Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008. By way of background, it is important to note the significant record of assistance given by the former coalition government in upgrading telecommunications infrastructure over the past decade. The crowning glory of these achievements was the $2 billion Communications Fund created by the former government, which is under threat by this bill. We know the Labor Party never liked the fund. They wanted to get rid of it, just like they wanted to raid the Future Fund, to suit their own partisan political motives. The former government, of course, reinforced the integrity of the Communications Fund by passing the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007, which augmented the effectiveness of this fund through making it a perpetual fund and requiring it to maintain a minimum principal of $2 billion. Sadly, as my colleagues have noted, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Communications Fund) Bill 2008, among other things, essentially reverses this important mechanism.

This is yet another example of what we can expect under Labor. They are going to raid the coalition’s Communications Fund for their own purposes, leaving many thousands of consumers and telecommunications users in the lurch. It is clear that the Communications Fund is of critical importance to some of the potentially more disadvantaged consumers—namely, those in rural and regional areas. Here we have another prime example of Labor’s disdain for those living in the country. It is nothing new to people in my electorate—they are used to Labor Party saying one thing and doing another—but the very legislation we debate today removes an inherent and ingrained aspect of the former government’s legislation that proudly protects the people in rural and regional areas, those who rely so heavily on telecommunications and access to quality services. All throughout the recent election campaign, the coalition challenged the Labor Party to provide the costings, coverage maps and technical information about their broadband proposal for the full scrutiny of the Australian public. It became quite clear that the Labor Party did not have a genuine broadband strategy for Australians beyond the major capital cities. Their plan continues to be light on detail with no technical backing. The Labor Party’s city focused plan is to build fibre-to-the-node services that will cost taxpayers around five times more, yet deliver speeds that are no faster than ADSL2 or WiMax. It will not provide for fibre to every isolated farmhouse, unlike the satellite subsidy that was the coalition government’s policy.

Over the last few years, Labor has failed to keep up with the coalition in having a policy for bringing telecommunications to rural areas. Does anyone genuinely believe that Labor will now install new fibre to the node to every isolated farmhouse? Of course not, and that is why a wireless service is far more practical and affordable for rural internet users and for the taxpayer. At the recent election, my Labor opponent in the electorate of Indi blundered badly when she said:

Labor’s broadband plan is to connect all exchanges to broadband, so if you’re connected to a telephone exchange, you’ll have access.

This confession, that fibre will only be laid to the exchange, was a major blow for the Labor Party’s rural broadband credentials. It means that the so-called ‘last mile’ between telephone exchanges and residences will not be upgraded. This is where the bottlenecks currently exist—between the exchanges and the users. This is exactly what the coalition government’s clear plan for using innovative wireless technology was all about. Further, the technology advocated by the Labor Party is only accessible by users who are within four kilometres of an exchange. This means that anyone who is currently unable to access broadband services will remain unable to access broadband services under Labor’s plan, which some wits have described as ‘fraudband’. Clearly, the Labor candidate in my electorate did not realise that the current hurdle to high-speed broadband services is copper cabling between a telephone exchange and a residence. This is due to the physical properties of copper cabling, not due to any government or telecommunications company policy. It is simply not physically possible to send data at broadband speeds down copper cabling that is more than about four kilometres long. This left a huge hole in Labor’s claim that their broadband service would serve people in rural areas of north-east Victoria.

I believe this bill represents a sneaky raid on important future-proofing measures that were implemented by the former coalition government and that readily protected the interests of consumers in rural and regional Australia. Labor has now turned its back on these consumers so that it can raid the fund to pay for its half-baked policy. The communications minister was said to have been grumpy with his department recently when wanting to implement Labor’s so-called broadband plans. He will have to do better than that if he wants Australians to believe his utopian promise—that they are somehow going to be better off as a result of Labor’s plot to raid the Communications Fund.

I hold grave reservations for the future state of telecommunications facilities and standards in rural and regional areas as a result of the measures contained in this bill. Together with my coalition colleagues I will oppose this bill, which is an assault on the very viability of businesses and an assault on the very viability of social infrastructure in rural and regional Australia. If we want people to live outside the capital cities, we have to be honest with ourselves. And governments have to be honest and ask the question: do we want people to live outside capital cities? If the answer is yes, there is an absolute obligation to provide minimum infrastructure services—whether that is roads and bridges or whether that is telecommunications infrastructure and social infrastructure, such as schools. These services are an integral part of maintaining viable communities outside capital cities. This short-sighted, ill conceived, technologically flawed proposal by the Labor Party will put telecommunications in non-metropolitan parts of Australia way behind the eight ball. Sadly, it will disappoint many who believed that Labor would deliver. I condemn this bill and look forward to fighting for access to telecommunications for those living in rural and regional Australia, including and particularly those living in my electorate in north-east Victoria.

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