Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Broadband continues to be an issue of concern throughout the community, particularly in my electorate. Early in my term in this House, we managed to get broadband connected to Horsley Park and Kemps Creek through the ADSL program, but there are still problems in accessing broadband in my electorate. I am contacted about this regularly by people who live near exchanges which have ADSL connection but who live too far from the exchange to be able to access broadband. Kevin Rudd’s broadband plan announced last week will deal with these concerns.

Fibre to node means that 98 per cent of Australians, including those living in my electorate, will now have access to broadband. This will include people who currently live, as I said, near exchanges which have ADSL access but who live too far from these exchanges to be able to access broadband. Broadband under Labor’s plan will be 40 times faster than that which is able to be accessed now.

I would like to deal with some of the nonsense we hear from the government about raiding the Future Fund. This is from a government which allocated $10 billion for water without even referring it to cabinet and without getting the proper advice from Treasury or the Department of Finance and Administration—and the government has the gall to lecture the opposition about fiscal rectitude.

Over the weekend, two senior cabinet ministers belled the cat on the government’s scare campaign. We saw Senator Minchin, on the front page of the Australian Financial Review, say that the Future Fund was now so close to meeting its requirement to fulfil the superannuation liabilities of the government that it was quite possibly no longer necessary to allocate future surpluses to the Future Fund. Senator Coonan, on the Insiders program on Sunday, said that, once the superannuation liabilities were met through the Future Fund, it was of course possible and desirable to look at other uses for the Future Fund money. Both of those senior cabinet ministers have contradicted the rants we have heard from the Treasurer in question time each day since Labor’s announcement.

There are real broadband problems in this nation and the government has ignored them. There have been 17 reports on the failures of broadband in this country, yet the government has ignored them. Our broadband rate is slow. Our take-up rate is low, although it is growing. The Prime Minister constantly says that the take-up rate is the second highest in the world, but he declines to inform the House that it is from one of the lowest bases in the world.

Feedback from well-respected commentators and people in the community supports Labor’s broadband plan. It is a good plan. If the future is not about broadband, what is it about?