Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Services, Local Communities and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I speak on what is a very important matter for regional communities, and I commend the member for Lyne for putting up this matter. In particular, I am disappointed that the shadow minister is leaving the chamber, because I wanted to take up a number of the points that he just raised in his contribution—but he is, of course, a very important man! And he is leaving the chamber in the middle of the debate on his core policy area.

I turn to the base assumption behind what the shadow minister has just said. The coalition's plan is based on an assumption that no-one will ever want or need more than 25 megabits. That is exactly what their policy is based on, and that is the base assumption. If the shadow minister's policy is so great, and if it is the best possible high-speed broadband policy for this country, why is it that everybody—everybody who knows anything about high-speed broadband—who is involved in this sector says that their policy is a lemon? I am going to quote some of those people.

Mark Gregory from RMIT in an interview on Triple J's Hack said: 'What the coalition are offering us, the Australian public, is, in real terms, an improvement on the one megabit per second for $30 billion, but it is the greatest lemon in Australian history.' Rod Tucker of the University of Melbourne said:

On balance, I think Labor's policy is superior because it provides the best long-term strategy for delivering the kind of high-speed broadband that Australia is going to need in the future …

Guy Cranswick, the analyst with IBRS, said:

It's crazy to say that the average family only needs 'this much' because we don't know what the future holds and have already seen the more familiar the technology, the larger the files we use …

Geoff Huston, the Chief Scientist at APNIC and Telstra's former chief internet scientist, said:

… quite frankly, 25Mbps in 10 years' time—that speed is going to look like what a [dial-up] modem looks like to us today. Too little, too slow, too backwards.

It is an apt description for the coalition's so-called high speed broadband policy.

What we hear about constantly from the coalition is the downloading of movies on iTunes. What we do not hear about are the other uses people are putting the internet to. People are uploading substantial files, and increasing the amount of data that they are uploading. I have an example from my own constituency. I have people who are working from home who are composers working internationally. They are uploading large files, of music that they have composed, and their speeds—at the moment they are on dial-up—are atrocious. They will give you the example that they can, from their small country town, start to upload their file, drive to Melbourne, log into their system in Melbourne, and find that this file has still not arrived—and they are an hour and a half to two hours down the road from Melbourne. So from the coalition we hear all about the downloading by families of a few movies from iTunes but they have failed to understand what uses people are putting and will put high-speed broadband to.

Since the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Wentworth were last in government, there have been a few changes. I do not know if anyone has noticed that. We have not just been frozen in time—much as the opposition would like to think that we are—with the world staying exactly the same. There has been an exponential change in the way people use high-speed broadband and the internet. Since the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Wentworth were last in government the amount of data downloaded by Australians over the internet has grown fifteenfold, and it is expected that that growth will continue exponentially. In the five years to 2012, broadband internet subscriptions alone doubled, to 11.6 million subscriptions. And, with the amount of information being stored online, the demand on broadband infrastructure is going to continue to grow. The Asia-Pacific, our region, will see more traffic generated than anywhere else in the world. If we are to deal with this growing demand, our nation needs appropriate infrastructure.

We heard about cloud based systems. I recognise the member for Lyne's contribution on this in particular. We are seeing more and more cloud based systems being used nationally and internationally that again will see greater need for high-speed broadband. Frankly, it is growth that the coalition's inadequate copper-to-the-home broadband plan is going to be absolutely incapable of dealing with. There is a reason that people have started up the website 'savethenbn'—because it is an incredibly important policy for this country. And it is about time the coalition realised that what they have put up is a dud. It is going to dud regional Australians. It is dudding people in metropolitan areas. We will see people left behind.

Whether it is broadband infrastructure or our roads, ports, rail or regional development, I am very proud that this government has delivered record investment in nation building. It is a government that has a very long-term plan for the country's future. The NBN is going to fundamentally change and improve the way Australia does business both domestically and internationally. It is infrastructure that will be especially important for Australia's regional communities.

The government has been trying to ensure that Australians have access to the best quality services and employment opportunities regardless of where they live. The NBN for regional communities is a game changer, not just in access to services but in the economic opportunities available to them. Whether you are in the most remote part of the country, whether you are in the regional or provincial cities such as where I live or whether you are in rural communities, it is a game changer for the economic opportunities. The NBN will improve the competitiveness of our regions, significantly improving regional Australia's businesses and our service delivery capacity.

Last month I visited a new business in the small town of Clunes in my own community run by somebody who has moved from Melbourne. There are a lot of tree-changers moving into that town. It is a town with just over 1,000 households. This business owner designed a very innovative gardening edging product which is a fantastic product. He has customers domestically, within our own region and nationally, and internationally. He trades exclusively online. He has no shopfront; he only trades online. The landscaping system that he has developed requires huge amounts of information transfer. It is being developed by an entrepreneur in a very small community, who we are delighted to have had move to a regional community and who will provide jobs and growth in that region. He has absolutely welcomed the National Broadband Network because he knows it allows him and his family to move to a country area but still to expand, develop and grow a business and an economic opportunity in the township of Clunes.

By contrast, the Leader of the Opposition wants to spend some $20 billion on a plan that will leave millions of Australians with no discernible difference in their broadband speeds—none whatsoever. Why would you do such a stupid thing? Indeed, the opposition voted against the National Broadband Network legislation in this place and in the other place no less than 16 times. What were you thinking? Those opposite have a plan that will see Australian taxpayers' money spent on rolling out broadband, with all of the costs but none of the benefits and certainly none of the benefits to regional Australians. Under Labor's plans, all homes and businesses will be able to access the NBN at no connection cost so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of fast broadband.

By contrast, under the policy that the coalition has put forward—and again the member for Wentworth did not talk about this—if it were to be implemented, regional Australians would be left behind with none of the opportunities presented by the NBN. Regional Australians would have no access to the modern infrastructure investment that will ensure our competitiveness in the future, not just domestically but internationally. For example, the coalition policy leaves families that are the last house on their block with slower speeds. If you are the last house on the block remaining on the copper wiring and you decide that you absolutely, because of both your needs and your employment opportunities, want to get more than that 25 megabits that is offered by them, and you need to do that—and we know that in the future that is going to be the case—you will need $5,000 for a connection. That is the reality we have under the coalition's plan.

The other issue that is incredibly important to regional communities, which was not talked about by the shadow minister, is uniform pricing. The coalition will abandon uniform pricing and force people outside of the cities to pay more for their internet. This means that people in Ballarat, my own community in regional Australia, will pay more for internet than those living in our capital cities. The absolute disgrace of this is in how the National Party have folded on this. Frankly, as a regional member I cannot understand it; it is a complete anathema to regional communities, and I condemn them for it. (Time expired)

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