Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Riverina for her question. Since 2004, as a direct result of the government’s Broadband Connect program and its predecessor, HiBIS, more than one million additional premises have had access to metropolitan comparable broadband services, more than 200,000 additional consumers in regional Australia have been connected to broadband services and more than 1,500 additional exchanges have been ADSL enabled. And now the government’s $162½ million Australian Broadband Guarantee will provide universal broadband for all Australians, regardless of where they live, because anybody unable to gain a reasonable level of broadband service at their home or small business can receive a subsidised broadband service.

I am asked about alternative proposals. I have now had an opportunity to look very carefully at the Labor proposal as launched yesterday and found it to be utterly implausible and lacking entirely in credibility. There is nobody in the communications sector who for a moment thinks that its grand ambition can be nearly realised. I invite those who would not normally rush to read a Labor Party proposal or paper to look at it because, out of 20 pages, there is but one page of anything resembling details. It gives you some idea when so small amount of space is allocated to a massively complex and technical area. There are no maps or costings of the proposal. There are no details.

Then there are the funding figures. We are told that it is an $8 billion plan. By four o’clock yesterday afternoon, only a couple of hours after the press club launch, the communications spokesman, Senator Conroy, was telling Steve Price at 2UE that the number could be as high as $9 billion. Steve Price asked, ‘So we are up around the $10 billion mark, are we?’ Senator Conroy answered, ‘It is about $8 billion to $9 billion.’ The figures are going up already. What sort of costed proposal is this? But why worry? They will just dip into the Future Fund to top up any overspend.

Moreover, it is a stupid policy. It is stupid because the private sector was going to invest anyway. Telstra and the group of nine consortium were going to invest through the fibre-to-node program without any government funding assistance because they were going to invest in the commercial areas of built-up populations. Now they are laughing all the way to the bank because the Labor Party recklessly, negligently—

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