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

I thank the senator for her question and her continued interest in the NBN. In an interview earlier this year Mr Turnbull claimed that it was 'very difficult to think of many applications that are of interest to residential users that would not be perfectly well serviced by the speeds I've described'—12 to potentially 25 meg. After returning from a recent trip to Europe, Mr Turnbull even claimed to have met telecommunications executives, quoting one senior official as describing the Australian NBN policy as being 'from our point of view, completely crazy'.

Mr Turnbull perhaps has not noticed the recent policy announcement by the European Union. They announced their Connecting Europe Facility proposal, with a goal of achieving ubiquitous access to speeds of a minimum of 30 megabits across Europe by 2020, with at least 50 per cent of European households subscribing to broadband speeds of 100 megabits by 2020 as well. None other than the Vice-President of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, has said that access to the right high-speed broadband infrastructure could deliver over one trillion euros in additional economic activity to the EU within 10 years, while increasing broadband penetration by 10 per cent would increase Europe's annual GDP growth by up to 1.5 per cent.

So it is unfortunate that Mr Turnbull continues to wander around Australia misleading Australians, claiming we do not need this new infrastructure, that all will be right. Yet Citibank described that policy as obsolete and 'out of date by the time it finished'. (Time expired)