Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor is totally opposed to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. This legislation is, of course, just the latest communications proposal from the Howard government. They have made some 17 different broadband program announcements in less than five years, but none of them has given Australia the national broadband network that we need to be competitive with the rest of the developed world.

There are many issues that draw a vast distinction between Labor’s comprehensive broadband plan and the government’s policy, and I outlined some of those earlier in this debate. However, I believe price to consumers is a critical issue. Unlike the Howard government, Labor does not believe that a government should set consumer prices. Prices should be set by an independent regulator—after negotiations with the parties—who will ensure the best possible outcomes for the consumer. What will achieve the best outcome for the consumer is establishing a structure which encourages the market to work. Labor’s fibre-to-the-node network is open access. This will ensure more competition between providers, which will lead to a lowering of prices.

The Howard government’s proposed program, even for the cities to which it is restricted, has no starting date. The government has said that it will form a committee—that is what the government has as its plan to move forward. Because Labor is prepared to move to that superior technology of a fibre-to-the-node network, Labor’s plan will ensure that we move more quickly to where we need to end up. We know that it is unsustainable to think that Australia would continue to be in the position we are in now. We know that the Howard government’s half-baked proposals for cities, and very inferior and second-tier proposals for rural and regional Australia and outer suburbs, are unsustainable in the long term. Therefore, the more quickly we move to a fibre-to-the-node network, the more quickly we will be in a position to actually compete with other countries in our region.

The government have been extraordinarily negligent in the way that they have dealt with these issues. They have responded, and this legislation is a product of that response, to the fact that Labor’s broadband strategy has been well received by consumers and well received by business. It is a part of Labor’s comprehensive strategy to deal with infrastructure. In the past 24 hours we have had a debate about the increase in interest rates. Labor will continue to argue that one of the threats to the economy, as has been indicated by the Reserve Bank of Australia, is the failure to invest in skills and infrastructure—the failure to invest in our human capital and the failure to invest in our physical capital. Of those infrastructure shortfalls, communications is a critical component. It is one of the four areas—along with energy, water and transport—that Labor have identified as our priority, because we have a comprehensive infrastructure plan.

Labor will create Infrastructure Australia, a statutory authority made up of representatives of Commonwealth and state governments and the private sector. It will be a statutory authority that will drive the prioritisation of infrastructure and coordination that Australia needs. We will of course have an infrastructure minister—something that this government has not bothered to do because it does not regard the coordination of infrastructure as a necessity. That body will conduct an audit and establish an infrastructure priority list. When I listen to the criticisms of those opposite—and it happened in question time again yesterday—they say, ‘We have AusLink’. That is infrastructure; nothing else. Telecommunications, energy, water, a coordinated approach to infrastructure for the nation for regional and rural Australia and urban Australia are simply not on the agenda of the Howard government.

Let us be clear: the earnings of the Communications Fund, which this bill provides for to sustain the roll-out of telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote Australia, are simply not enough. Labor makes no apologies for using the Communications Fund to build a national broadband network that will vastly improve telecommunications services across Australia, including rural, regional and remote Australia. The Howard government have ceased to govern for the national interest—in fact some would already argue that they have ceased to govern completely. This legislation is at best a political stunt against the Labor Party, but one that undermines their coalition partners in the National Party. I wish therefore to move the following amendment:

That all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “the House declines to give the Bill a second reading and condemns the Government for it sfailure to invest the $2 billion Communications Fund in a national fibre to the node broadband network to ensure:

(a)

parity of service and metro comparable pricing for all Australians serviced by the fibre to the node network;

(b)

the state of broadband services in Australia is turned around, after the past 11 years of neglect under the Howard Government;

(c)

Australians have access to the best available telecommunication technologies;

(d)

Australians in rural and regional areas have improved telecommunication services, including access to e-health and e-eduction, which are only possible over a fibre to the node network. The interest earned on the Communications Fund (up to $400 million every 3 years) is not enough to ensure this;

(e)

98 per  cent of Australians, including those in rural and regional areas, have access to future proof telecommunications technology; and

(f)

the two per cent of people that the new fibre to node network will not reach have a standard of service, depending on the available technology, that is as close as possible to that provided by the new network”.

Labor moves that amendment to put very clearly the choice that is there: on the one hand, under the government, essentially up to $133 million a year for rural and regional telecommunications; under Labor, a comprehensive $4.7 billion program done as a private-public partnership to ensure that all Australians have access to high-speed broadband, not just because this is a communications issue somehow viewed in isolation but because telecommunications are a driver of economic growth. Without being competitive in the area of telecommunications as a vital piece of infrastructure we cannot compete economically. This legislation would ensure that we will increasingly have a two-tiered system whereby people, because of where they live—such as in your electorate, Mr Speaker—will not have the same services that are available in my electorate in inner Sydney. That is what this is about.

If you live in inner Sydney you are going to have high-speed broadband services—not as good under the government’s option as what we are putting forward but nonetheless better in comparison with those for people in outer suburban areas or in rural and regional Australia. That is not the only matter. This government, because of its tired leadership that is old in its ideas and incapable of moving forward with the challenges in the new century, just does not get how vital this is for education, health and our future economic and social development. This is a tired old government that has been here for too long—that this week told the rest of the Australia that it has given up on governing, that it is simply about trying to buy its way to another election victory regardless of the economic consequences—and not just regardless of the economic consequences but regardless of the fact that it is neglecting the big issues and challenges which need to be taken on if we are truly going to be able to move forward in Australia’s long-term national interest rather than just the short-term political interest.

In this case, however, I cannot understand how any regional or rural representative, whether of the Liberal Party or of the appendage laughingly called the National Party, can possibly support this totally inadequate legislation. I can understand how the member for Gippsland, who represents the communications minister, can support this—because I have met him. Anyone who meets him understands why he could support totally inadequate legislation—because he is simply not up to it. But I would call upon other members to stand up for their constituents and demand the same services for all Australians regardless of where they live. I commend the amendment to the House.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 will ensure that Australia’s perpetual $2 billion Communications Fund cannot be raided and frivolously spent. It will protect in legislation the $2 billion principal of the Communications Fund so that only the interest earned from the fund, up to $400 million every three years, can be spent. The Communications Fund was established by the government in 2005 and provides a guaranteed income stream to fund hard infrastructure for regional communities, such as additional mobile towers, broadband provision and even backhaul fibre capabilities. The fund’s capital will be invested and the revenue generated will be spent on ensuring rural, regional and remote Australians can access affordable and reliable telecommunications services in the future. This will provide certainty for people in regional and remote Australia that the improvements in their telecommunications services will keep pace with the rest of the nation, effectively future proofing telecommunications services. Spending from the fund will be tied to independent, regular reviews of telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote Australia. The first review will be conducted in 2008, with reviews to follow every three years after that.

The Communications Fund, along with Australia Connected and the Australian Broadband Guarantee initiatives, clearly demonstrate the Australian government’s commitment to ensuring all Australians will have access to competitive state-of-the-art telecommunications. Australia Connected is immediately rolling out a new competitive state-of-the-art broadband network that will extend high-speed services to 99 per cent of the population, utilising a mix of fibre optic cabling, ADSL2+ and wireless broadband platforms. By using the variety of the broadband mediums available to us the Australian government is able to ensure the residents of the Central Coast are receiving the best quality broadband services at the best price. In direct contrast, Labor’s belief that one type of broadband delivery will adequately service all is ludicrous. If Labor knew anything about broadband, they would know that Australia’s geographic conditions require the best mix of technologies. The Australian government is making the best use of this mix.

It has been 10 years since the Howard government took the landmark decision to open up Australia’s telecommunications regime to competition, forever changing our telecommunications landscape by delivering significant benefits to consumers in terms of choice and price. Australia’s telecommunications industry has been transformed from a single dominant provider to full and open competition, with 167 licensed carriers in the marketplace and prices falling by over 26 per cent.

Recently the government released the much anticipated Australia Connected announcement and named OPEL as the winning bidder to roll out a new, wholesale high-speed broadband network across Australia. OPEL, a joint venture by Optus and rural group Elders, will deliver Australia one of the world’s most comprehensive rural and regional broadband networks for a country of our size and population spread. Broadband speeds will be 20 to 40 times faster than those used today and delivered in the country at city comparable prices. OPEL’s new network will be funded by government support of $600 million from the program and $358 million of additional funding to a total of $958 million. OPEL’s own commercial contribution to the network is $917 million. The new broadband services will retail for between $35 and $60 per month, depending on the speed package chosen by the consumer. This sound technological investment in broadband means that local residents living and working in the Dobell electorate will very soon have access to high-quality, fast and affordable broadband for the first time. It is a shame that Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo is demonstrating sour grapes. They did not have the wit to put in an innovative alternative tender. The Next G technology that they are providing is really first class. Surely they could have come up with a better price proposition than what they have come up with.

OPEL’s sound technology investment means that local residents will certainly be much better off. Under the Australia Connected scheme, areas such as Bateau Bay, Blue Haven, Wyoming, Mardi, Warnervale and even most of Jilliby in the Yarramalong Valley can look forward to internet speeds of six, 12 and eventually even 20 megabits. By 2009 Australia Connected will provide 99 per cent of Australians with access to a broadband speed of 12 megabits, which is 20 to 40 times faster than that in use by most customers today. This is a huge win for local residents, who have been lobbying for a long time to get access to even basic broadband and telecommunications services. Within the next couple of years they will have access to the latest technical improvements in this field.

Everyone in Dobell can benefit from these telecommunications initiatives, including those running their businesses from home, those working in our hospitals and schools, families who use the internet to keep in touch with loved ones, and our business people who use it to contact their customers and suppliers and to find new markets for their products and services. Indeed, many small businesses are microbusinesses, mainly run by women operating from home. Broadband certainly improves their access. Students and parents on the Central Coast are especially pleased with this federal government initiative as it will make completing schoolwork at home a lot easier, as they will have fast access to relevant information and sources.

On the other hand, Labor plans to waste $4.7 billion of taxpayers’ money on a broadband proposal about which they refuse to disclose until after the election basic information such as coverage maps, detailed costing and how their joint arrangement would work. The member for Grayndler criticised some of the maps produced by OPEL. Where are the Labor maps? What technology are they going to use? How are they going to get fibre to the node to 98 per cent of the Australian population? Telstra cannot do it. Some of the people on that side have some technical competence, like the member for Blaxland, who has been dumped for another union heavyweight. He is the one member over there who understands something about telecommunications; the rest of them are Rudd duds.

