Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak as a representative of the Australian Labor Party, the political party which holds most regional seats in this parliament. So, when we hear the Leader of the National Party or the Liberal-National Party or whatever they are these days, we know that the confusion that we just heard explains why they are now surrounded by Labor members up and down the Queensland coast. It is because they were out of touch with the needs of people in regional Australia and with the needs of people in the business community.

Just this morning I flew to Newcastle accompanied by the member for Newcastle and the member for Hinkler. The member for Hinkler was pleased to accept my invitation to participate in the opening of the Australian Maritime Centre. I was doing a radio interview on 2HD, and the legacy of 12 years of neglect from the Howard government kicked in when the line dropped out. That is what happened when you went around regional Australia—the lines simply dropped out. They dropped out as regularly as voters dropped off voting for the coalition and the National Party. It is pretty clear every time you hear those opposite address this House that the people they are really angry with are the Australian public. They do not accept the verdict of the Australian public

Today we introduced proudly the legislation to rip up Work Choices—again, one of the other major reasons why we now sit on this side of the House. Work Choices and the opposition’s failure in regional Australia on broadband were two of the main issues. What did we do? We went to the election campaign stating that we would build a national broadband network. We argued that it was an important infrastructure investment for Australia’s long-term prosperity and we did it in the context of our position of arguing for nation building. Since the election we have backed up those promises that we made during the campaign with fulfilment. We have established Infrastructure Australia. We have got going on building the nation and part of that is our commitment to provide up to $4.7 billion to facilitate the rollout of the national broadband network—the biggest national investment in broadband infrastructure ever made by an Australian government. It is a network that will cover 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses and deliver a high-speed fibre based network.

We have made this a first-order infrastructure priority and we are moving forward quickly and methodically to implement our election commitment whilst ensuring the integrity of the NBN process. The practices of those opposite make it clear that they would not recognise integrity if they tripped over it. Two days in a row we have had questions in this House about the tender process, when the tender closes tomorrow. It would be entirely inappropriate and would subject the government to legal action were we to go into detail as to the tender process, but of course, when you are from the National Party, you do not worry about legal processes, you do not worry about probity and you do not worry about integrity. We have seen that in every one of the programs that they had control over. We certainly saw it with regard to their attitude towards broadband and modern communications.

We on this side want to build highways, we want to build railways but we also want to build the new communications highways of the 21st century. Those opposite introduced 18 short-term bandaids during their 12 years in office—that is, 18 different proposals in 12 years—but Australia was still standing by the side of the information superhighway while the rest of the nations in our region sped past. Australia was left behind while our peers around the world started to roll out high-speed fibre based broadband networks. The latest OECD figures for its 30 member countries rank Australia 16th on penetration levels and 10th on the most expensive subscription prices, yet those opposite have the audacity to accuse the government of not delivering on broadband infrastructure. Let us be clear: Australia’s lack of world-class broadband infrastructure is the result of too many years of bandaid solutions.

We had the suggestion by the Leader of the National Party that we were promoting yesterday and today’s technology. This is from a mob who wanted to go to wireless technology because they did not quite understand the whole concept of broadband. They just did not get it. They were led by a leader and a leadership team who were stuck in the last century and incapable of moving forward. They were stuck on industrial relations in the century before, the century of the master-servant relationship, but on the challenges of the new century they were simply unable to move forward.

Let us have a look at what they proposed while in government. They included: in 2002, a Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities; in 2003, a Higher Bandwidth Incentive Scheme; and, in 2004, a National Broadband Strategy, a National Broadband Strategy Implementation Group, a Coordinated Communications Infrastructure Fund, a Demand Aggregation Brokers Program, a metropolitan broadband black spots program, a Broadband for Health initiative, and a broadband pharmacy program. You would think that maybe they would have completed all their work, but, oh, no—in 2005, they were back in here with more bandaid legislation. In 2005 they had an NBSIG Australian action plan. They then had a Clever Networks program. In 2005 they also had the Broadband Connect subsidy program. They had the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program, they had the Communications Fund and in 2006 they had the Broadband Blueprint. When we got to 2007 they had OPEL, the fixed wireless broadband product that did not meet the terms of the contract that it had with the Commonwealth. And what about the Australian Broadband Guarantee in 2007? It was the very program that the coalition would not commit funds to in the lead-up to the 2007 election, even though the program was going to run dry in June this year, the very program aimed at improving broadband services to areas where there are no commercial metro-comparable broadband services—to people in places that the member for Wide Bay claims to represent. No amount of pleading from the National Party was going to convince the Liberals that the Australian Broadband Guarantee was worthy of long-term funding, so they simply got done over. And what is their response to years of being done over by the economic rationalists in the Liberal Party? They have joined them. With their tail wagging, they got their little pat on the head. They rolled over and had their tummy tickled by the Liberal Party, and now they are the Liberal-National Party or the National-Liberal Party or something else in Queensland.

By contrast, Labor’s election commitment was crystal clear, and in this year’s budget we announced $270.7 million for the program over four years. Once again, it is Labor funding regional programs, something that the National Party failed to do. If the coalition’s record on broadband was not bad enough, I would like to remind the Leader of the National Party about his commitment to regional Australia, because it is astonishing that he is prepared to criticise the government on the biggest injection of funds into broadband this nation has ever seen when he was prepared to deliver a two-tiered solution. There are some new members here who might find it astonishing that there would be a two-tiered solution proposed to broadband, but that is precisely what they proposed. If you lived in an electorate such as mine, you got fibre to the node for the cities but, if you lived in a regional community, you got a different system. You got a weaker system. You got a cheaper solution, a second-class solution. You got a fixed wireless system for the regions. One of their proposals did not take into account that you were fine as long as you lived on a plane—as long as there was not a hill or a building in the way you were fine. Meanwhile, through the NBN and other measures specifically targeting the remaining two per cent of Australians, the government has committed substantial new funding to improve telecommunications services in regional Australia.

On top of the $270.7 million allocation to the Australian Broadband Guarantee, a further $400 million has been made available to fund the government’s response to the Glasson report. Australia certainly deserves much better than the short-term political opportunism of those opposite. We on this side of the House have stated that we expect that the NBN will facilitate competition through open access arrangements and provide affordable services to consumers. We have gone direct to the market to ask what it can deliver so that proponents have the chance to put forward the regulatory changes necessary to facilitate their proposals. It is up to proponents to demonstrate how best to meet or exceed our objectives within the competitive process. We remain open-minded on the regulatory solutions that can achieve our objectives, and we are certainly not in the business of killing creativity and innovation.

When these proposals close tomorrow we will then be in a position to make further comments about the way forward. But we know that broadband infrastructure is absolutely critical to nation building. The opposition are stuck in the past on broadband. For the benefit of those opposite, high-speed broadband is not just about faster internet. Broadband is a critical enabling technology that will change how businesses serve their customers, how government delivers services and how the community interacts. The need to act decisively to remedy Australia’s broadband infrastructure problems is well understood by Australian businesses. When I go around the business boardrooms in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other centres, I am continually reminded by businesses how they were let down by the former government’s neglect of this critical area. Indeed, the CEO of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, has stated that any political party that did not understand the need for the NBN should ‘get themselves into the 21st century’. But, of course, Heather Ridout is now sledged by those opposite—

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