Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan. Will the minister inform the Senate as to how the government is expanding access to broadband? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Humphries both for the question and for his interest in telecommunications services, particularly for people of the ACT. Despite some ill-founded criticisms that you hear from the Australian Labor Party, the news on broadband in Australia is positive. It is growing exponentially. Today Australia has the second fastest take-up of broadband in the OECD. There are now nearly four million premises—that is, homes, businesses, schools and libraries—connected to high-speed broadband.

More than 80 per cent of Australian households and small businesses have access to fast broadband speeds of up to eight megabits a second. Telstra’s new Next G mobile network will offer speeds of up to 14.4 megabits per second by next year. In addition, HFC cable networks, which pass around 2.7 million premises in major capital cities, can provide very fast broadband speeds of up to 17 megabits a second. More than a dozen ADSL2+ providers are supplying speeds of up to 24 megabits to their customers. Recognising that there are some Australians who cannot access multimegabit broadband, this government has committed more than $1 billion to ensure equitable access to broadband regardless of where people live.

I have been asked about alternative policies. Indeed, I am aware of one from the Labor Party. Senator Kemp will be interested in this: it is to tax broadband infrastructure. The ACT Stanhope Labor government has announced a new utilities land use permit tax which slaps a tax on each kilometre of new broadband cable laid in the Australian Capital Territory. The broadband proposition in the ACT is simple: the more broadband you roll out in the ACT the more you get taxed. Under this plan, telco companies will be charged rent for lands used for all telecommunications infrastructure. The ACT will extract $8 million in utilities tax from its hapless citizens next year and more than $16 million the year after. These costs will no doubt be passed on to the consumer, resulting in a tax on ordinary Australians using broadband in the territory.

I cannot help but wonder: where is the outcry from the federal ALP on this move? How can Mr Beazley say that broadband is his top infrastructure priority yet fail to demand that the Stanhope government reverse its broadband tax? For that matter, why has Senator Lundy not made the case to her ACT comrades, demanding the exclusion of telecommunications companies, if not the abolition altogether of this regressive tax? This move by Labor to tax broadband infrastructure and, ultimately, broadband use, reveals the depths of Labor’s hypocrisy on telecommunications and its total lack of commitment to making critical infrastructure available to Australians. It really is time that federal Labor stopped wasting its energy on attacking the coalition on its positive broadband policies and turned its attention to its own backyard.