Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I said ‘the back of Bourke’. I did not say ‘Bourke’, Member for New England. Lord Howe Island has difficulty. The way to solve that is through the former government’s and the current government’s broadband guarantee, which allows a subsidy for satellite services so that no Australian is disadvantaged. And that is the way it should be.

Labor’s fixed broadband proposal comes at a time when broadband delivery through wireless and other mixed technologies is rapidly gaining momentum. You now see people all over the place with their laptops, wherever they are, with their little cards plugged into the side of their laptops. They are on the net, surfing and doing their business. Of course, this is the way that the member for Canberra can solve her problem in respect of the 75 units in Chifley. It works at high speed—faster than ADSL—it is reliable and it works wherever you are. Labor wants to roll out broadband across the country over the next five years. It will slowly bleed the Communications Fund dry and have little to show for it at the end of the day.

The private providers in the metropolitan areas should be providing the capital to do all of this, because they are the people who will take the benefit, the dividend and the profit. In the metro areas it is quite lucrative for the private providers to provide these services, yet Labor wants to spend rural and regional Australia’s money on metro services that would be provided anyway by the private providers. That is just not sensible. That is why this bill should be voted down.

I started off by saying that this bill was effectively a licence to steal—to steal from regional and rural Australia. The previous government’s—now the alternative government of this country—attempt to future-proof regional Australia from falling behind metro centres in accessing improved communications technology is now very much under threat. And it should not be. This fund was set up for the ongoing benefit of households in rural and regional Australia, and they should be protected. It is wrong; it is stealing. Income from the fund was specifically and exclusively mandated to support communications services outside the metro area but, if this fund is run down, there will be no income. It therefore follows that there will be no support. Those in rural and regional Australia who are listening to the parliament tonight will be quite angry to know that Labor is stealing their money. This is not just rhetoric—it is not about my standing up at the dispatch box—it is what is happening. A fund that was set up for the benefit of rural and regional Australia—thousands of millions of dollars—will now be snaffled up by the Labor Party and spent in metropolitan Australia. I think there will be a revolt when people in rural and regional Australia understand what the Labor Party is doing.

The Prime Minister and the Labor Party went to the electorate promising that they would do something about petrol prices, grocery prices and mortgage rates. It was part of the central plank of the Labor Party’s campaign. The electorate trusted the Labor Party and expected this to happen, but the government is now taking away the money earmarked for rural and regional Australia. We will see telecommunications prices, petrol prices, grocery prices and mortgage rates go up. People will realise by the time of the next election that they have been sold a pup, just as this bill is a pup in relation to rural and regional Australia. I absolutely reject and oppose the legislation before the parliament tonight.

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