John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

you might as well have lit a fire and got a smoke signal going, because the GSM was absolutely hopeless in regional Australia. Senator Conroy, with all his interjections, is probably not very proud of Labor’s history when it comes to the mobile telephone network.

Thank goodness that in 1996 we had a change of government. The coalition, driven by the National Party, introduced CDMA, and many towers were put up. CDMA was a good system. The coverage was much better over distances. With a car kit and a broomstick aerial on your car, you could pick up reception 30, 40 and 50 kilometres away from a tower.

Then we went on to take the next step, to Next G. Despite criticism by many, such as Tony Windsor and others, I find the Next G system also very good. In my car, with, as I said, the car kit and the broomstick aerial, I can actually drive from Inverell to Adelaide, 1,800 kilometres, and not be without a signal for longer than one minute on that trip. In fact, driving around much of the state, as I often do, it is very rare that I cannot get a signal. Thank you to the previous government for building those towers.

The point I want to make is that many of those country towns have only Telstra. I do believe that when something is a monopoly it should be retained by the government. I had reservations about the full privatisation of Telstra—I am being perfectly honest here, Mr Acting Deputy President Bishop.

We now have the NBN plan being put forward by Senator Conroy and the Rudd government. At the last election, I think it was a $4½ billion plan for fast broadband with downloads of 12 megabits per second, to cover 98 per cent of Australians. Now we have 98 per cent getting fibre to the home and a budget blow-out from $4½ billion to a massive $43 billion. It will be interesting to see whether the $21 billion that is expected from the private sector will be forthcoming. The first thing they will want to know is how much of a return they are going to get on their investment—so they will be keen to see the business plan that none of us have seen as yet—to encourage them to put the money in.