Industry analysts have also slammed Labor’s claim to reach 98 per cent of Australia’s population and are predicting a massive cost blow-out by Labor. Indeed, this $4.7 billion plan is an old rehash of something Telstra proposed some years ago. That is why there is no detail—Labor does not understand it. It demonstrates a real economic risk that Labor presents to the taxpayers. Even Telstra’s five-city program is going to cost $4 billion or $5 billion, and that will only cover a very small proportion of the Australian population. It certainly will not do anything for the people in Dobell. On top of that Labor has committed to drain the entire $2 billion from the Communications Fund, rob the bush of its ongoing funding and squander the funds on a network that is estimated to reach only about 75 per cent of the population. The remaining 25 per cent of the population in rural and regional areas will be stranded without any future service upgrades under Labor. Ironically, it is the 25 per cent of consumers in rural and regional Australia that the Communications Fund was established to protect and that the Labor Party will abandon if elected. Not content with pillaging the Communications Fund, Labor has also promised to grab a further $2.7 billion from the Future Fund for a total of $4.7 billion to waste on a broadband network that the industry says will fund itself. And we know that governments cannot run businesses.

Furthermore, having racked up $96 billion in debt when last in power, the Labor Party has now committed to raiding the Future Fund to pay for its election promises. This represents an irresponsible and short-sighted policy which would penalise future generations by running down the money set aside to meet future costs. Taxpayer funds should be used to deliver equity in underserved areas and ensure regional and rural Australians are not left behind in the ongoing telecommunications technology revolution.

This is a particularly important bill, as its passage through parliament will protect rural and regional Australia from the gross economic irresponsibility of the Labor Party. The very clear challenge to the Leader of the Opposition and his party is to provide the costings, coverage maps and technical information about their broadband proposal for the full scrutiny of the Australian public. This needs to be done before the election; otherwise, it will just be another Rudd dud. All details of the government’s new national broadband network are in the public domain, but we have heard nothing but rhetoric from the Labor Party. It is clear that Labor does not have a genuine broadband strategy for Australia beyond our major capital cities. That is its base, that is where its constituents are, and that is where its union heavyweights live. Its plan has no detail, no technical backing and no plan for the 25 per cent of the population that Labor will leave stranded without a service. We saw this happen in the mobile telephony area. When it dumped AMPS, rural communication was left without any mobile service until the Howard government introduced the CDMA network.

This bill will prevent a future government covertly abolishing the Communications Fund. Any future government that wants to abolish the Communications Fund will have to publicly introduce legislation to do so. This whole process provides certainty for people in rural and regional Australia that the improvements in their telecommunications services will keep pace with the rest of the nation in stark contrast to Labor’s proposal. Labor is not interested in the needs of rural and regional constituents of Dobell; it is only interested in having more union bosses in Canberra. We have seen the disdain it has for the constituents in the Central Coast area by parachuting in candidates from Victoria. Candidates could not get a seat down there. Many members were being dumped and even the member for Hotham had to mount a rearguard action to maintain his preselection.

The Labor Party’s hurry to raid both the Future Fund and the regional Communications Fund for short-term political fixes reveals its dire inability to manage the country’s economy. This demonstrates Labor’s complete lack of interest in Australia’s future. We cannot avoid the fact that we are an ageing population. This funding has been quarantined to deal with our future liabilities.

The unfortunate truth for the opposition is that the government’s broadband programs have now achieved much more than Labor claimed they would, and we have done it four years earlier and for a fraction of the cost to taxpayers. Our proposals are fully costed and fully planned, and the new national broadband network will start rolling out immediately. Australia cannot afford to wait until 2013 for the ALP’s network to be completed.

The coalition government will not need to raid the Future Fund to establish a national broadband network. We have been able to do this because of the government’s commitment to having appropriate and focused policies and strategies in place. We have introduced policies to foster a competitive environment for the delivery of broadband services. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. In fact, the fibre-to-the-node network would not provide a service in the area I live, and I am 10 kilometres off the Sydney-Newcastle freeway and three kilometres off the main distributor road from the freeway into most of the Central Coast population. Fibre to the node will do absolutely nothing for other people who live in an area like mine. We are about two kilometres from residential customers. That is the fallacy of fibre to the node. You cannot achieve full broadband with one technology. The government has created the environment, and investment in telecommunications infrastructure and services is strong. This bill secures the Communications Fund to protect the long-term interests of rural, regional and remote Australia. I am confident that the Australian government has got the balance right and that this new network will deliver an enormous productivity boost to the electorate of Dobell.

Indeed, the member for Grayndler rubbished the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access program. He obviously does not understand that WiMAX is a new and developing technology. It is similar to Next G in its infancy. Both of these programs can be improved.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Crean interjecting

Ken Ticehurst (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hotham, who is interjecting, should read the article in Tuesday’s edition of the Australian containing a report about Sony Ericsson’s prediction that users will need only one phone; they will not need a fixed house phone because one phone will be able to access both the mobile and fixed phone networks. Catch up with the technology and he might understand what it is all about.

Telstra can provide ADSL2+ because many of its exchanges are fitted with the appropriate technology. However, it refuses to turn it on until it has a competitor providing a service out of the same exchange. That is one example of Telstra trying to maintain its monopoly; it is trying to protect its fibre-to-the-node idea. It is obvious that the Labor Party is trying to get into government so that it can get people signed up to a new phone network resulting in more and more unionists. That is what it is all about. I commend this bill to the House.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Party opposes the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. It is merely a stunt designed to hide the government’s incompetence in connecting the nation with world-class broadband access. Despite what the member for Dobell said, having sold Telstra, this government has had 11 years to provide world-class broadband services across this nation, but it has failed to do so. That demonstrates its incompetence in delivery writ large. It cannot get its water policy right and it cannot get its health policy right, and it flounders—Abbott for Mersey! This is another example of where the government has failed the nation. Despite selling off Telstra, it has failed to make the essential investment in connecting all the nation, not only the capital cities.

Labor has a plan, and I will come to that in a minute. I hope the member for Dobell, if he is interested in learning something, will stay in the chamber and listen. Of course, he is not interested. He comes into this place and makes wild accusations—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am listening!

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here he is over in the corner! We’ve got the member for O’Connor. We really have the heavyweights here. It is very interesting to note that when this government says its legislation is designed to do something it gives it a title that suggests it will do the exact opposite. Mr Deputy Speaker, you might remember that the title of the GST legislation stated that it would lead to a fairer tax system. It did anything but. The industrial relations reform legislation was called Work Choices, but it allowed no choice—in fact, the only choice is to sign a contract or to be sacked. The government has now introduced the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill, which will prevent regions getting world-class telecommunications services. The government has not been content to demonstrate its incompetence; it has now introduced legislation that has no purpose other than to block Labor’s plan. The government’s solution to its incapacity and incompetence is to block something. Because it is not a doer, it becomes a spoiler. That is what this legislation represents.

Labor’s plan is to use the $2 billion Communications Fund to help build world-class telecommunications services for the entire country. However, this bill attempts to prevent Labor from using that $2-billion fund to implement its plan. It quarantines that money for the government to use if left to its own devices. The government’s plan is to use the interest on that $2 billion for telecommunications services. However, it still has not said how that interest will be invested; none of that has been disclosed despite the previous speaker’s assertions. How did this fund come about? It was the buy-off to get Senator Barnaby Joyce’s vote in the Senate for the further sale of Telstra. The government champions the fact that it has established a $2 billion fund, but it can access only the interest earned from it—that is, a little over $100 million a year. What will that achieve in connecting the nation? It will not have any significant impact. It is no wonder that the system is failing. The government wants the kudos of saying it has a $2 billion fund, but it is not allocating that money for its stated purpose.

The Treasurer’s response has been to say that there should be no government investment in telecommunications. He says that the private sector will provide the services all on its own and asks why the government should intervene. He says that Labor is pouring money into an area in which the private sector should invest. The fact is that the private sector will invest only where it can get an economic return. It will not invest in the regions because it is not economic unless it charges exorbitant prices. That is market failure and it is the reason that in the past this parliament has made a bipartisan commitment to providing universal access to standard telephone lines. We must make a commitment today that everyone in Australia, regardless of where they live, will have access to world-class broadband services. This government will mouth the words, but it will not make the commitment.

If the Treasurer is right that the government does not have to invest any money, why is it making commitments to do so? Just recently, it had to increase the funding available to the successful bidder, OPEL, in a contract that had previously been put out at $650 million. The government upped it to almost $1 billion. The winning consortium was OPEL, but Telstra is now suing the government because it was not advised of the increase that the government was putting into play. And the previous member was talking about transparency and openness and about the government coming clean! If we are talking about openness, where is that extra $350 million being funded from? I have heard no mention of the interest from the Communications Fund going into it, and the government still has not explained where the additional $350 million is coming from. On top of that fiasco, this government has also bragged on other occasions about how it has already invested $4 billion to try and improve telecommunications. We know this has not improved it. That has been a dismal failure. How can the government have the hypocrisy to come into this place and attack Labor’s plan on the basis of putting in money when it has put in money and wasted it?

Labor’s plan is to commit $4.7 billion, of which $2 billion is to come from the Communications Fund. This is not just from the interest on it but from an allocation as an investment in the future of this country. The additional $2.7 billion is to come from the further sale of the Telstra share, which the government will put into the Future Fund. Understand that this is the sale of a government asset that the whole of Australia owned. The government’s solution is to put it into the Future Fund, which does what? It meets the unfunded superannuation liabilities of who? Commonwealth public servants. Why should the nation’s savings be used for such a limited purpose? If, in fact, we are realising the savings of that which the nation made from a great investment in the past, why shouldn’t those savings be reinvested in our future? That is what Labor says we should do.

What we are talking about in terms of this Telstra component is the remaining 17 per cent of Telstra. Labor’s proposal will not even have to draw on that full amount. But I make this point: this is a government that has failed to connect the nation, having sold 83 per cent of Telstra already. Labor will do more with the remaining 17 per cent to connect the nation than this government has done by selling 83 per cent. That is how incompetent and uncommitted this government is in addressing this problem. Labor’s plan is costed, it is funded and it is comprehensive. It will see 98 per cent of the country covered by fibre-to-the-node technology. The remaining two per cent that cannot be covered by fibre to the node will be covered by technologies that aim to achieve the equivalent speed of it. That is our commitment. That is where wireless technologies, satellites and any other technologies can be used, but fibre to the node has to provide the essential base.

If anyone doubts the importance of achieving this agenda, let me explain why rolling out broadband to the whole of the nation is so essential. In the 19th century, railways were important to connect the nation; in the 21st century, connecting to the information superhighway is the imperative—particularly for the regions, because their capacity to develop economic opportunities is critically linked to their ability to access fast-speed broadband. They cannot compete in the marketplace in accessing information, in tendering documents, in operating from home—especially those living in more remote locations—and in participating in electronic commerce if they cannot access the speed that the cities take for granted. They will not have a chance.

It is very interesting that the Australian Local Government Association found in its State of the regions report—I had the pleasure of speaking at their conference on this last year—that the cost of inferior broadband in 2006—just one year—was $2.7 billion in forgone gross domestic product and 30,000 regional jobs. Just think of that in terms of the regions. We talk about regional development but, if we get this right, this technology will provide an economic underpinning. The simple fact from that report is that regions that have access to broadband are doing well; those that do not have access are the ones that are being left behind.

