Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection from over there. Why don’t you spend some time in Geraldton with those people who now have a genuine broadband service because of the development of the National Broadband Network? People are now, for the same price, getting ten times faster speeds and double the downloads. To those Western Australian senators I say: go to Geraldton. To those Tasmanian Senators opposite I say: go and talk to the people using the NBN in Tasmania. They will tell you that they are getting a fantastic service. The school in Tasmania that used to pay $60,000 for the same connection it gets today now pays $1,400. That is $58,000 that it can spend on educating kids because that money now is not going to Telstra. The educational experience of those kids has been enhanced enormously. But the Luddites over there—the self-confessed ‘I’m no Bill Gates’—demonstrate every day that they are about nothing more—