Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to speak on this MPI today, because the availability of broadband and speed of the service is something I have taken a keen interest in in my electorate of Stirling. When I was elected there were some broadband black spots. They were isolated and they seemed to occur at random intervals. But after several visits by the minister for communications, who came and directly discussed the problem with constituents in Stirling, and due to the Howard government’s commitment to providing broadband services, I am very pleased to report to the House that those black spots are being eradicated.

This is really what surprises me about this motion today. The Howard government has already made a firm commitment to provide all Australians—that is, all Australians regardless of where they live—with access to broadband services. I think that bears repeating: the government has committed that all Australians, regardless of where they live, will have access to broadband services. This includes the remotest parts of the nation and it includes isolated areas that obviously pose particular challenges when it comes to providing telecommunications infrastructure. This commitment has been backed already by the $1 billion worth of expenditure. Indeed, on 7 March, a mere two weeks ago, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts announced a further $162½ million for the Australian Broadband Guarantee. This is on top of the $878 million Broadband Connect program and the $50 million Metro Broadband Connect program.

The government’s performance on broadband take-up rates and speed is already extremely strong. Australia has over 3.9 million broadband subscribers and around one-third of all Australian homes have broadband. Australia is above the OECD average when it comes to broadband take-up. Indeed, we are ranked 17th for overall take-up. If you have a look at where some of the comparable countries in the OECD are ranked, Germany is 18th, France is 16th, the UK is 10th and the US is 12th. But Australia’s take-up rate for broadband grew at a faster rate than any OECD country except Denmark in the 12 months to 30 June last year. Residential take-up of broadband increased by 63 per cent in regional areas and 41 per cent in metropolitan areas in the year to September 2006. A major factor driving this take-up is price. Australia has very internationally competitive broadband pricing. In 2006, a UK report ranked Australia’s residential broadband plans as cheaper than those of South Korea and the United States.

I want to turn to speeds, because we have heard a lot about relative broadband speeds in the debate today. I would like to inform the House that almost 90 per cent of Australian households are connected to exchanges that provide speeds of between two megabits per second and eight megabits per second, which is more than enough bandwidth to download movies, conduct videoconferencing, play online games and teleconference. Of course, it is more than enough for everyday internet and email use. Nearly 50 per cent of the population can access even higher speeds of between 12 to 20 megabits per second from ADSL2 broadband and from pay TV cable networks. And yet the Labor Party has announced their grand plan today to provide speeds of 12 megabits per second broadband! Fifty per cent of the Australian population can already access speeds that are equal to or higher than that.

Fixed wireless networks in Australia provide speeds of up to two megabits per second to almost 6.5 million premises in Australia, including around 800,000 that cannot access ADSL broadband. There are now four third-generation mobile phone networks operating in Australia, all of which offer broadband services. Since March 2007 the number of broadband subscribers on 1.5-megabit speed connections or greater has doubled to 1.1 million. Small businesses are taking advantage of the faster speeds. Almost one in five online small businesses use connections of two megabits or greater.

Australia is different from some of our competitors in the fact that we operate in a unique environment of having a huge continental landmass which is sparsely populated. But when South Korea, a country that would fit into Australia many times over, decided that they needed to build the equivalent fibre-to-the-node network that Labor is talking about today it cost them $US40 billion. Yet the Labor government has today announced a plan that they say will cost only $A4.7 billion. The government has already shown unique ingenuity in dealing with new technologies as they arrive in Australia and adapting them to our very difficult requirements. Of course, it is vitally important that this happens, because we have a $1 trillion economy and we fully recognise that broadband is going to be an important part of productivity growth in the future.

Broadband is indeed going to play an important role in securing our economic future. That is why the minister announced a broadband blueprint in December last year. This blueprint provides a national framework for the future of broadband in Australia, and it comes at a reasonable cost in conjunction with private sector investment. By contrast, let us look at Labor’s plan. They plan to raid the future. They plan to steal from future generations to fund what may well be obsolete technology in the future. We need to remember that Labor’s policy two years ago was to spend $5 billion building a dial-up network. This is the point: the private sector is best placed to adapt to new technologies and is best placed to roll out these new technologies as they evolve. What the government should do is provide the appropriate framework and support where necessary for that to happen.

Labor announced its plan today—this so-called fibre-to-the-node network. They believe it will cover 98 per cent of Australia. It is not a real plan, because we have yet to see any detail. There is absolutely no detail on how this network will be rolled out to 98 per cent of the Australian population. We have no idea what level of private investment will be involved, what regulatory arrangements are being contemplated, whether there will be appropriate access arrangements or how this public-private partnership might work. These are just some of the questions that have not been answered. The plan provides no idea how Telstra’s cooperation will be obtained or how any other competing carrier will be able to submit a viable fibre-to-the-node proposal. It begs the question: will a Labor government use heavy-handed legislation to compulsorily acquire parts of the Telstra network that they believe might be essential for establishing this fibre-to-the-node network?

Labor has fixed on fibre to the node as the only way of delivering high-speed broadband to all areas of Australia. But, of course, and as I know from my own experience in Stirling, there are many other technologies such as high-speed wireless networks, which may provide more efficient or viable services. The best example of this is to refer back to Labor’s policy of two years ago when they proposed to spend $5 billion to build a dial-up network that we all know now is completely obsolete technology. Labor have not given any consideration to the effect of its proposal on existing broadband providers in regional Australia or on the broadband infrastructure to be rolled out as part of the government’s Broadband Connect program. We know what Labor are really going to do: they will rob the bush to provide a level of service in the city that people outside of the metropolitan areas will not be able to get access to. This confirms Labor’s legendary contempt for rural Australia.

Before I close, I would like to turn to the funding policies that Labor have for this network. Last year, the Howard government achieved the historic full privatisation of Telstra after a decade of making the arguments publicly about the benefits that a full sale would provide for Australian consumers. After we went out and made the arguments, and Labor opposed us at every turn, in a very short space of time Labor have managed to come up with plans to spend that money. The sale of Telstra along with strong budget surpluses have allowed us to eliminate the $96 billion of debt that we inherited from Labor and to create a super fund to provide for the government’s superannuation liabilities. Labor plans to totally destroy that good work. As a younger member of this House, I find it offensive that the coalition have worked hard to provision for outstanding liabilities that will accumulate with Australia’s ageing population, yet Labor want to cavalierly raid this money to provide for their political— (Time expired)

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