But the benefits of broadband are not just economic. For individuals, businesses and regions broadband is the great enabling infrastructure of our age. It offers our children the opportunity to secure educational outcomes regardless of where they live. It enables them to connect with a world of learning that they would not otherwise have. It is also about giving Australians access to an advanced range of services, including e-health and e-education—not to mention the vital capacity for Australians to be able to communicate more effectively from wherever they are so that they are able to remain in touch with their loved ones, their community groups and their friends. This technology also has the ability to deliver quality entertainment and recreational facilities. That is why it is important. It has economic but also cultural and social benefits. These are the sorts of things that are good public goods and why governments must make the investment where the market fails in its economic coverage.

It is only Labor that is committed to build such a network. I have said before how we intend to fund our commitment to the plan. Why should the Future Fund be used to pay only the superannuation liabilities of Commonwealth public servants? Why should the proceeds of Telstra not be reinvested in the telecommunications network of this nation? Why should the Communications Fund be restricted to an interest-only payment? Labor will not stand for that, and neither, I believe, will the Australian public. Labor acted in relation to the ALGA report. Labor understands the importance of connecting the nation, and we put our proposal into the public domain.

The government’s plan will hold the regions and the nation back. As more details emerge about the government’s broadband pre-election bandaid, more evidence is emerging that the regions will not only be consigned to a second-rate system but will be slugged for the privilege. Country residents could be slugged with internet installation bills of up to $1,000 as they will have to install satellite-dish-like antennas. This cost will not only be an additional burden but provide them with an inferior system which will duplicate existing services, including exchanges which have already been upgraded and Telstra’s Next G network.

It is not just our word that I ask people to take note of in relation to this. Leading academics and the OECD have found wireless inferior to fibre for speed and reliability. Fibre is the Labor solution. The WiMAX wireless solution, the inferior solution, is what the government proposes. Wireless does have a place, I accept that, but only as a complementary technology to the fixed-line network. It is what we would use, for example, as part of the solution to address the two per cent that we cannot connect with fibre to the node.

We have to aim for the biggest capacity, but a number of important telecommunications experts confirmed, when the government’s report came out in June, that wireless technologies would always be slower than fibre and would suffer from interference and low quality and that fibre provides the largest bandwidth. Neil Weste from Macquarie University has said so. Andrew Parfitt from the University of South Australia has said so. Eryk Dutkiewicz from the University of Wollongong has said so. But what does the government do? It ignores the experts. It trots out the incompetent Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. At a press conference on 27 June, she claimed:

The network design and rollout has addressed topography and local weather conditions …

That is what the minister said on the public record. But that is not what her department’s own website says. That website features maps of Australia from OPEL, the consortium that won the bid, showing what it seeks to cover. They look impressive and seem to show that the whole of the nation is being covered. But at the top it says:

Users should note the disclaimer on these maps.

You have to click the link to find the disclaimer, but when you do, the disclaimer says:

… these maps do not take into account local topographic features.

Hang on—didn’t the minister tell us that they did? Didn’t the minister say that on 27 June?

Why is it important to take account of those sorts of things? Because, if you do not, you do not understand whether the network is going to be effectively connected. If the maps do not take account of the topographical features, they are rendered useless. For example, line of sight problems mean the signal will not transmit through mountains, hills, trees or buildings. In addition, because OPEL will transmit the WiMAX signal in the shared spectrum frequency, it will not be permitted to transmit at powers greater than four watts. This means that the signal will not transmit over 20 kilometres, even in flat terrain. Industry experts consider five to 10 kilometres more likely.

The disclaimer goes on to say that the existence of technical impediments to service provision in the existing copper network is not taken into account. And, finally, it says that the minister’s own department:

… makes no guarantee about the suitability of these maps for any purpose by any person whatsoever.

What is the point of putting out maps like that? The minister goes to the Press Club, rants on about how effective this is going to be, and her own department is bagging her. Her own department says it will not give any guarantee about the maps’ suitability for any purpose by any person.

This government has again shown its incompetence in this area. It is not committed to regional Australia. It is not committed to connecting the nation. It believes that the private sector should do it and everyone should pay the price. We believe the government has a responsibility to make the investment. We have the plan to do it. We should be able to get on with it and not have this legislation block it. (Time expired)

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before calling the honourable member for O’Connor, as a former Fitzroy supporter and a Brisbane Lions supporter, I acknowledge a Brisbane Lions supporter in the gallery.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A very significant issue of policy has just been put on the record in this House by a very senior member of the opposition: ‘Commonwealth public servants don’t count. Public servants are not entitled to a guarantee of the superannuation to which they are appropriately entitled.’ And this comes from the mouth of one of the people who have lectured us about redundancy and entitlements. The member for Hotham has just said it plans to diminish the Future Fund by extracting shares, now the property of the managers of the Future Fund. They say it is more important to achieve some political gain of their impression—I think they are wrong—with an opportunity that goes from the ability to do business at the higher speed, which is to be applauded, to the downloading of movies. They say it does not matter whether the money will be there to pay the people who are totally dependent on this Future Fund and are so important to our nation today in the defence forces and the Federal Police and of course the large number of public servants of long service who do not come under modern contributory arrangements. That is what he said.

Consult the Hansard and you will see that the member for Hotham, on behalf of the opposition, said it is only going to Commonwealth public servants. I am pleased to say it is—that was the purpose, because we are going to see a huge demographic change. There is a view that the poor old taxpayer will have to stump up for them in another 20 years time. Who says? The taxpayer may be confronted with an offer from the government at that time saying: ‘We are not going to increase your taxes by X per cent. We are just going to put those public servants on the pension.’ To insulate those public servants and their entitlements, we have put the Future Fund in place, and they will be the losers if one dollar is extracted from it for other purposes.

But what has the previous speaker, the member for Hotham, just told us? It will be back to the future—suddenly the government is going to buy back into telecommunications and become the owner of a network. It is interesting to note that both the commercial independent parties fighting over the right to spend $4 billion of their shareholders’ money say that it will only address 72 per cent of the people in the network. Somehow or other a miracle is going to happen and the government will manage to deliver, for the same money, to 98 per cent! But above all—won’t it be nice?—there was not a word about the recurrent costs of this investment. Who is going to look after it? Who is going to get paid to do that? Or are we going to go back to the future and get another 20,000 public servants who will all be members of the union? That is about the only repository of membership the trade union has left—public servants. And they of course will all be up for their $5 levy to guarantee the re-election of a future Labor government.

So that is what we are being told—they are going to take $4 billion of taxpayers’ money and go and fight with two consortiums who are both fighting over the same bit of territory. What is the $2 billion being put into reserve for, to guarantee protection from the avariciousness of future treasurers, be they Liberal or Labor? What is the purpose of it? To use the words of the member for Hotham, to address market failure. In a commercial environment, government must always assume the responsibility of delivering balance by using some taxpayers’ money to address areas of market failure, because we as Australians believe in egalitarianism. We believe that the person most remote from where we stand today in the centre of government should have access to, particularly, the same communications services—probably above all else.

I am quite interested in this back to the future issue, because I have been around this place for quite a bit of time. I remember when the government owned Telecom, and I remember having 160 outstanding applications in one shire, the Shire of Denmark—I’ll name it—from people waiting to get an ordinary telephone connected. I remember fighting tooth and nail to try and reduce in the early 1980s the $6,000 the old-fashioned ‘government, we love you’ Telecom would charge to run a single wire up from the road to the household of a farming property. I well remember the fellow that rang me once and said: ‘Wilson, you can’t sell Telstra. The service is not as good as in the old days.’ I said, ‘Yeah, and I remember what sort of service you got when I first came, because I helped you get your first telephone.’ He did not have any complaints because he did not have a telephone. I always think it is a bit humorous when people complain over the internet to me about the standard of their internet service. I remember when that was a dream beyond anything, and that was when the government ran the shop.

So what are we talking about? A sensible approach. Let the private sector fight over it. I understand that Telstra has its nose out of joint. I am somewhat supportive of some of Telstra’s claims. I think they do have a responsibility to their shareholders and I think, when they sort out a few things, their 3G network, Next G, will be a very significant service across Australia. We have the right as the licensing authority to make sure they meet the commitments they made to the public.

But we do not need to go back to the future and invest $4 billion of taxpayers’ money, stealing half of it from the defence forces and the other half from officers’ superannuation, because we need every cent of it. Something like $140 billion is the liability that is going to arise. There are probably people working in this parliament who are dependent on that money. Do not ever think—I repeat, do not ever think—that without that money a future government will necessarily stand by those people. Do not ever think that. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, I and some other people sitting in this room have been around too long to believe that idea, other than with a guarantee. So do not touch it, because it would be a very foolish thing to do.

We have seen a senior shadow minister stand up in this place and say that public servants do not count, that this money is only for public servants. I hope a few public servants read this copy of Hansard because that is what was said and that was the reason given. ‘Give the children the opportunity to download movies now and someone else can worry about whether people in the defence forces et cetera get their proper superannuation entitlement.’

I have looked at the pious opposition amendment. There again we find the reference that they are going to fix 98 per cent of the population, when the private sector says that $4 billion will look after only 72 per cent. We want to protect these funds now. It is suggested that somewhere between $100 million and $150 million per annum will accumulate as profits from this fund—a fairly significant amount of money. I note the member for Hotham wanted to tell us that people will want to be connected to the satellite. That service is as fast as you would want today. You can go to various providers of satellite services and tell them what speed you want. You do not have to wait for high-speed broadband, fibre to the node or anything else. There is a problem in that: when you get to very high speeds, companies want to charge you more. Even that has become competitive.

If in the process you take VOIP—in other words, you connect your telephone to the same system—you no longer pay $40 a month for a telephone connection. When you put all those figures together, you can get well up into the hundreds out of a satellite. The member for Hotham said that that might cost somebody a $1,000 connection fee. The current arrangements still provide $2,750 of capital investment for the installation. The reality is that we get a situation where there is a direct subsidy. Let me say, to be fair, I think Telstra ran around and got too much of the HiBIS money to upgrade their exchanges with which, unfortunately—one starts talking about the various technical issues—ADSL travels only five kilometres of wire. That is not five kilometres of radius; that is five kilometres of wire. As a wire culture, Telstra encouraged people to form consortiums. They took the $1,000, or whatever it was, available under HiBIS and they aggregated it for an exchange upgrade. In my mind, they did not sufficiently vigorously market satellite for individual homesteads which are all, collectively, both five kilometres radius and more than five kilometres away from a central exchange. I have told them that.

I have told them they should take back, at their own cost, all the dodgy handsets that they let people buy without making sure that they were adequate for the outer regions. They now have a blue tick system. It is a bit late but in that process I have written to them and said that they should make an open offer. They all went for the kids’ handsets, all the nice little flip-flop ones, instead of getting a more suitable tradesman’s set, as one brand calls them. They did not get the tradesman’s set; rather they went for the others on the understanding that this unit would do what the CDMA unit they had traded in, got rid of or junked had done.

