Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Submarine Cable Protection) Bill 2013. I particularly thank the member for Greenway for her contribution. Hers was a great victory on election day. On a day that was pretty tough for Labor, the member for Greenway was a shining light. She brings her expertise in this area to the chamber in a way that those opposite do not seem to have grasped at all. I am particularly appreciative of the fact that the member for Greenway understands the productivity boosts that will come with the NBN rollout—the fair dinkum one, not the copper-wire one, to the home—so that businesses, homes, hospitals, universities, the elderly, workers and families can get the benefits of the digital revolution. Those opposite who are sitting up in their offices tapping away on their Ataris do not seem to have grasped that we have moved on a bit. The reality is there are great benefits that can come for regional Australia. I see the member for Gippsland in the chamber and he would know of the great health benefits that come for people who cannot duck off to Melbourne every day for check-ups and the like. The digital trials will show the great benefits to our communities as these baby boomers change the shape of our population pyramid. The next 20 years—perhaps it is even the next two years—will see one in five Australians over the age of 65. The reality is that, as we age, our health needs increase. We are not a particularly healthy nation and recent data show that we are in fact the most unhealthy nation in terms of some lifestyle factors.

We have some big issues in front of us and so we need to have a piece of infrastructure that will serve Australia in the future, not the Australia of the 1890s, when they were debating whether to replace iron with copper. This is a matter of national interest that I am proud to be associated with. I think most of those opposite do understand that no matter which side of the chamber, we are here for the national interest. There is the odd individual who is here only for their self-interest, but most of us are here to serve the nation. Australia, as a high-wages country in the middle of Asia, has particular challenges. We could go down the low-wages road. That was tried by John Howard with WorkChoices, and the Australian people said: 'No thank you. We believe in the fair go; we do believe in people having a decent wage. We don't want to be like our friends across the Pacific in the US working at Walmart who have food raising campaigns for the people who are employed.' That is not the Australian way. We believe in decent wages, whether you are a cleaner or working on a farm or a factory. We have always believed in a decent wage.

That means that we have to do things in a more clever way. How do you do that? You accept that there is a digital age. You accept that the world has changed. The future is all about technology and the exchange of information. It is not just about downloading music, TV shows and movies. Rather, it is about an exchange of information. It is a matter of national interest. I am a bit disappointed in the Minister for Communications, because I think that he does not believe in his own policy. I know he made the front cover of the coalition's election booklet, but I do not think he has embraced their policies. We know that from the shares he has invested in. He knows that the way forward lies with the Labor NBN scheme. There are challenges with the rollout, but you do not give up on the Snowy Mountains scheme because you encounter a different form of rock. If you believe in a national piece of infrastructure and the benefits that come particularly to the bush, that is what you do.

Business competitiveness is absolutely vital in our growing global economy, where capital moves quickly and where labour moves quickly. We must have better access to broadband both at home and in business as the divide between workplaces and home becomes more and more blurred and as permanent employment becomes a rarer beast. My four-year-old understand the benefits of superfast broadband; he understands iPads better than I do. My eight-year-old understands the fun opportunities but also the learning opportunities.

Our small and medium businesses, the SMEs, will be able to sell their products and services to the fastest growing region in the world, Asia. Four or five hundred million Chinese are emerging from a basically peasant lifestyle and moving into the middle class. There are 700 or 800 million people in India who are on the same journey towards improving their standard of living. Australia can be a trusted brand that can reach into these areas. If the Indonesians ever speak to us again, there are 240 million of them who are prepared to buy our services. I am sure the member for Gippsland, who is at the table, will be doing his best to clean up some of that mess in the future. I wish him well in those endeavours. I know he is particularly passionate about our region.

Let us have a quick look at the difference between Labor's fibre-to-the-premises model and this government's fibre-to-the-node model. Labor's NBN connected homes and businesses to the internet via an optic fibre. The expected minimum lifetime of this fibre is 60 years. It is interesting to compare that with the comments and the bit of history given by the Minister for Communications, the member for Wentworth, in his second reading speech. The speech is good. It gives a good history of telegraph cables, noting that they have been laid for over 150 years. He makes the point that 'over time, demand has caught up with the extraordinary increase in capacity'. Who would have thought that, if you create an opportunity, businesses and people will take advantage of it? He states in his speech:

Modern submarine cables typically provide multiple terabits per second of capacity when deployed and can be further upgraded, positioning them to meet future traffic demands.

