Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

They are crying out for the National Broadband Network! People everywhere are crying out. But I will tell you what they are really crying about in the bush. They are crying about not getting the sorts of services that they deserve and about being misled for 12 years, being betrayed, by the National Party and the Howard government. The coalition could have delivered something for them, but they will complain in this place that it takes too long or that we somehow cancelled some contracts or things that were in place. Isn’t it always the case that they are going to do something? They were always ‘gonna do this’; they were always ‘gonna do that’. But in the end people in the bush missed out—at least, they did then. But now we have a government in place with the courage and the fortitude to deliver this and make this happen. We will not back down. We will make sure it happens, one way or the other, through either the structural separation or functional separation of Telstra. It is up to Telstra to decide. They have some choice, some options. In the end, the winners will be the consumers and the Australian economy.

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