Telstra has a responsibility, as does anyone else who marketed those handsets—Crazy John—to take them back and give people the right one, just as you would expect had you bought a deficient item from another retailer. I think that would have a significant effect. I also point out that this much criticised minister has said on television, it is my personal observation, that we, using the licensing power, will insist that there be an appropriate service before CDMA is turned off. That did not happen when the analog service was turned off—it was just turned off. I well remember it. There was no such service with the digital changeover. The decision was made for the right reasons—because analog uses up too much of the spectrum—but it was a bad decision because the new service did not stand up. Then when we came to office Telstra found it appropriate to discover CDMA. Over time that has become a very good service. I always make sure, when meeting with my constituents, that I leave my phone turned on in the hope that it rings. It might be embarrassing but I say, ‘I thought this thing didn’t work in your town’—just for a bit of fun. The reality is that it has become a very good service and, what is more, it is time the new service was demonstrated to meet that requirement.

This is a universal service. It will work as well for my constituents in St Georges Terrace or for people in capital cities around Australia as it will for people on farming properties. That is what we expect. If you buy the appropriate plug and put it into your desktop computer, it will give you high-speed broadband. That is a development happening in the private sector. I am sympathetic to Telstra—that it is doing all that and is being treated as the bad boy. All strength to their arm if they want to give us a clip around the ear because they are a commercial body and are entitled to do so. And the member for Hotham stands up and says, ‘We’re going to steal $4 billion from the superannuation of public servants and we’re going to take this $2 billion so we can spend it now but we will have no proceeds in future for meeting areas of market failure, and we’re going to start our own little business.’ Not one word has been said in this place—and there is an opportunity for speakers to do so—about recurrent costs. Who is going to own it? Who is going to manage it and are those people going to be paid workers, who will, of course, all join the telecommunications union and be subject to the same sorts of levies that have become fundamental to the electoral returns of the Labor Party?

I do not think for a minute that this $4 billion has been identified or its expenditure proposed out of the goodness of the heart of the Labor Party. What a nice little investment; all those extra government workers to prop up their election funding! I also see the irony of the situation of the member for Hotham criticising the sale of Telstra. In any commercial sense, Telstra was the only surviving commercial asset of the Australian parliament or government on the day that we won the election and it was mortgaged to the extent of $96 billion. If this parliament was subject to the normal rules of commerce it would have been an issue, as it properly was, of an election where we went to the people and said, ‘If you re-elect us we are going to start selling Telstra.’ That stands in stark contrast to what one Paul Keating did, as I recollect, when he signed a letter to the Commonwealth Bank officers union promising before the election they would never sell the other half of the Commonwealth Bank—the 51 per cent, to be exact—and no sooner did they get re-elected in a surprise result than they announced they would sell it. We told people we were going to do it. But had we been a proper commercial entity the bank manager would have told us to sell it because we were overextended in debt. What had been done under the Hawke-Keating government with the other assets—with TAA, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory, Qantas in its revised form, the Commonwealth Bank, as I just mentioned? Each and every one of them was sold and, as is proposed with the Future Fund, the money was spent. It was not used to pay off debt. While all those proceeds were being disposed of, the debt of this parliament went up from $16 billion to $96 billion in five years.

There is the situation: it is a proposal that has no business planning, and you are just going to spend the money. You are going to do for 98 per cent what the private sector says it can only do for 72 per cent—and, of course, there is no money for the two per cent. There is no reserve fund for addressing market failure, which is the one and only responsibility of government. Of course we should do that. We have some opportunity to do it, as demonstrated with CDMA through the licensing, but I think that is a secondary choice. If you want to privatise things you then identify areas of market failure. We are putting in a fund and we are now guaranteeing it in law, so in the future, before you get your sticky fingers as a government on that money, you will have to pass laws in both houses of parliament. If the election was won by Labor they would have a majority in this place but they would have a much tougher job in the Senate—and thank goodness for that.

My people want this protection, they want it guaranteed, and so do the public servants. Every public servant in the defence forces and in the Federal Police and those others I mentioned can sleep well at night while the Liberal coalition stays in office, because we have guaranteed their retirement funds. They must start to lose a bit of sleep on the announcement made today that they do not count, that there are other political imperatives that accede on that occasion. (Time expired)

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The stated purpose of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 is to amend the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act to protect the $2 billion Communications Fund. The real purpose of this bill—and we have just heard it from the member for O’Connor—is that the government wants to try and have a crack at Labor’s plans to use the Communications Fund to build a national broadband network. I say to the government: thank you for the opportunity to show, once and for all, that it is Labor that has the plan to build and deliver high-speed broadband to this country, that it is Labor that believes it is the responsibility of governments to nation build, that it is Labor that understands that investing in broadband is one of the most important infrastructure investments we can make towards ensuring future economic growth. The government wants to lock the Communications Fund away so that it is only the income or interest earned on the investments of the fund that are available to implement recommendations proposed by the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee. Despite the bill’s title, the bill will not protect regional and rural services, nor will it improve across the board the woeful broadband services we have currently. In fact, what this bill does is condemn regional and rural Australia to a second-class broadband future.

The story of the Howard government when it comes to broadband really is a case study of what you should not do. This bill is the 19th time the government has tried to fix up regional and rural services. The problem is that the Howard government has an outdated view of the needs of regional and rural communities, particulary of their broadband needs. The fact is painfully underlined by the Howard government’s announcement of the roll-out of a wireless network for regional and rural communities, the shortsightedness of which I will discuss later.

Coming from a regional electorate, I know firsthand that the standard of telecommunications in regional and rural areas is of great concern. People and businesses alike have had to endure a second-rate service when it comes to high-speed broadband—in fact, calling it second-rate is to give it a compliment. In my electorate, the furthest town of which is only an hour and a half from Melbourne—hardly remote; hardly at times even rural—the problems we have with accessing ADSL, let alone anything faster, would lead you to think we are in a Third World country. This has serious implications for our ability to compete not just globally, which is what many companies in my district do, but even within our own state. I know the line the government will take on this bill; they are going to claim that by investing the interest of the $2 billion Communications Fund into regional and rural Australia they will fix our broadband problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. It only highlights how little the government actually understand the problem. The income and interest earned by the Communications Fund is nowhere near enough revenue to raise the standard of telecommunications services in regional, rural and remote parts of Australia. It is a drop in the ocean of what is needed and what investment is needed to build a national fibre-optic network. It really is the case of far too little and it will be far too late.

Australia’s broadband performance is poor; we are ranked only 16th out of 30 countries surveyed by OECD. It will take more than the interest payments from the Communications Fund to bring regional and rural Australia up to speed with metropolitan centres, let alone the rest of the world. It will take more than the government’s fraudulent Optus-Elders wireless plan to improve broadband services in this country.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, governments laid out railway networks as the arteries of the country. In the 21st century, governments around the world are ensuring that high-speed broadband networks are laid out as the arteries of the new economy. After 11 years of the Howard government, we have nothing more than a patchwork network which lags behind those of most developed countries. As is the case with most areas, regional and rural communities are doing it the toughest. Fifteen per cent fewer people in regional Victoria have broadband access than in metropolitan areas. It shows there are still more than 55,000 Victorians who want metropolitan-equivalent broadband coverage but who cannot access it, up nine per cent since 2005.

Broadband services in Australian cities are second rate by world standards. In Australia, broadband is defined by access speeds equal to or greater than 256 kilobits per second. In other countries, the service is not even considered to be broadband unless it provides minimum speeds in the megabits or 1,000 kilobits range. In Hong Kong, the slowest broadband speed is 1.5 megabits per second. In Australia less than half of households have access to broadband speeds in excess of two megabits per second, whereas in the UK, Sweden, France, Italy, Canada and the USA 80 to 90 per cent of households have access to faster broadband.

For 11 years regional Australia has had to endure broadband speeds that are slower than those of our metropolitan centres. That is not a matter for debate but a matter of fact. The Howard government’s latest broadband plan has effectively locked regional communities into a second-class future by cementing a two-tiered system across the nation. The Prime Minister’s solution to the broadband problem in regional communities is to roll out a wireless network. That is not the solution; it is a fix to try and get broadband off the agenda before the election.

I recall that in question time the Prime Minister held up a map of my electorate—a map of the communities that, he claimed, would be able to access faster internet speeds. Having had time to study that map in some detail and consult with telecommunications experts, I can say that the map held up by the Prime Minister in question time, the whiz-bang broadband plan for the electorate of Ballarat, is a complete and utter sham. The Prime Minister stated that the map showed five areas in the electorate of Ballarat that were going to get the benefit of ADSL2+. The first problem is that only three of the communities identified on the map that were going to be able to access ADSL2+ are actually in the electorate of Ballarat; the other two are in other electorates entirely. Of the three that were going to have access to ADSL2+, two of those already have ADSL2+ and will notice very little difference in their broadband speeds.

I do not know who put the map together but I am pretty sure that the children at Bacchus Marsh Primary School or Bacchus Marsh preschool could have done a better job of drawing one up. They would have at least known to put Bacchus Marsh on the map in the first place. Bacchus Marsh is a pretty large community and to leave it off the map was an astounding omission. They would also know that condemning a town the size of Bacchus Marsh, only 35 minutes from metropolitan Melbourne, to wireless is simply a dumb idea.

The map was also supposed to show which communities would be able to access wireless. When I observed the map, I saw that many communities that have been crying out for faster internet speeds could supposedly access a wireless network. ‘Okay,’ I thought, ‘I will have a look at that.’ The problem is that the map is entirely wrong. Communities such as Yandoit, Shepherds Flat, Mount Rowsley and Blackwood will not be able to access the wireless network, despite the claims on the Howard government map.

When devising the map, the Howard government did not take into account the topography of the area—the variations in vegetation, buildings, rain et cetera that will prevent significant numbers of people in my district receiving broadband services under the Howard government’s plan. The wireless network is a line-of-sight technology, which means that, if you cannot see the transmitting tower, you cannot access the network. The problem is that regional and rural Australia is not flat: it is blessed with vast numbers of valleys, hills and, occasionally, mountains which cut off many communities from accessing the network.

The data delivered using a WiMAX solution is shared between multiple users. Rather than delivering a minimum 12 megabits per second to customers, the Howard government will deliver up to 12 megabits per second, shared between multiple customers. Broadband speeds are more likely to be 512 kilobits per second. It really is ‘fraudband’.

The government maps that depict the OPEL coverage are misleading and they now come with two pages of disclaimers, disclaimers the Prime Minister did not even mention when he was in here in question time holding up the map for Ballarat. The disclaimers state that depictions of WiMAX and other wireless coverage on these maps do not take into account local topographical features, a disclaimer that John Howard did not see fit to bring up in question time.

The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has admitted that the maps only provide indicative coverage and that exact coverage maps would be available once the network was operational. That is a bit too late if you have decided that, because of the map, you will be able to get WiMAX—and then you find that you cannot. Industry experts suggest that WiMAX coverage from a base station is more like five to 10 kilometres. This is ignoring power limitation issues and is certainly nowhere near the 20 kilometres that the government has claimed.