You do not build a bridge for the traffic of today. You build for the capacity, in this case, of the next 60 years. With the geometric progression in data sharing around the world, you have to be prepared.

The member for Greenway touched on the vacillating proposals of those opposite. She particularly mentioned the member for Ryan. I remember the member for Ryan when she was a local councillor. A bit of her ward was in my patch. I remember her commitment to put optic fibre cables in the sewer. The Lord Mayor of Brisbane at the time, Campbell Newman, had a plan to run these cables through the sewer. Back then the member for Ryan was all in favour of superfast broadband—not at 25 megabytes per second but at 100 megabytes per second. She became the member for Ryan and all of a sudden she was happy to settle for second prize. She cannot see the opportunities that she saw when she went to visit South Korea, a country that has a bit of vision and is prepared to invest in infrastructure, that knows that the way of the future is not in low wages but in a high-skills business community, a well-educated workforce. That is the way forward. We cannot compete with surrounding countries on low wages—that way madness lies; that way misery lies—but we can compete by being clever and educated and by having the infrastructure that serves Australian innovation.

We are that unique nation in which—Indigenous Australians aside—people have come from all over the world. That has created a sense of innovation from day one. For 223 years of a 225-year migration program, Britain was the No. 1 source of immigrants to Australia. Two years ago the No. 1 source was China and one year ago it was India. That reflects modern Australia. This chamber is slowly becoming aware of that. We have all these connections with Asia. It is not that we are breaking our ties with Europe but that we see the opportunities that come from emerging Asian markets.

As commendable as the copper network is—and it did serve a purpose years ago—it has been hard to maintain. Nowadays, if you ask anyone under 25 for their landline number they will say, 'What is a landline?' Things have changed. The world has moved on. We need a system that serves modern Australia, not what it was back in the 1950s. BIS Shrapnel estimates predict a reduction of up to 70 per cent of the current copper network maintenance costs, which are gradually increasing as the ageing network decays, in turn creating problems, particularly for regional areas, which will end up with second-rate internet and conductivity speeds. I see it in my electorate. When I go for my morning walk I see the Telstra pits. It can take up to eight months for them to be maintained properly. As Telstra has stood down workers over the years, it is not doing the upgrade that it needs to.

The cost of repairing and maintaining the decaying copper network is now so high that, in many cases, Telstra opted to deploy new fibre technology to replace parts of its network damaged by floods or fires, which sadly has been the case in Queensland over the years. The BIS Shrapnel report states, 'Overall we believe the copper network has maintenance costs of up to $1 billion a year.' I have not looked at the fees to see if they are spending that, but it is obviously cheaper to do it right, to get it done properly.

On the NBN speeds that they trumpet, the reality is they are not able to match their election commitment of 100 megabits per second. That is just a reality. Upgrading the speed of the NBN under Labor's plan of fibre to the home is simply a matter of replacing the equipment at each end of the fibre, which is much simpler. Speeds exceeding 40,000 megabytes per second have already been demonstrated in research laboratories using the same type of fibre as the NBN. So there will be opportunities for the infrastructure, if we get it right, to accommodate the digital revolution that is upon us now.

I would suggest that the Minister for Communications stop refusing our nation this vital infrastructure. Why waste the money that they are prepared to commit to come up with something that is second rate? It is funny, but I have never seen a more suddenly energised and motivated group of people than the gamers in my electorate when they suddenly realised the Liberals' plan was going to come to the fore. They were suddenly motivated about politics and asked, 'Why would we do this? Why do they have such limited vision?'

I urge people to have a look at the facts. Labor's optic fibre provides the technology to use the broadband of the 21st century, not the 19th century. Copper did serve for a time, but we have moved on. The infrastructure that we are putting in will take us to 2040 and beyond. Depending on what happens with those new experiments, it could serve us for the next 100 years.

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