Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

was to agree with Telstra and Optus, for no additional payment—and I stress this: for no additional payment—to be able to use those copper and hybrid fibre coax networks to enable us to complete the project much sooner, much cheaper and much more affordably.

Now, turning to the member for Banks's electorate: 77 per cent of the premises in his electorate are passed with cable TV networks—the HFC networks. They would all have been switched off by the Labor Party, decommissioned and turned into junk. They can now be used to deliver—as they do today—100 megabit per second speeds and, with very straightforward modifications which are being deployed all over the world, to go right up to one gigabit per second speeds without having to roll out new cable infrastructure. You might think that is common sense but, of course, it was a penetrating glimpse of the obvious that was denied to the Labor Party—the most uncommercial deal.

Senator Conroy at one point said, 'Who would buy Telstra's copper?' Well, of course, we have not bought it; we have negotiated to acquire it for no extra cost. He said, 'Come on down! Alan Bond, Kerry Packer would be laughing all the way to the bank'—

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