If you thought that this cobbled-together policy could become any shabbier, then think again. The Howard government’s broadband plan does not have its own spectrum to broadcast. Instead, spectrum must be shared, which leads to a number of issues. For example, power limitations apply to the shared spectrum, limitations which will severely limit overall transmission distance. Because use of the shared spectrum in WiMAX deployments is atypical, Australians will require customised computer chip sets in order to access bandwidth, delivered over a shared spectrum. In addition, the WiMAX service offered by the Howard government may suffer from interference, due to the fact that other household appliances, such as your garage door opener, share the same spectrum, as do cordless phones and microwaves.

It did not take long for businesses and constituents and local experts from my electorate to contact me, outraged at the government’s political fix. I was emailed by one of my constituents some time ago, and I want to read out quite a bit of his email as it illustrates the depth of the government’s failure to understand just why regional and rural communities need fibre to the node, not WiMAX. Now while Ian is a very sophisticated internet user, with technologies such as voice over IP increasingly being used it will not be long before people realise how woeful their system is.

Ian assists in a global network of volunteers who develop the Ubuntu Linux system, quite a complex system. There are lots of people who describe themselves as IT geeks right across the country all the way from small rural communities to metropolitan areas. They get onto this network and are part of the system of building Ubuntu Linux, a system that is used by many large-scale online businesses. The problem for Ian is that he lives in a small community which is not too far from Melbourne, some 45 minutes away, and he is only able to get ISDN. Currently he is on a 128-kilobit ISDN home service, which is the best he can do via copper. He says in his email:

Downloading one 650 megabit CD image takes me about 11½ hours. The 1,599 megabit version upgrade is going to take nearly 30 hours and one DVD, if you could be bothered to attempt it, would take about 3½ days of continuous downloading.

He usually starts his CD downloading in the evening before he goes to bed and leaves it running overnight to have it finished sometime next morning. These are theoretical maximum times because it can depend on whether there are interruptions and whether the full speed on the line is available for the entire period.

While he says that 11½ hours is a long time, he is very fortunate to be on an unlimited data ISDN internet plan, so there is no additional cost other than the long time it takes to complete a download. Currently Ian pays $46.40 per month for his internet access through Telstra BigPond. On the other hand, if he were to take up the government’s program, which is to get satellite broadband into his area, he would be paying $300 per month. It is not a matter of just saying that there are other technologies available; it is also the cost of those technologies that is the problem, and that is not something that the government has taken into account. As Ian says:

As you will appreciate, any of these outcomes are financially unviable for a home user and are significantly more than the $46.40. I am therefore better off remaining on a narrowband but unlimited download ISDN internet plan than being lured to a broadband plan by conditional promises of faster connection.

He goes on to say specifically:

Only when our bandwidth issues are seriously addressed, such as through fibre to the node or fibre to the home—core infrastructure development schemes—will the internet move from being seen as a first-generation option to being embedded in society as a mature fundamental communications medium. I am sure that history recorded a similar sequence of progress in the introduction of the telephone 130 years ago. It went from being a scientific curiosity to being a luxury item that only the very rich could afford to being a commercially exploitable mass communication option and finally to being embedded in society as fundamental and essential infrastructure. Television has also followed a similar path since the 1950s. The faster the internet also reaches that final stage the better.

I could not agree more with Ian.

George Fong, a local IT expert, in response to the Prime Minister’s plan for condemning regional Australia to a wireless future, said:

Australia lacks a big-picture strategy and without that seems doomed to continue with a litany of short-term solutions that ultimately will leave the country’s telecommunications languishing behind the rest of the world.

I could not have said it better myself. For George Fong, the only future to pursue is one that invests in fibre-to-the-node technology. In fact one of his and my major concerns with the direction of the Howard government’s proposal is that it will delay rather than enhance the kinds of broadband services in regional and rural areas.

If you look across the globe, all developed countries have or are rolling out fibre-to-the-node networks. If regional Australia is going to stay competitive we have to go down the fibre path. There is no choice about that. Local businesses within the IT sector have already told me that companies will not locate to regional areas because they cannot access fast enough broadband. If regional and rural communities are to remain competitive, they will have to have access to fibre to the node. A failure to do this would have catastrophic effects on regional communities. So why not start now? Why wait? Why delay the inevitable?

The answer is that there is an election only weeks away and the government needed a short-term political fix instead of what is needed in the long-term interests of regional Australia. The Howard government is keen to point out that the wireless network will be available before Labor’s fibre to the node. But, if you look at it in terms of what you do in your own household, you would not spend $10,000 on building an extension to a house—because you could get it up quickly—knowing that in a couple of years you are going to knock down the whole building to build something better. You can apply the same logic to the Howard government’s wireless network. What is the point of investing $1 billion of taxpayers’ money on something that will be well past its use-by date in less than two years?

Compare this to Labor’s broadband policy. Once a fibre network is rolled out it will make sure regional and rural areas have access to a first-class broadband network for the next 50 years. The Victorian Department of Infrastructure’s economic modelling shows that, by 2015, an IT industry with 21st-century broadband has the potential to add $15 billion to Victoria’s gross state product and create 153,000 new jobs. Let us not put regional communities further behind the roll-out. Under the Howard government’s plan, metropolitan areas and other countries will move further ahead. Their economies will grow while regional and rural communities are strangled both economically and socially by a second-rate service.

The internet is not something that only people in the cities use. People and businesses in regional and rural Australia use the internet and they use it in more and more sophisticated ways. They do not just use it, as we saw in the case of Ian, to send emails every now and again. They use it in more innovative and sophisticated ways than we could have imagined even a year ago. Again, I want to quote from Ian to explain why it is so important for rural and regional communities. He says:

Professionals in any industry sector who want to work online from home will sooner or later face a similar issue to me. For obvious lifestyle reasons, some of these people want to live in rural or rural fringe areas such as Greendale. Being within an hour of the Melbourne CBD, this area is arguably metropolitan fringe. However, in terms of internet access, we are treated the same as someone living in a dugout in Tibooburra.

Not that that is a bad thing to do. He continues:

That aside—though a key feature of the internet is that it breaks down physical barriers, and a person working in cyberspace who happens to physically be in Creswick needs to be on the same level of access as a person working in the same cyberspace who happens to be in Carlton or Coober Pedy or Tennant Creek or Paris or Baghdad or Denpasar, for that matter—if rural people do not have the same access pipeline into cyberspace as those in the suburbs, the internet carries with it similar limitations to their physical location. One could even argue that the most remote and isolated locations in Australia should really get high-speed broadband internet access first, to offset the ‘tyranny of distance’ issues that those in cities and less remote areas don’t have to contend with. I think most home users of the internet aren’t even aware of the potential that the internet holds once high-volume data streams come into play. A lot of people only use the internet for email and to surf web pages. Those use cases can easily be serviced by dial-up connection, and barely scratch the surface. The computer and the network connection are sitting idle 99 per cent of the time in this usage pattern. When voice over IP telephony, videoconferencing and multimedia streaming start becoming seriously mainstream, which isn’t too far away now, then the limitations of the infrastructure will start to become more apparent to the user community.

Labor have a plan to invest $4.7 billion in our broadband infrastructure. Labor’s plan does not discriminate between taxpayers living in urban, suburban, regional and rural areas. The $4.7 billion Labor plan is to build a national broadband network. Labor’s plan is for a state-of-the-art fibre-to-the-node network that has speeds of 12 megabits per second, capable of upscaling, to be laid out over a five-year period. The Howard government has already spent $5 billion of taxpayers’ money on 17 broadband proposals, none of which have delivered true broadband capabilities. Labor’s national broadband network is the sort of nation building that this country needs, and the sort of nation building that only a Labor government will deliver.

Barry Wakelin (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

History is always the best judge of these matters but, in speaking to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007, I have enough knowledge of this place now to remember some of the previous elections and some of the previous promises. It is vital that this bill be brought to the House and that it be put in place.

I can recall the efforts of this government in bringing the most modern telecommunications to the regions some decade or so ago under Minister Richard Alston. In those days, we had a fund called the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. There was a board, as I recall, chaired by a distinguished Australian, Mr Doug Anthony. Australians from all over regional Australia served on that board. We were able to get a fairer distribution of telecommunications services across Australia in a way which would never have happened unless we had done it. It included mobile services. It included internet. It included a whole suite of services which we could only imagine a decade before we came to government.

The reason this legislation is so important is that, immediately we came to the election after our policies were announced, it was the opposition policy to abolish that fund. There is no doubt about it. Whether the then opposition spokesman, Senator Chris Schacht, can recall those days, I guess only time will tell. But we know that efforts to improve telecommunications services in regional Australia were clearly under threat at that election. And of course we all recall, from this side of the chamber, the scare campaign about selling Telstra. It was a political program as regular as clockwork: ‘The coalition will sell Telstra; the sun won’t rise tomorrow’ type of politics. Three elections we went to on that policy; three elections, the people returned us. So this legislation is vital.

The nonsense of the argument about corporatisation of Telstra—that somehow, because it is privatised, it cannot deliver a better service—is so easily demonstrated. When Kim Beazley was minister in the Labor government in 1991 when Telstra was corporatised—some may recall that it went from Telecom to Telstra—it did much more than make a name change. It was required to act like all other corporations in Australia. It was required to have a board responsible to its shareholder, the Commonwealth government. So all of this nonsense was a political facade anyway. Yes, we had a universal service obligation and, yes, this government introduced the service guarantee, which was important and set some standards. Now, in this current parliament, we have the final sale process. That gave us the Communications Fund, which we are here protecting today.

We will hear a lot in this campaign about the issues of the competing teams for government—that is, Labor and the coalition. I am sure it will be said many times in this debate, but I must repeat it: Labor promises to deliver a fibre-to-the-node program, which is not practical for rural Australia. It will have an access radius of four kilometres from the exchange. It will spend $4.7 billion, it will have a start date of mid-2008 and a completion date of 2013, and the Communications Fund will be abolished.

The government, by comparison, has a program proven to reach 100 per cent of the population, with a high speed of 99 per cent. It consists of fibre, WiMAX, which is fixed wireless, ADSL2+ and satellite. It is already out there and being put in place. It will be a minimum of 20 kilometres from base station. It will cost the taxpayers $958 million and will guarantee affordable and metro comparable prices for all Australians. National retail prices range from $35 to $60 per month depending on the service speed chosen by the consumer.

As I was saying, with the Labor party, it will not happen until mid-2008 to 2013; with the coalition policy, the government policy, it will be immediate. The start date is immediate and the completion date is expected by mid-2009. The Communications Fund will be retained and $400 million will be available every three years for emerging needs, because one thing we know for certain in this debate is that telecommunications technology will advance. It will be changing all the time. One of the great challenges is to stay abreast of it, and Australia is seizing that opportunity now.

