Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment is with us because I am going to issue him with a challenge. He knows and members generally know that Queensland sugar cane growers have been locked in battle with the Singapore-based miller, Wilmar. Barnaby Joyce, the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, has been saying he will fix this problem. He says that if the Queensland parliament does not fix it he will intervene. I want the trade minister to guarantee me that the government will not intervene in any way which offends the Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which would have serious consequences for trade between those two countries. The minister scurries out of the chamber, and I understand why: he knows there is a real threat here from the agriculture minister, who says he will intervene. He is not prepared to say how he will intervene, but he has said he will intervene in a way which will hurt—that was the word he used—that Singapore-based company involved.

I just want to quickly say that we know only too well about the digital divide between our capital cities and those of us who live in rural and regional Australia. There is a very significant divide of disadvantage in the regions. In my own electorate, we also have a digital divide locally: the divide between those who have the Prime Minister's inferior fibre-to-the-node NBN and those who fear now getting fibre-to-the-node NBN. Those who have it in my electorate, particularly those living around the western side of Lake Macquarie, hate it. It is slower than their old ADSL2 service, but worse, it keeps dropping out. Worse again, their landlines keep dropping out.

Take Barney from Edgeworth. I will only use his first name. On a daily basis Barney loses his landline. He talks to my office about how frustrating it is to attempt to talk to Telstra about the problem. He does not have any criticism of the staff at Telstra, but it is clear to Barney that they are just not capable of fixing his problem because of this hopeless NBN introduced and given to us by this Prime Minister.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10 : 09 to 10 : 30

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