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

I will speak briefly to this legislation, so if there is a following speaker then I note that I will not be here in 20 minutes time. I notice that the previous speaker left it right until the end to arrive in this place.

I support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Network Information) Bill 2009. But I do believe that this is a test for the government, partly for some of the reasons that have been enunciated by the opposition. It is a test of its commitment to a piece of infrastructure for the future. There has been a lot of money spent on, and promised to, roads, rail and other pieces of important infrastructure, but there is no more important infrastructure for this nation, either globally, domestically, regionally or in any context that people want to put it in, than equitable access to broadband services.

This legislation allows for information to be gathered and shared between various companies so that a proposal can be built up, with some existing infrastructure and other pieces of information from the various technological players, to allow a national broadband network to become a reality. This piece of infrastructure—broadband infrastructure—in my view is the most important piece of infrastructure that we can talk about. The government will be judged on the delivery of the services that it says it intends to deliver.

Broadband services delivered in an equitable fashion with equitable access negate distance being a disadvantage for people who live in the country. That will mean an incredible boost for regional development. Some of those people have equity of access at the moment, and we have to ensure that, where possible, that equity of access and equity of price is made available into the future. So I am very supportive of what the government is trying to do because I think that, for the first time, it actually looks at getting a service that will benefit not only individuals but also businesses. This is important because then, in a sense, you can run a business from anywhere in Australia. It will remove the need for the city concentration of businesses that we currently have. There are many other benefits of doing this. I am sure all country members have examples of international businesses being run from farm homesteads. Those businesses are using this global technology to access the world. Location becomes less and less relevant if in fact you can gain access to high-speed broadband at equitable prices. So it negates distance being a disadvantage of living in the country.

It is also absolutely critical, in my view, given some of the medical costs out there that government is dealing with—the numbers of doctors, dentists, specialists et cetera and the educationalists that are required in this modern global economy—that we are able to access high-speed broadband to deliver some of those educational and health facilities. It is not impossible. In fact, it is happening in parts of the world now where specialists are actually attending operations via the internet while they are thousands of kilometres away. Their expertise can be utilised at these critical times. That can apply to the education area as well. It can also apply to the climate change debate. There is a mass movement of people flying to see each other to do business. The higher the internet speeds, the more in-time access will be available. A lot of that travel will become history and a lot of the work will be done via the broadband network. So for country Australians this particular proposal from the government is very important.

As I said at the start, I think this is a test for the government. There have been a lot of distractions. I congratulate the government on the way it has addressed the economic crisis. But, in terms of substantive legacies, there will be no greater one than a national broadband service that actually works and provides some of the services that I talked about a moment ago. In that sense, the jury is very much out. Some of the issues that have been raised by the opposition are legitimate, but some of them are political issues as well. I think the government really has to stick to its knitting on this. If it has just pulled a number out of the sky and thinks that it can impose that number and not deliver on those service announcements, the nation will judge it accordingly. In my view, this sort of infrastructure is more important than any road or rail that we can talk about. I am not demeaning those pieces of infrastructure but I think that, in the development of a nation of this size, if we can get this right we will go a long way towards getting our place in global communications right.

We have seen examples before in this parliament of where grand ideas have fallen foul. We saw with the previous government, for instance, the inland rail concept that was promoted for many years—and which still is promoted by Everald Compton, who is a great Australian in my view. The previous government led that concept along, saying it was one of those nation-building concepts that had great potential for the future. Various studies were done. Some of the studies indicated that maybe the freight that was available to go on that particular route was not what some people had expected. That debate is still open. The point I am making is that governments who continually make suggestions, particularly about nation building, will be judged if they do not eventually deliver on some of those things. I think that the National Broadband Network is one of those things on which this current government will be judged.

Parallel to this piece of legislation, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, will be in my electorate next Monday. We are having a forum. I have invited a range of political players of various political persuasions from the north-west in New England—mayors, general managers and others—interested in the national broadband rollout to come to a forum. I thank the minister for accepting the invitation. That forum is not going to be a political forum. It is going to be a forum where information is garnered from the minister. It will give the minister a good opportunity to outline the program in a regional context with, I hope, some specifics for the New England and north-west area and on the timetable that the minister sees for the National Broadband Network rollout.

