Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

Not anymore. But, as I said, it is not the only broken promise here. The minister has also said that he is going to pare back the number of houses that are going to get fibre to the node. In the policy that he put out before the election, he said that 8,968,000 people will get fibre to the node—you know this is true; 71 per cent of the population, now, gone. All the rest of those people are going to have to rely on the HFC network. The minister said that he is going to fill the gaps there. But will it be an open access network? And who is going to pay to connect the coax from the pole to people's houses? Is it you? Is it NBN Co.? Is it the people who live in those houses? And, if they do, well, who is going to pay that extra money? The minister has promised that this would be a faster, cheaper NBN.

What we are getting here is a slower, potentially more expensive NBN—slower because internet speeds will be slower under this model than they would be under ours, slower because this minister has just broken a promise to deliver it by 2016 and, potentially, dearer because people in the bush are going to pay more than people in the city.

This is the biggest and most important infrastructure project in Australia. Remember: we sit on the edge of what will be the biggest middle class that the world has ever seen. Our challenge in this parliament is to make the most of it. We often call this the Asian century; it is also a digital century. The wealthiest countries in the decades ahead will be the smartest countries, the countries with the best educated workforces, with the best access to information and with the infrastructure to drive that. That is why the NBN is so important. It is the engine that drives jobs, creates companies, builds productivity, increases trade and makes us a stronger economy and a fairer country. It will help to build the Australia of our imagination.

Now, because the NBN is so important, it is important that it be done right, and that means using fibre, not copper which we are going to have to come back and replace down the track. The minister keeps telling us what the old, decaying economies of Europe are doing. That might be right; they might be investing in maintaining their copper. But we are not part of Europe. We are part of Asia, the dynamic and growing Asian region, and this region is investing in fibre. Japan, South Korea and Singapore are all investing in fibre to the premises. So is New Zealand and so should we; otherwise, we are putting ourselves at a disadvantage. We will be left behind with a second-class, second-rate national broadband network and, we learned today, one that will not be delivered on time. Of all days to learn this, it is the day after finding out that Holden is shutting its doors, when we should be thinking ahead, thinking about the future, thinking about where we invest to make sure we have a strategic advantage and can compete in the Asian century to set ourselves up for the future. This government is not doing that.

I have said this before but it is worth saying again. When Robert Menzies was in opposition in 1949, he was one of the biggest critics of the Snowy Hydro scheme. He criticised it up hill and down dale. Two months before the 1949 election, Menzies refused to attend the launch of the Snowy Hydro scheme; but, when he became Prime Minister, he changed his mind. He supported it, he funded it and he built it. At the opening of, I think it was, the Tumut dam project in the fifties, he said:

In a period in which we in Australia are still, I think, handicapped by parochialism, by a slight distrust of big ideas, of big people or of big enterprises … this scheme is teaching us and everybody in Australia to think in a big way, to be thankful for big things, to be proud of big enterprises and … to be thankful for big men.

Menzies was a big man, but there are not too many 'big men' on that side of the parliament, just broken promises, one after the other—debt, boats, education and now the NBN.

We have a Prime Minister who does not understand how important the NBN is, how important this infrastructure is. He has described it as 'essentially a video entertainment system'. In TheWashington Post only a few weeks ago, he called it 'wacko'. But he has also described himself as 'the infrastructure Prime Minister'. If you are going to be 'the infrastructure Prime Minister of Australia', then you need to build the infrastructure of the 21st century, the infrastructure that Australia needs—and guess what? That is what this is. That is what the NBN is. It is quintessentially the infrastructure of the 21st century, and you cannot be 'the infrastructure minister' or 'the infrastructure Prime Minister' unless you are investing in building the biggest and most important infrastructure project in Australia.

Today, Paul Keating is visiting Parliament House for only the third time since he retired. Paul Keating, like Menzies, knew the importance of the big calls in government and getting the big calls right. It was his decisions that set Australia up for a staggering 20 years or more of uninterrupted economic growth. In large part, Paul Keating built modern Australia. He built the Australia that we are living in today. The big decision we need to make today is whether we are going to build the infrastructure that we need for the next century or just for the next few years. Our responsibility is to govern not just for this generation but for the ones that follow. The pace of change and the challenges ahead demand it, and there is no better example of this than the National Broadband Network. Menzies knew it, Keating knew it and we know it, but this government obviously does not. Today they have made a very big mistake. They have betrayed the trust that was put in them by the Australian people, and for that you can be sure they will be judged very harshly.

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