Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I reject the opposition’s claim that Australia is not a world leader in broadband communications. They are running a disingenuous line by saying that Australia should have broadband penetration rates comparable to those of geographically small countries—some mentioned those in Europe and others like Japan and Korea. It is time for Labor to come clean and admit that their policy will cost taxpayers billions of dollars, perhaps coming close to the $40 billion that the South Korean government spent rolling out its fibre.

Australians understand the limitations of distance and the limitations of innovations. They are all part and parcel of living in the most sparsely populated country on the planet. What we have to do is use a mixture of technologies—not just fibre, which would be inordinately expensive. We need to look at other technologies.

Despite our geographic challenges, the take-up of broadband services in Australia has now reached almost four million connections—the equivalent of about 80 per cent of Australian households and small businesses. As at 30 June this year, broadband take-up had increased by 1.4 million connections or 67 per cent from June 2005. That is according to the latest ACCC Snapshot of Broadband Deployment. Australia was also in the top five OECD countries for per capita broadband subscriber growth. If you want to rate us with the OECD, you want to look at where we stand in the equation and how fast we are rolling things out. We can expect continued growth in broadband take-up thanks to the government’s serious investment in rolling out broadband around this nation.

Last year the coalition announced $3.1 billion in funding for telecommunications projects, including $878 million for Broadband Connect. This program, which has already provided an extra one million broadband connections to both homes and businesses in Australia, was to be a new launching pad. We have delivered $2 billion of that to the communications fund to provide an income stream to fund future upgrades of rural telecommunications infrastructure. That could also have an impact on broadband further down the track. The government also recently announced a second-stage program which will see $600 million spent on larger-scale infrastructure projects to deliver competitive wholesale prices in regional areas into the future.

Let us get one thing straight: the Labor Party do not care about getting more broadband into the bush. In fact, Labor described the government’s $3.1 billion Connect Australia package as ‘one of the National Party’s slush funds’. Labor announced in May that, if they were elected to government, they would shut down Connect Australia—note that: they would shut down Connect Australia—including Broadband Connect and the $2 billion in the rural communications fund. Labor plan to use this money to subsidise broadband infrastructure in highly commercial and competitive metropolitan markets like Sydney—areas that the industry itself is prepared to invest in.

The opposition cannot even decide what broadband is. First, the opposition communications spokesman, Senator Conroy, called for broadband of 10 megabits per second and faster, calling anything less ‘fraudband’. Then Kim Beazley came out with his plan for broadband of six megabits per second. It is no wonder that Senator Conroy quickly revised the fraudband definition. He then started talking about 100 megabits per second—a speed which at this point is enjoyed by almost no-one in the world.

The coalition see broadband as a key component of national infrastructure and, as such, one in as much need of national policy oversight as roads, railways, ports and airports. We will need to ensure that services will be provided for into the future and that, where the market does not provide new technology, we have a $2 billion mechanism to provide new technology across rural and regional Australia. The National Farmers Federation has welcomed this new package, saying:

... this $600 million component has the capacity to significantly improve the services, and enhance the availability, of efficient and timely broadband outcomes for rural Australia ...

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