Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in the strongest opposition to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008, which is set to allow money to be used ‘for purposes relating to the creation or development of a broadband telecommunications network’, primarily for city, urban Australia. This money is the $2 billion Communications Fund that was created through the passing of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Future Proofing and Other Measures) Bill 2005. That bill at the time was extremely contentious. I feel quite sincerely justified in standing here and opposing this bill to the very end. What I cannot understand, in referring to the Future Proofing and Other Measures bill, is where the former opposition, now the Labor government, stands on this process. I moved to this side of the House, from the government benches to the opposition benches, and crossed the floor and voted against the sale of Telstra. Every one of the Australian Labor Party members of parliament here, who made up the opposition at that time, voted against the sale of Telstra. They were adamant and strong on the point that it was not to the benefit of the Australian telecommunications industry and not to the benefit of the Australian people to sell off Telstra. Yet what do we see? We see an enormous backflip. Not only are we willing now to sell Telstra; we are also plundering, raping and pillaging the very program that was put in place to protect rural and regional Australians.

In September 2007 the coalition government reinforced the Communications Fund as a perpetual fund by the passage of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. The bill title says it all. That bill required the fund to retain a minimum principal of $2 billion. The bill we have here today repeals this safeguard. This is very distressing for people across Australia. I believe that this government will regret the day that it decided to plunder the fund that provided for the people most vulnerable. It is a very distressing day for all residents in rural and regional Australia.

This bill allows the fund itself, not just the income from it, to be accessed and to be applied in a broader range of financial instruments, including the acquisition of shares, debentures and assets. As for the development of this magical telecommunications network, the bill will have enormous impact on the way in which communications into the future will reach rural and regional Australia, even more so in my circumstances in the Riverina. I feel I have the right to feel enormously aggrieved at the Labor Party’s decision to sell us out once again. At the very time metropolitan areas are benefiting from competition between telecommunication providers and the rollout of new services and technologies, the Rudd Labor government is trying to rip the remedy to the digital divide away from the bush, to spend taxpayer funds on a vague, citycentric plan that Minister Conroy cannot even describe. What a disgrace!

The Rudd Labor government does not just want to raid the interest earned from the fund—though that would be bad enough. It would be bad enough to plunder the interest earned from this regional fund, but to take the fund itself—to take away the very support those currently most disadvantaged rely upon to ensure that they can be full participants in an information society—is nothing short of a crime. It is a crime against the people of Australia. The former coalition government had a clear plan for ensuring fast broadband services were available to the people of rural and regional Australia, and that plan did not require a raid on the Communications Fund.

This income stream, from the interest earned on the $2 billion fund, estimated to be up to $400 million every three years, is quarantined to be used to finance the government’s response to independent reviews of regional communications services. Senator Conroy has recently endorsed the current work of the review team. It was established by the former coalition government, by the former minister. It was headed by Dr Bill Glasson, and he has done an admirable job. So you have the minister coming out and endorsing this work but, at the very same time, you have the government—the government that he is a part of and responsive to—raiding the dedicated resources required to implement the committee’s findings. I find this an unbelievable dichotomy.

The Labor government says it is prepared to use the Communications Fund now to provide better broadband services to 98 per cent of Australian residential and business customers. Optus said in October last year: ‘It is impossible to cover 98 per cent of the population with just fibre-to-the-node.’ Optus said in October that Labor’s plan is undeliverable and will leave millions of Australian families and small businesses stranded without any high-speed broadband—and we all know where those families and small businesses sit: they sit in the forgotten land of country Australia; they sit in the forgotten space, which is supposed to just disappear into oblivion. And that is obviously the intention of this Labor government, for every program that has been slashed in this place has been a rural and regional program and now here we have another attack on rural and regional people.

Surely—since there is such a contingent of union members in this House who are there to represent those who are less fortunate and those who are being impacted upon by the hierarchy and by the giants—there has to be somebody who is willing to stand up and say: ‘This is simply not right. We voted as a party whilst in opposition against the sale of Telstra.’ The Labor Party voted against the sale of Telstra. Now, not only are they into the sale; they are into the bucket. They cannot keep their hands out of the cookie tin. And it is just an absolute disgrace that this act against those people in rural and regional Australia should take place.

There are also comments from Optus’s head of technology and planning, Peter Ferris, who has said that it is unimaginable that areas which are yet to be put on the power grid could feasibly have access to fibre. He said some areas in Labor’s footprint do not even have a grid supply. There is no doubt that fibre broadband is fast, but only if you live within 1.5 kilometres of your local telephone exchange or node. WiMAX broadband has a coverage radius of 20 kilometres. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision to pick a single broadband technology poorly suited to those in rural and regional Australia will mean that one in four Australians will miss out completely on a high-speed broadband service under Labor. Just relegate us into a black box, and who cares? And the fact that they are raiding the Communications Fund—which is essentially, as I have said, designed and named for rural and regional Australia—is absolutely unacceptable. Again I say that Labor has shown its true colours when it comes to supporting the needs of the seven million people who live outside the capital cities.

A fibre rollout in South Korea cost the South Korean government $40 billion. Australia’s landmass is so much greater than South Korea’s—yet the government thinks that $4.7 billion will reach our landmass? It is an absolute obscenity. To raid the Communications Fund is simply robbing our regional communities of future vital telecommunications services, and many of my constituents in the Riverina electorate are already facing tough circumstances. They had drought for seven years. They have had to continue to operate on small incomes, if any income at all. They have had their backs to the wall but they have kept their spirits high. They need communications to run businesses. It is a fact that we, in country Australia, actually do run businesses. It might come as a great surprise—

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