Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Yes—have a look at the WiMAX technology! I congratulate Senator Conroy, who is in charge of this particular piece of legislation, for not turning off the CDMA service until the handsets particularly—but also some of the towers for reception in country areas—are brought up to scratch. I would urge him not to switch off CDMA on 28 April either, because we need to make sure that at this particular time in our history, with the former government having sold out a public instrumentality and with us converting to a new technology—that of Next G, access to which country Australians are not up to scratch with—we do not lose this piece of political leverage. The former government said—and I would have thought that the member for Herbert would be supportive of this—that they would enshrine in legislation equity of access, in terms of quality and cost, to broadband and telephone services. If the member for Herbert wants to address these issues with respect to fairness, maybe he could elaborate as to where that particular guarantee was enshrined. Where was it enshrined in legislation? The answer is that it was not. Country people and members of parliament who were here then know they were duped into selling an asset that was not only a valuable commodity but far more valuable in terms of its capacity to deliver services to people. The role of government is to provide those sorts of services into the future. Providing those services—which may or may not be economic in terms of size, scale and magnitude of delivery—is what the role of government is supposed to be about, I would have thought. They sold out. For the National Party to be part and parcel of it and actually carry the coffin to the grave really encapsulates why the credibility of that party has diminished and why it will fade away, and deserves to fade away, into the sunset. (Time expired)

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