Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Goodenough, I take the opportunity to thank you for my 2025 calendar, which arrived today. And in that 2025 calendar I'm going to mark 2025 as the year that we roll out more fibre broadband to Ashfield—I'll mark that in the calendar—and more fibre broadband to Bassendean in my electorate. I'll mark in the calendar that we put more fibre out in Bayswater, after years and years and calendars and calendars of failure when it comes to the National Broadband Network under those opposite.

You would have marked the date of 20 December 2010 in your calendar, Deputy Speaker, because you would know that was the day that those opposite, under their then leader Tony Abbott, said:

… do we really want to invest $50 billion of hard-earned taxpayers' money in what is essentially a video entertainment system?

That's where we've come from. If we were to go forward a few years into the calendar and look at 9 April 2013, that's when the leader of those opposite told us:

We are absolutely confident that 25 megs is going to be enough, more than enough, for the average household.

Debate interrupted.

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