But it would be remiss of me not to mention why we are able to offer a Communications Fund, why we are able to have the sort of economy we have these days. Remember that we started with a $96 billion debt. If you think back to the efforts by this government in 1996 to improve telecommunications at a time when we were still dealing with Labor’s debt, you will see that as one of the hallmarks of this government—that and its commitment to regional Australia. Labor was accumulating debt. It was selling private assets. It was raising taxes and it was raising fuel prices to pay Australia’s way. I just ask people to compare that with the current government’s approach.

I now turn to some of the issues around Telstra. With a policy that has been out there for 20 years to make a more competitive telecommunications system in Australia, Telstra has found itself caught up in its old culture of monopoly rent and has no doubt found itself frustrated by government ownership and then by the transition to private ownership. Nevertheless, that is our history, our culture, and that is the basis of our current system. To make that happen, a competitor is required to have a declared service declared, or if a declared service is supplied or proposed to be supplied by a carrier or carriage service provider they must declare that. Then we go to the great difficulties with the ACCC—the great challenges. I think there is something like 40 or more groups or companies now trying to negotiate access with the ACCC as the arbiter. I will just let that sit there. Telstra is, as I say, caught up in this rather anachronistic system, and its tactics are quite interesting to observe. As I understand it, it can withdraw its price and conditions—put them in front of the ACCC—and then submit new ones. So we have what looks to me like a significant delaying process. I do not envy the job of the ACCC or in fact all players in trying to negotiate when they are locked into this old culture. But it is a matter of both sides of this parliament respecting the policy—that this is about competition and offering alternative services. That is what our society and our economy is based on.

Telstra will recall the issues around the COTs case. Once again, it brings out these monopoly practices. I think it is still struggling with that attitude in many ways. We regularly have issues in our electorate office where Telstra could resolve some consumer issues much more readily and we find ourselves a little too often going to people like the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. I would like to try to describe, as I see it, the current culture in telecommunications in Australia. Somebody much more expert than I am on this issue, Mr Paul Budde, makes some quite astute observations. This comes to this issue of where Telstra thinks it might be at in the current world. He said:

The best option would have been for Telstra to work with the government and the industry, but the incumbent has clearly indicated that it has no interest in collaborating with the government, the regulator or the industry to achieve a national broadband plan.

He went on to say:

Telstra may have succeeded in delaying the development of broadband in Australia, but it has certainly lost the case it was arguing for—that it needed a monopoly in order to advance broadband in Australia. It is now facing severe competition in both regional and metropolitan Australia. This is a far worse outcome for its shareholders than if the company had opted for a cooperative process in which it could have had a serious input. It has now been pretty much sidelined.

He further said—and I think this is accurate:

Fortunately for Telstra it is so dominant that it will be able to maintain a strong position, but this will no longer be on its own terms.

That is as far as I need to go. Telstra is out there as one of our largest, if not the largest, corporations—although, with the capitalisation of some companies these days, it is a bit risky to say whether or not it is the largest.

The other thing I would like to mention about Telstra being a key player in the Australian telecommunications industry, in regional Australia in particular, is the issue of their attack on the government and on the Optus company, particularly, because they are an overseas entity. I remind Telstra and the people of Australia that Telstra is 20 per cent owned by overseas interests and is led by—much of its senior management are—overseas people, so we need to be a bit careful about attacking the bone fides of others just because they happen to be from overseas.

I support the minister in reminding all of us that it is the consumers of Australia whom we are here to serve, particularly regional consumers on this occasion. I do want to put on the record, though, that we should not presume that metro-Australia has perfect telecommunications services, because it does not have perfect services. So we need to keep every Australian in mind. I welcome the OPEL bid and I wish it well.

In my final few minutes, I want to cover two or three things and then sum up. There is a grievance that I need to bring to the chamber, and I cannot think of a better time to do it. I appeal to Telstra to be a positive community and corporate leader. I think it is vital that it does that. A small contracting firm in my electorate have been arguing with Telstra about a contract that they had with Telstra some years ago and they have not been able to resolve the issue. I am sure that we are all aware that commercial contracts can go astray, and these things can happen, but I know these people rather well. I will quote from their senior executive, who says:

We feel that Telstra have treated us harshly and unjustly, using their position of strength to overwhelm a small regional business which lacks the financial capacity to take on such a large corporation (with seemingly limitless legal and financial resources) in the court system. From perusing Telstra’s annual reports, I note that one of their corporate objectives is to be a good corporate citizen. Telstra has not acted as a good corporate citizen in their treatment of us.

That was from the senior executive of Cowell Electric—a firm in my electorate. I wanted to put that to the chamber to demonstrate the tough environment and the tough way that Telstra sometimes operates.

The government is to be congratulated for what it is doing here today to protect the $2 billion Communications Fund. This coalition’s term in government has been a time of progress for this nation with regard to telecommunications. We are protecting the Communications Fund from the Labor Party. We are not on some political witch-hunt or looking for some political opportunity; we are defending the Communications Fund against what the Labor Party has previously said that it would do. That is a fact. That is on the record. I welcome the legislation and remind the House, to quote from the minister’s media release:

The Australian Government will ensure that 99 per cent of the population has access to fast affordable broadband by June 2009.

Australia has now entered into a whole new broadband era with speeds 20 to 40 times faster than those used by most consumers today ...

Let me say here that I do not see that the task force that is charged with the responsibility of the $400 million interest on the Communications Fund being restricted exclusively to broadband. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I think you and I would agree that some mobile services would go well in some places within our electorates.

This is the future, and the government is responding to it. Everyone pretty much knows this, but it is important that I remind the House that there is a safety net that ensures that Australians living in the most remote or difficult to reach areas—the remaining one per cent—are entitled to a broadband subsidy of $2,750 per household. I support the WiMAX technology, but it is only one of a number of technologies that have been used—and no doubt there will be new technologies coming on all the time. That is what the Communications Fund is all about. In addition to WiMAX, a further 426 exchanges, representing more than three million premises, will be enabled with very fast ADSL2+ broadband for the first time. So the march goes on and the services continue to improve. It is very important to understand that the OPEL network will enable, as I understand it, a reduction in regional backhaul prices of around 30 per cent. That is very important. I have touched on the expert task force and the distinguished people who will serve on it, so I will not repeat myself other than to say that, in order to expedite the plan, the competitive bids process will start immediately and the expert task force will be formed straightaway.

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to speak on this bill today. It is important that it be locked in for posterity. This government has been able to facilitate telecommunications in a way that is far removed from previous telecommunications, including during Labor’s era, of eight-gauge fencing wire and pine posts and where the best we could hope for were party lines that did not go down when a tree branch fell down on them.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In reference to the parting comments of the member for Grey, I remember as a relatively young person having to go out and untangle the party line, which the galahs or whatever had twisted up, or a branch had fallen across it. Irrespective of our views on telecommunications, some of which I am about to give, I think we would all say that there have been some improvements over those years. Telecommunications, obviously, as I know you, Mr Deputy Speaker, would fully recognise, is quite possibly the most important piece of infrastructure of this century. We talk about roads and railway lines et cetera, but telecommunications will be the most important infrastructure, particularly in country Australia, because it is the one thing that negates distance as being a disadvantage for rural Australians. It can do that on a whole range of levels. It can do that at the medical level, for instance, by piping through information, analysis, diagnoses of various diseases and engagement with specialists irrespective of where they happen to be located. There is a whole range of benefits in areas such as health and education. We are all fully aware of that. It has the capacity to allow people to do business in a country location and, in a sense, if they can gain equity of access in price and conditions of service, it gives country people an advantage over their city cousins because of the obvious lower infrastructure and overhead costs in running a business in the country compared to in the city.

The keyword is ‘equity’ in service, access to that service and the price of those services, whether they are telephone services, broadband services or services that we do not even know exist. I will be supporting the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 today. The member for Grey said that this was going to ‘lock in’ the $2 billion Communications Fund. We are all adult enough to know that nothing locks anything in in this place. No government or piece of legislation can guarantee that the Communications Fund lasts more than the term of this parliament, which could be two or three months. Our Constitution says that no parliament can bind a future parliament. To say that this is locked in to future proof country Australians as to telecommunications is really a myth. I know the coalition would say that the only way to lock it in is to vote for the coalition. People will make up their own minds about that but, in technical terms, it does not lock in this fund. This is a $2 billion fund, the interest of which will be available. That is roughly $100 million a year—maybe a little more after yesterday’s announcement, but about $100 million annually—to future proof country Australia from some of the impacts of future technology and attempt to provide some equity. Most of us would know that $100 million in this fast moving technological age will be quite meaningless in the longer term and can be changed at the drop of a hat. We are amending the legislation today. We can amend it tomorrow and do something completely different with it. I remember the days when the National Party in particular said that they would never sell Telstra. Times have changed. ‘Never’ does not always mean never, does it? These sorts of things can change.

There has been a tendency to demonise Telstra lately. The government should reflect on what it has done for Telstra. It was the government that moved to privatise Telstra; it was the government, as the custodians of the public purse, who had a controlling interest in Telstra on behalf of the public; and now it is the government that is whining about a private company, which it has created in a sense, trying to make market movements to achieve the highest share price for its shareholders. I have been critical of Telstra over some of the things that it has done over the years, but there has been a constant barrage of insults coming from the government towards the management of Telstra in recent months. The government should examine who created the monster that is now being demonised. It is quite visible to all now that the very things that were being spoken about at the time of the privatisation—that country people would expect a better service under a private business where there was some competition apparently, and that it would provide a better service for country people than public ownership—are coming home to roost.

We have an extraordinary circumstance at the moment, which is being articulated in a number of country areas. I will give an example of one circumstance in my electorate, and I would be very surprised if it were not happening in the electorate of Mr Deputy Speaker Haase as well. The little town of Yetman, where a number of international businesses are attempting to operate or would like to operate, does not have any mobile services at all. Its people have not got to the argument of broadband, WiMAX, ADSL2+ and the optic fibre of the city. They do not have mobile services at all. They have been appealing to the government and to Telstra for some time about the provision of those services and the provision of a tower.

I attended a meeting in Yetman some months ago where Telstra Countrywide made the point that they would look at providing a service to the people of that area, which is right on the Queensland border, if the community came together and provided a site, a road, electricity and the tower. I am pleased the member for Maranoa is here today, because that tower would provide some services to his electorate. If the community provided the site, the road, the tower and the electricity to the tower, Telstra would look at potentially putting a mobile aerial on top of the tower.

In the seat of the member for Gwydir at the moment a similar arrangement is being broached in the small community of Pilliga, which is in the middle of the Pilliga scrub. That is not what the government committed to when it sold Telstra. It did not say to people in small communities, ‘By the way, when we sell this, competition will provide.’ I did not notice any of the competitors out in the street of Yetman, and I have not heard of them in Pilliga. Obviously, competition is not going to provide in those smaller communities where you have commercial operators who have to make a return on their investment.

