Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What this country cannot afford is to re-elect a government that has no vision or plans for the future. Let’s face it, when Kevin Rudd, on behalf of the Labor Party and with Senator Conroy, announced our broadband plan early this year it was because there is a vision for the future and some foresight in the Labor Party. It was announced because this government fails the test of the future. After dithering around for 11 long years and not getting on the program when it comes to keeping up to date with telecommunications and the infrastructure, finally this government is forced to react and come up with something. It has come up with a half-baked idea which is a concoction between SingTel, Optus and Intel. If you have a look at the substantive nature of this infrastructure, you see that it buys out old technology, when young kids, businesses and the families of our nation want not today’s technology but tomorrow’s technology today. This certainly will not deliver it.

I think this government is hoping that the general public will be dazzled by technology words and IT concepts that they will not understand. When people go to their computer to access the internet, they want real-time, fast service. I notice a suggestion that this OPEL deal will access 99 per cent of the population—Senator Bernardi suggested 100 per cent just now in his reply. In fact, that is absolute piffle.

If you have a look at the copy of the map that I have in front of me of the OPEL coverage for the Northern Territory—and I will seek leave to table this map—compared to what Telstra already delivers commercially, you will see that all it is simply going to do is affect Darwin and Palmerston. Funny about that: Darwin and Palmerston happen to be in Solomon. The rest of the Northern Territory has no black dot marks or circles anywhere on this map. Of course the rest of the territory happens to be in Lingiari. But the issue of whether this is perhaps going to be rolled out in marginal seats is a debate for another time. If you are not living in Darwin or Palmerston and you live somewhere else in the Northern Territory, what do you get out of this deal? Zero; nothing. If you live in Jabiru or Katherine, let alone Borroloola, Tennant Creek or even Alice Springs, you get absolutely nothing out of this deal. This map proves it. This map has only two little dots on it, over some of Darwin and over some of Palmerston. Anywhere else south of those lights at the Palmerston Centre you will get absolutely nothing, nothing at all, out of this deal.

Mr Howard’s plan is for a high-speed service but only if you are in one of the major capital cities in the states. You will get a low-speed service if you anywhere else in this country and absolutely no speed if you live in the Northern Territory outside of Darwin and Palmerston. Our plan is worth $4.7 billion; the government’s plan is worth $900 million. The reason that our plan costs a lot is that it will actually roll out fibre optic to the node, not just in the capital cities—and in marginal seats—but beyond the capital cities and into rural, regional and remote Australia. Territorians are being held back, and our options are even more limited because we do not have the level of internet access that is acceptable in the 21st century. I put it to you that if you live in the heart of Melbourne or Sydney then your internet access needs are not as crucial as those of someone who lives on a cattle station, out bush or in a remote community because the people out there are now relying on internet services for their day-to-day access to information.

The OPEL network that the government is suggesting is based on obsolete technology. It has fixed wireless WiMAX with connection speeds that are shared and the more users on the network the slower the speed. In fact, industry experts have indicated that the network is on average capable of delivering only 512 kilobits per second at twice today’s average speed. I have already mentioned that Optus have admitted that wireless will have only a six-kilometre penetration and it will be less behind hills—not 20 to 50 kilometres as the minister stated in her press release in June. So the Howard government is proposing an antiquated, back-to-the-past broadband connection. (Time expired)