Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We will take the interjection there, that it is an admission that it a false claim. It has just been made up for something to do.

I have a look back to the 11 years when they were in government and I remember that Opel, which was plan number 18 or 19 or 20—I cannot remember because they all failed. I remember the maps that were brought out by the then Howard government—those wonderful masters of technology—that had the big Opel plan and the big map saying, 'We are going to service 75 per cent of your electorate'. You think communities would go, 'Wow wee isn't this great? How exciting is this?' The problem was, when you actually had a look at the map it never took into consideration things that we have in country areas like mountains, trees, buildings and lakes. All these things. None of that was taken into consideration. If we had got a great big iron and flattened the earth to dead flat and cut all the trees down then, maybe, the Opel contract they had may have worked. I say 'may have' because even they could not prove that it was going to work. The NBN project will deliver high-speed broadband to places that were never, ever in consideration by those opposite. During all their plans—failed plans, because every single one of them failed—

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