I was shocked when the former leader of the National Farmers Federation, Peter Corish, made the public statement that the NFF would support the sale of Telstra and that it had conveyed that message to Senator Barnaby Joyce because he was wavering. Senator Joyce used the NFF’s support for the legislation as a reason finally to vote for the legislation. In a sense, this bill grew out of those circumstances. Peter Corish said at the time that he had received written guarantees from the government that there would be equity of access to broadband and telephone services for country people, and the minister confirmed that. A number of questions have been asked during Senate estimates hearings, in the Senate and in this House about the issue, but people seem to have forgotten about that. The issue raised its head again even as late as last week, when the minister referred to a draft regulation to bind Telstra not to turn off the CDMA network until Next G is comparable. That relates to the equivalence-of-service argument, which reminds me of the up-to-scratch argument. If a reference to equity of access to service had been in the letter to Mr Corish and had been enshrined in legislation, there would be no need for the minister to introduce regulations because the CDMA/Next G switchover seemed to be slipping away. I am sure that the election has absolutely nothing to do with that draft regulation.

People will remember that the government, not Telstra, gave those commitments about equity of access to broadband and telephone services. But what will we get? We will have a two-tiered system: an optical fibre network in the major cities and a combination of ADSL2+ in some regional centres, WiMAX—which provides slower broadband coverage—and subsidised satellite coverage for one per cent of the country, which no-one seems to know about. Of course, satellite technology is subject to a range of climatic effects. As a result of these arrangements we will not have equity; we will have a two-tiered system. Country people may have accepted that if the government had told them the truth, but it said that competition would drive many of these issues. The government guaranteed and said it would enshrine equity of access to broadband and telephone services in legislation, but that has not happened. Rather than simply shifting the debate to demonise Telstra, the government parties—particularly the National Party and country Liberals, who should have known that they were being sold a pup at the time—should look at the way they made some of those decisions.

I have referred to the regulation that the minister has foreshadowed introducing to ensure that Telstra does not switch off the CDMA network before Next G provides at least an equivalent service. I have a couple of points to raise about that. I have received about 3,000 completed surveys from constituents about their attitudes to the changeover and the problem areas. Telstra, to its credit, has offered a vehicle to have its officers visit the areas in my electorate where people are saying that they are not getting the service that they did with CDMA, or any service at all in some cases. We will be able to rely on the information provided by real people in real circumstances rather than on Telstra and government maps. Those officers will be visiting the electorate of New England in a couple of weeks, and I am pleased to be able to take part in that process.

Next G advertisements state that the service will be available anywhere that it is needed. In fact, a large roadside sign has been erected with that ad on it, but you cannot get through. I will not identify the site, but I will take the Telstra officers there. It will probably have an aerial within a week! That advertising campaign should be looked at. I have a Next G phone and I would rather it was much narrower. If it were flattened by a semi-trailer it might work better than it does now. 

The changeover to Next G has not been handled well. I raised equivalence of service with the Prime Minister on two occasions in one week in the parliament and he eventually wrote back to me. I made my initial complaint during Senate estimates hearings when officers from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority and the minister were being questioned about how they intended to gauge equivalence of service. Their response was that a truck would be driven around Australia for eight days to gauge equivalence between CDMA and Next G services. It was also admitted that the truck would not go anywhere near the Northern Territory, Western Australia or Tasmania. The theory was that if a service existed in New South Wales the same service would exist in Western Australia.

The Prime Minister did write back, and I thank him for his letter. He said that it has changed. I notice that the minister has also said that it has changed because they need an extended period of time—which will get them past the election—to examine equivalence of service. They will now need a 12-week period to examine it. So the period of time to examine the equivalence of service has gone from eight days to 12 weeks. That is an improvement. Why wasn’t it done in the first place? Why say that you can gauge the equivalence of service in eight days? It is impossible to drive around a quarter of Australia in that time and measure the reception that people would receive.

Today in Tamworth, which is where my electorate office is located, staff from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts are in town. They are holding a communications forum on broadband, mobile and consumer issues. This is very good. They communicated with the people in that area about this forum yesterday afternoon. They put out a press release at 12 o’clock. I received a call from one of the media at about two o’clock saying, ‘Are you going to this?’ I said: ‘No. I am in Canberra. I doubt whether many other people will go because no-one knows it is on.’ Minister Coonan has sent these people to Tamworth. I raise this today because, if she is going to send staff around Australia to talk to people about their concerns, she should give them some notice—communicate with them so that they can turn up. Or is the agenda to have something on record so that they can say, ‘We went to Tamworth and no-one turned up, so there is no problem.’ People cannot turn up if they do not know something is on. I had a call from the ABC media this morning saying that they had just found the press release. The meeting is on now. It started at 11 o’clock—seven minutes ago. If that is the form of communication that country Australia can look forward to from this minister and this government, God help us.

My electorate office rang me this morning to say, ‘We’ve just had a call from a receptionist’—I do not know whether she is the minister’s receptionist or the department’s receptionist—‘saying that she is getting calls in Canberra about a meeting that the department is supposedly having in Tamworth and could my electorate office inform her of what is happening so that she can tell the people who are ringing her up.’ These people have just heard on the radio that there is going to be a government briefing, which is how it is being promoted, in Tamworth. If the minister is serious about the concerns of people then give them time. Or is the agenda, as I said, one of knowing what the concerns are but not really wanting to hear them?

I will convey to the minister and to the Prime Minister and others the results of the survey that I am doing in my electorate. I will be participating with Telstra in a survey to gauge the equivalence of service between the two networks. I would encourage other members to do that. I believe that every member has been offered the opportunity, and only five have accepted. The current system is going to offer a two-tiered system, which is contrary to the government’s commitment on the sale of Telstra. Liberal Senator Adams gave the game away when she said at a doorstop interview that rural areas cannot expect proper services. I raised this with the Prime Minister and I raise it again now: why not? In a nation that has done so well with its economic advancement, why can’t country Australians expect equity with their telecommunications now and into the future?

In conclusion, this legislation, which I am supporting, guarantees for at least three months that $100 million a year will be available for future proofing. That is not sufficient for any future proofing. (Time expired)

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak in the House today in support of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. The bill protects the $2 billion Communications Fund that the government put aside from the proceeds of the full sale of Telstra. This legislation is very important, because we know there are bandits on the other side of the House who, if they ever came to this side of the House, would raid this fund and destroy it for future generations. So this legislation is extremely important. Anyone out there in the community who is listening to this debate today should understand that we are doing this to ensure that this fund cannot be raided by any future government.

This money was put aside when the government fully privatised Telstra. I would like to recap the history of the fund. It is well known by many across Australia that the National Party were very much opposed to the full sale of Telstra unless we could have agreement with the government on certain policy principles. They were very sound principles. They were about ensuring that, on the basis of parity of service and parity of price, all Australians could have access to high-quality communications and new technologies as they became available. One of those policy principles was not about picking technologies but about ensuring that money would be available should relevant technologies be developed in the future and the market failed to provide them. That is what the fund is about. It is about ensuring that an income stream is available from the $2 billion Communications Fund so that future communities are never left behind. I am reminded at this moment of the situation we confronted when we came to government. The previous Labor government had abolished by law in this place and in the Senate the very successful and usable analog mobile phone service. It was a particularly good technology in rural and regional areas because of the distance that it could cover. It was a very good service, but it was abolished by the Labor Party without there being any alternative to replace it.

I remind people living in rural and regional Australia of the Labor Party’s policy at that time. And the Labor Party do not provide solutions for the people of rural and regional Australia in their amendments to this legislation. What they propose in their policies is to raid the Future Fund completely, spend the money and leave nothing for future generations to ensure that, when markets fail in the future, they do not have to go back to Treasury to get the money. The money that we have put aside will provide that income stream, but the Labor policy is to just grab that money and spend it and not spend it in rural and remote parts of Australia. I think Labor’s policy will cover 75 per cent of the people of Australia, not 100 per cent.

There are market failures in Australia when it comes to a whole range of services, but nothing could be more important for people living in rural and remote Australia, or anywhere in Australia, than high-quality communications services now and into the future. Roads are important and access to a whole range of other infrastructure is important, but if there is one technology that breaks down the tyranny of distance it is high-quality communications networks. If you have them, you are only as far away from the best access to medicine, education, counselling services or any business activity you might like to conduct as the technology that connects you to the rest of the world.

One of the technologies that I believe is going to meet the communications needs of rural and remote Australians into the future is optic fibre cable. The copper network across Australia has been providing a conduit between people and businesses since the overland telegraph line went from Adelaide through to Darwin. Copper line was used then. Today it is optic fibre. I would like to think we will be able to build a national network once we are able to move forward and utilise the $400 million income stream that will come from the earnings of the Future Fund.

I mentioned market failure a moment ago. As you would know, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Haase, holding a very large rural electorate in Western Australia with very large mining communities—I have a similar electorate in many ways—there have been market failures since prior to Federation. I heard the member for Grey and, I think, the member for New England mention their experiences living on the land and having to repair their own party lines. We really have come a long way. Whereas once upon a time people in rural communities built their own telephone lines to the local exchange, today, thank heavens, the national network, through various technologies, goes right out to very remote homesteads and communities.

I have remote communities such as Birdsville and Bedourie out in the west of my electorate. Birdsville is a very small community in the Diamantina shire. I believe, and I am sure you do too, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, that people in these communities should be treated just the same as any other Australians in relation to access to and parity of service and price of technologies and communications in the future. But I often remind myself and my colleagues that until 1984 the people of Birdsville did not have any telecommunications access other than a two-way radio set through the Royal Flying Doctor Service. When they did get their first telephone service into the community, via satellite, they themselves raised half of the money to bring it to their community. This was back in 1984. It is not very long ago in history. But it demonstrates that, where markets fail in the future to provide communications services and new technologies, there is a need for government to step in and provide taxpayer funds to assist communities, to ensure that they are part of the Australian network.

I welcome the fact that, under the Australia Connected package, 99 per cent of Australia will get access to high-speed broadband. It will be through a variety of technologies. I have never been one to pick the technology. I always hope that the market will provide the solution. In this case, the Optus and Elders consortium was successful in its bid. It will receive some $930 million or $940 million from the government and will put forward a similar amount itself. But this demonstrated to me yet again that there are areas where the market fails. Some one per cent of Australians will not greatly benefit from that Australia Connected package. There are towns in my electorate that have ADSL. There are towns that only have dial-up access. They are part of that one per cent. Once again it shows that there is a market failure. It identifies that, even with 99 per cent of Australians gaining access to high-speed internet, which I welcome, one per cent are going to be left behind. I know it is very difficult to address those needs for those communities. I know there is a challenge in how we provide the technology to ensure that those communities are not left behind. I note in the minister’s releases that we will continue—and I welcome it—the $2,750 satellite subsidy to allow fast internet speed. It will not be massively fast by comparison with what fibre to the node could provide in cities, but we will continue to provide that subsidy to allow that service.

I think there will always be some remote homesteads for which satellite is going to be the only solution. But I am also sure that there are small communities that would greatly benefit from being connected by optic fibre to the main network. Telemedicine could be brought into those communities with a much improved quality of the signal through optic fibre. As I said a moment ago, just as the copper wire has served us well for more than 100 years, I believe for the next 100 years it is going to be optic fibre that will future proof the communications needs through the national network.

