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

Broadband is a key component of our national infrastructure. We need it essentially as we need roads and railways, ports and airports. The government has invested in providing subsidised broadband to regional areas since 2005 and has just announced a further $162 million for the Australian Broadband Guarantee which will fill the remaining black spots. If necessary, further funding to patch these black spots will come from investment of the government’s $2 billion infrastructure fund, which in round figures should give at least $120 million a year on an ongoing basis. That is what makes Labor’s plan to eliminate that fund so heinous.

The next step in rolling out better broadband is the promotion of next generation investment in rural and regional areas, which is why we have put on the table $600 million to establish an open access network. An open access network implies competition, and competition is essential because better broadband is of no use to people if they cannot afford it. We have heard a lot today about Korea and the United States. Their broadband is a lot dearer than ours will be, which is why a combination of competition, strategic government support and strict regulation is the key to delivering this technology.

The government is already getting on with the job. Since 2004, $878 million has been spent on  Broadband Connect and approximately $109 million has been spent on HiBIS. This has resulted in more than 200,000 new consumers in regional areas being connected to broadband, more than a million extra premises having access to metro-comparable broadband services and an extra 1,500 exchanges being ADSL enabled. To underscore the government’s achievement, the President of the National Farmers Federation, David Crombie, late last year had this to say:

As part of the government’s broadband connect initiative focused on under-served areas 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.

The minister will shortly announce the successful bidder or bidders for up-front funding from the $600 million program to help build new large-scale broadband infrastructure which will deliver competitive wholesale prices in regional areas into the future.

So let us look at the Labor policy, which is really just a rehash of the one Kim Beazley cooked up around two years ago. To get to that, Labor will abolish the $2 billion Communication Fund which, as I said, is capable of giving us about $120 million a year into the future and which exists to make sure the most disadvantaged Australians have access to decent telecommunications services into the future. The new Labor policy will be ‘Bush be damned!’ They will spend the Communication Fund plus—wait for it—$2.7 billion of the Future Fund on broadband for the cities and forget about the backbone of the national economy: our hardworking farmers, businesspeople, miners and others who live outside the metropolitan areas.

I would like to know how Labor’s fibre-to-the-node network is going to reach 98 per cent of Australians and still deliver competition. It is interesting, too, that they picked 98 per cent. I went to the briefing on the coalition’s current programs, and at the end of the $600 million program, which will be rolled out in the near future, we will be at 98 per cent. So where is the wizardry here?

The other interesting thing is that just two years ago Labor wanted us to pay $5 billion for dial-up internet. That is how far up with the technology they were. There was forward-thinking policy of great rigour—I don’t think! If $5 billion is the magic figure and they are going to have $4.7 billion to do what they want to do, there is a very strong inference in the scenario that Labor is putting to us that they are going to put the whole thing into the capital cities.

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