The issue of equity and commercial viability has been raised by the opposition. The previous speaker made note of it. I note that in the second reading amendment the opposition have moved—which really does not mean much because they are not declining to support the bill—one of the phrases concerns me. They talk about a cost-benefit analysis of the National Broadband Network. The point they make is that the project—presumably the $43 billion National Broadband Network that the government is proposing—may not be commercially viable. This concept of commercial viability in the nation-building context interests me. I spend a bit of time in the west of New South Wales, and I guess a lot of people spend a bit of time in some of the more remote parts of Australia. The little town of Lowther, for instance, which is not in my electorate but which is a town that I have some personal contact with, would never have received electricity if a commercial viability criterion had been imposed upon it. I urge the coalition to revisit some of the wording of this amendment, because it smells of a context from a few years ago where if something was not commercially viable then it did not happen. What is viable for commerce, what is viable for government, what the public sector should provide to the people and what the role of government is in the provision of those services starts to be questioned.

We have been down the road where the provision of services to the greatest number of people was done most efficiently and at the lowest unit cost. If you could put them in a feedlot, that is how you would deliver services most effectively. The former government tended down that pathway. I remember at one time suggesting that, if you put them in a high-rise feedlot—which in fact was done in some of our cities—and used gravity to some advantage, you were being even more cost effective in the feedlot mechanism that those people were being pressured into. I think there have been aspects of competition policy that have actually driven that context. I think some of the speakers coming up might be able to explain to me what the coalition actually mean by criticising the government over the commercial viability issue. Does it mean that we provide services to people only where a commercial business would garner a commercial return or does it mean some sort of commercial viability involving government policy, which is something different? If we still have remnants of this feedlot mentality as being the only way to deliver services in an economic fashion to the greatest number of people, that tends to rule out country people. They live in distant areas. In a lot of cases they are in remote locations, in some cases they are small and in most cases they tend to be weak in their political numbers. It is something that government really has to address if they are serious about creating an environment where more people go to the country rather than fewer. The policy mix we have had in the past—and still have to a certain extent—articulates that we want people to go to the country, but the economic pressures are that the country goes to the city.

This particular piece of infrastructure gives the government an opportunity to reverse the old paradigm on which it is more cost effective to operate a business in the city compared with the country because of the factor of distance. If we can get this right—and right, in my view, is to get the cost right so that it is equity of access to similar technologies—so that the country location will have a comparative advantage over the city location, the consequences not only may be in the performance of business but may alleviate some of the pressures on cities. You can see the debacle in New South Wales at the moment where you have got all these urban transport pressures and greater demand for more highways and motorways to get people in and out of a congested city. Here is an opportunity to break that nexus of the concentration of people in a limited number of centres and this dependence on so-called commercial viability.

Another instance which occurred in telecommunications was the sale of Telstra—this thread of commercial viability and the business sector always running more effectively without government involvement. That might be right to a certain extent, but there are people on the margin—and they happen to be in the country—who will miss out under that regime. We saw it in the privatisation of Telstra. The previous government, in conjunction with the National Farmers Federation whose president at the time was Peter Corish, said that equity of access to telephone and broadband services for country people would be delivered by the legislation and that a letter existed that would support equity of access for those services. Senator Barnaby Joyce fell for the three-card trick. I remember the day because I was at the Senate doors as I had heard that the National Farmers Federation president at the time was going to make an announcement. I was certain that it was going to be a positive one. I was absolutely shocked when he fell for the three-card trick and announced that he had been given a guarantee that these particular commitments would be enshrined in legislation. Those things did not happen. Senator Joyce voted for it. Nothing was in the bill and no letter was ever sighted. People in country areas are still suffering from that decision. I supported Senator Conroy and Lindsay Tanner at that time because of their opposition to the sale. I am supportive of what they are attempting to do, particularly Senator Conroy’s attempts, with the National Broadband Network, but the eyes of all Australians—and very much country Australians—are firmly fixed on the language of these arrangements. People want delivery.

In conclusion, I highlight the point that this is the most important piece of infrastructure that this parliament will talk about during this term, and probably through many terms. It is the infrastructure that equalises all Australians in a sense because the costs of living in the city actually give the country locations a real advantage. All the other factors—distance, remoteness et cetera—augur that country locations will not be advantaged. So I encourage the government to get it right because its implications for other policy areas could be as significant as the delivery of this invaluable service to all Australians.

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