Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wentworth for his question. I must admit I did not notice that he was at the ALP candidates seminar, but I am not surprised! I am not surprised that he is just taking out a little bit of insurance, and I am not surprised that he would like to be at a meeting where there are no climate change deniers and where people, like him, believe in a market based solution to carbon pollution. So, if he is ever feeling the need to talk to people who are actually on the right side of history when it comes to carbon, he will be very welcome indeed.

Then there is the question of being on the right side of history in terms of rolling out the infrastructure that our nation needs now and making sure that our nation does not get left behind. At every stage in history, when it comes to big projects, there are sceptics around. There were those who thought that the telephone line was unnecessary, that you would always be able to find a messenger boy to take your slip of paper to the neighbouring household. There were those who thought we should not have got on with the Snowy Mountains scheme. They were called the Liberal Party. They thought we should not get on with that nation-building project. So it is unsurprising that in the modern age, when it comes to the next generation of nation-building infrastructure, those on the other side are the ones carping and carrying on. What they would want to see is our nation confined to dial-up or to ADSL, while the rest of the world has moved on. Businesses looking to locate where infrastructure for the moving of information would be absolutely pivotal to them would pass Australia by because we did not have the National Broadband Network—

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