is the policy announced by the government provides world-first policy initiatives and it will ensure that all Australians, regardless of where they live, will have access to affordable broadband—quite a contrast to what Senator Conroy said today. And of course, in contrast to that, the policy Labor released about three months ago is uncosted, untested and undeliverable. They have misled, or attempted to mislead, the Australian population into thinking that they can deliver fibre to the node to 98 per cent of Australians. You only have to look at their flimsy costings to demonstrate that this simply does not add up.

It is generally recognised that $4 billion alone will be required for the cities that cover 36 per cent of our population. So if you are quite generous and assume that you can get another 36 per cent in the less populous areas for another $4 billion, you still only have a total coverage of 72 per cent for $8 billion. That is nowhere near the 98 per cent the Labor Party have promised in their policy. What that means in practical effect is that, under Labor’s policy, some three million premises will be left without a broadband service, and they will have absolutely no prospect of getting one in the future.

Clearly, Labor’s proposal is demonstrably flawed. It is already unravelling because not long ago we heard Labor’s shadow minister for defence, the member for Hunter, Joel Fitzgibbon MP, bell the cat in a media doorstop when he was asked by a journalist, ‘Who misses out in that region’—his own region—‘under your plan?’ He said:

Well those things are yet to be tested; we will roll out fibre to the node right throughout the Hunter region. Obviously there may be some people excluded from that. We haven’t ... don’t have the technical backing to make those final conclusions.

So there we have one of Labor’s senior shadow cabinet ministers confirming that many are going to be left behind, including in his own Hunter region. So this is not a plan for the future. This is a fraud on the Australian people attempted by the Labor opposition. That is absolutely clear again today from what Senator Conroy said, and it reinforces the fact that we have an inexperienced Labor team. They do not have the necessary economic or policy clout. They still have not done their hard yards on policy development after how many years opposition?