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

Oh, you know that guy! He was out there talking about, 'We need fibre to the home; this is the greatest thing to happen.' Well, blow me down, when I got to the committee meeting there was a bloke with exactly the same name sitting there saying: 'We don't need it. It's wrong.' It is typical hypocrisy from those opposite, whether it is on carbon pricing or the NBN. The member for Flinders is out there saying in his thesis, the one he wrote with his words of wisdom, that Liberal constituents will be upset, but bad luck, we have to do this. Paul Fletcher goes out and says, 'We need fibre to the home and we need it now. It is the only way we can keep up in the 21st century economy,' but then goes to the committee and says, 'Oh, no, we don't need this. We can make it work through the technology, just like we did in the 11 years that we were in government, which left us with about 15 per cent of people connected.' The NBN is an important thing to have done. It is like the railways of the 19th century. We know that. Early Hansards show that, back then, the forefathers of the Liberal Party and the Country Party were asking why we needed an Australia-wide rail network.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

That is right! The Luddites on the other side back then said, 'We don't need trains. What good are they?' Now they say, 'We don't need broadband. What do we need broadband for?' We need it because in every single field that this country deals in—education, health, business and personal use—it is going to deliver faster and better broadband and some absolutely exciting things. Even those opposite might learn something. But, as usual, they will sit in their little caves and say, 'No, we don't need this.' But they will still shy away from going out and telling their communities that each and every day they are in here saying 'no' to the NBN. (Time expired)

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