In order for the government to be able to spend the $400 million we need to, as per the act, conduct a review of communications needs similar to the Besley and Estens inquiries and come forward with recommendations of the identified need. That committee is going to have a huge challenge in front of it. I think it is important that on that committee we have people who understand the communities like the ones you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Haase, and I represent. I would hope that we would be able to announce it shortly, but I would want to make sure that on that committee we had people who actually live in those rural and remote parts of Australia and people who conduct their business there. It is terribly important that we have people with an understanding of the importance of communications to our rural and remote communities—that one per cent of Australians who are not greatly benefiting from the Australia Connected package. I look forward to the announcement, whenever it might be.

I know that the people who are chosen by the minister to conduct that review have an enormous challenge in front of them. They will have to look at a very large part of Australia, probably 98 per cent of the landmass, including the islands off the mainland of Australia and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. They will have a massive job in front of them, but I am confident that, if we have the right people there—people who have an understanding of those communities, who have lived and worked in rural and remote parts of Australia—they will come forward with recommendations that will address their needs and we will be able to see this $400 million spent wisely, ensuring that we deliver on one of the very core policy principles that the National Party put up before we were able to support the full sale of Telstra: a parity of service and a parity of price with urban Australia. I am sure you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Haase, would concur that that is one of the obligations that we as members of parliament have to ensure we deliver on.

I have looked at the amendment that the Labor Party wish to bring forward and I cannot support any of it. It is quite hypocritical of the Labor Party to suggest that what they want to do is invest money so that:

(e)

98% of Australians, including those in rural and regional areas, have access to future proof telecommunications technology;

That does not say much; it is mealy-mouthed, in my mind. Out in the bush in my electorate they would soon snap the head off any politician who used words like that. It continues:

(f)

the two per cent of people that the new fibre to node network will not reach have a standard of service ...

In the universal service obligation, a standard service is a telephone that works with access to local calls at a regulated price. That is what the Labor Party is offering that two per cent—a standard service. It goes on to say:

depending on the available technology ...

We all know what technology is available today. Perhaps they want to pick a technology, but we know what they are like when it comes to technology. They were the party that abolished the analog mobile telephone network without an adequate replacement. So I warn the people of rural and remote parts of Australia and many regional communities that, if the Labor Party were ever elected to govern this country, they would gut the Future Fund, spend it in one hit and some $2 billion would be gone. Future generations would then have to fund any upgrade they wanted for the communities outside of the metropolitan areas and certainly for the two per cent of Australians they suggest the new fibre-to-the-node network will not reach. They would be left behind forever under a Labor Party government.

Finally, in relation to Telstra and Telstra Country Wide, one of the other conditions that the National Party were insisting on was that, as part of those policy principles, Telstra, as the universal service provider, have a physical presence in rural and regional areas of Australia. We were concerned because, when the Labor Party was in government and they moved to corporatise Telecom—as it was called in those days—Telecom took the opportunity to withdraw their physical presence from rural areas of Australia and go to the big regional centres, the capital cities. When this government came to power, the National Party wanted to make sure, through the process of looking at the sale of Telstra bill, that Telstra, as a condition of their licence, maintained a physical presence in rural and regional areas of Australia. In my own electorate I have two such Telstra Country Wide offices, one in my home town of Roma and another one in Longreach. They are an invaluable conduit to the people, many of them, obviously, the ones that they have to service.

I have recently been travelling with Telstra Country Wide into many rural, regional and very remote parts of my electorate, testing out the CDMA network and the Next G network and comparing those two networks. In my electorate I have witnessed problems with handsets for the Next G network, which are not really suitable for operating in rural and remote parts of Australia. I have also seen that, unless you have a good aerial on your motor vehicle and a car kit, you are not going to get the same sort of signal that you would get in town or in a capital city. Just like the radio in our cars, if you put the aerial down and try to listen to the radio when you get out to the limits of the broadcast beam, you find that you are flat out hearing the radio. The same principle applies to the mobile phone network. When you are travelling in rural and remote parts of Australia, you need a good high-gain aerial and a car kit, and you find that many handsets are not necessarily suitable to our areas.

The Telstra Country Wide network is providing services out in rural and remote parts of Australia. I want to continue to work with Telstra, because of their physical presence in my electorate, to provide solutions to the Next G network problems. The Telstra Country Wide people working in my electorate are dedicated to providing that service and reliability in communications out in my part of the country.

I reject the amendment moved by the Labor Party. I commend the bill to the House because it will secure the Future Fund for generations, ensuring that the future communication needs of rural Australia will be met.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. I say from the outset that I would always be happy to support any bill that supports telecommunications services for rural and regional areas but, unfortunately, this bill does no such thing. Having adequate telecommunications services in regional areas such as my electorate of Richmond is very important. I certainly support the amendment moved by the member for Grayndler.

Access to telecommunications services continues to have a huge impact on my electorate of Richmond. I am constantly told by locals that services right across the board—from internet access and mobile reception to delays in home and business landline connections—are simply not up to scratch. They cause a huge amount of distress and concern. Even people living in Tweed Heads experience many of the problems I just referred to. Remember that Tweed Heads is only five minutes from the Gold Coast, a major regional centre. It is only 1½ hours from Brisbane, yet right in the heart of Tweed Heads people experience problems. Right throughout the electorate of Richmond there is a very high proportion of elderly people, and their phones and access to the internet can be their lifeline—from a social perspective and very often from a medical perspective. For those people, access to those services is vital. If it were merely a matter of inconvenience, that would be one thing, but the simple truth, which the Howard government and their National Party counterparts have failed to comprehend, is that substandard services can affect people’s lives and even threaten them in the case of the elderly, who need to know that their telecommunication services are working. When they urgently need access to medical services, poor communications can create a huge amount of distress for them.

Substandard telecommunications services can diminish educational opportunities for locals and impact on the productivity and viability of many rural and regional small businesses. Many in my electorate have experienced massive problems due to a lack of internet access or the slow speed of it. The bill fails to deal with the many real problems in this area. Like so much coming from the opposite side of the chamber at the moment, this bill is a politically motivated stunt. It is being debated not out of any real concern for regional services but out of a very real concern that there may be a federal election in the next couple of months. Nonetheless, it is worth looking at the substance of this bill. Its purpose is to amend the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 and relates to the $2 billion Communications Fund, which was established in September 2005. The bill dictates that only income or interest earned on this fund will be available to implement recommendations of the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee, which will report to the government every three years.

The bill will mean that the principal $2 billion of this fund will not be available to improve services in rural and regional areas; instead, only the interest and income—up to $400 million every three years—will be available. It is clear, when looking at the substance of this bill, that there is little commitment by the coalition, particularly the National Party, to raise the standards of telecommunications services in rural and regional Australia. Otherwise they would be investing this $2 billion in what it is supposed to be invested in.

Rather than governing and conducting themselves in a manner expected by their regional constituents, it is clear that the National Party is more interested in playing the role of ring man for their senior coalition partners, who, as we all know, have never been interested in protecting services in the bush. It is for these reasons that I fully support federal Labor’s amendment to this bill. In essence, it states that the House condemns the government for its failure to invest the $2 billion Communications Fund in a national fibre-to-the-node broadband network. This would mean that the fund would be used for what it was designed for—to ensure that Australians have access to the best available telecommunication technologies, that there is parity of service and metro-comparable pricing for all Australians serviced by the fibre-to-the-node network and that, in particular, Australians in rural and regional areas have improved telecommunication services, including access to e-health and e-education, which are only possible over a fibre-to-the-node network.

I am merely asking here that the continued sell-out of regional areas by the National Party stops, that they finally stand up for what their constituents were promised and honour their commitment in this area. Despite the National Party still protesting publicly that they support rural and regional interests, their constituents woke up to them quite a long time ago. We can also look at other issues such as the original sell-off of Telstra or the coalition’s extreme industrial relations law—all coalition policies having a disproportionately negative impact on rural and regional areas and all supported overwhelmingly by the National Party. But I think the game is up for them now; the truth is out. This measure is further proof they are only interested in maintaining their coalition partnership with the Liberal Party, not in representing the issues and concerns important to people living in rural and regional Australia.

In contrast, federal Labor is committed to ensuring there is telecommunications access for people in rural and regional areas. We will use this fund because we on this side of the House believe that $400 million every three years is not enough to raise communications standards in rural and regional areas. We believe that when you say you are going to spend money on services that help rural and regional areas, the right thing to do is just that. Federal Labor are committed to ensuring that rural and regional areas have access to modern and reliable telecommunications services. In particular, we understand the importance of reliable broadband for regional health, education and business, large and small. It was for these reasons that in March federal Labor announced our policy of a national broadband network to be funded by a public-private partnership. That is a $4.7 billion commitment, $2 billion of which will come from the Communications Fund we are discussing today. Federal Labor’s commitment will ensure that Australians in rural and regional areas receive metro-comparable broadband services where possible, with 98 per cent of areas being serviced by the fibre-to-the-node network.

I am very proud of federal Labor’s policy in this area. We are listening to Australians, in particular those in rural and regional areas, and we understand the real impacts that substandard telecommunications services have on people’s daily lives and on their business lives as well. As opposed to the National Party, federal Labor believe that many rural and regional centres need this sort of investment in order to survive. An initiative such as federal Labor’s national broadband policy commitment is long overdue. Australia’s performance in this area is on par with lesser developed nations, and that is a staggering indictment of the Howard government and its failure to invest in Australia’s future. The continued inaction of the Howard government in this area, as well as its lack of understanding about the importance of this investment, proves once again that it has lost touch with the needs of our nation, particularly the needs of people living in regional areas.

Labor’s broadband policy has had a very positive response from my constituents in Richmond, as I understand it has throughout regional and rural Australia. The response in my electorate was highlighted when federal Labor’s shadow minister for communications was recently in Tweed Heads. Many locals attended a forum on broadband access and the shadow minister spoke about federal Labor’s policy. The interest in this issue and the number of people who constantly contact me about it shows there is a huge demand for this problem to be rectified. People were certainly pleased to hear about Labor’s very positive policy. At the forum we heard familiar stories from parents who are frustrated that their children have difficulties accessing the internet for homework and research. We also heard small businesses speaking about the lost productivity that the unreliable internet causes and how that has severely impacted on their businesses. There were also local families who want to take advantage of new technologies but are unable to do so because of the very slow download speeds that are currently available. Many locals also spoke of the very high cost of accessing broadband, when it is even available at all. Those who could get it were quite distressed about its increasingly high cost. The cost-of-living pressures are already being felt disproportionately in Richmond, where we have the highest incidence of rental stress in the nation, and the high cost for the internet is another one to be added to groceries, petrol, child care and health services, particularly dental health.

As I have said before, the issue of reliable communications infrastructure and services is not new in my area, and I know it is not new in most parts of regional Australia. The simple fact of the matter is that in the 11 years of the Howard government there has been total inaction in this area. In fact, the plight of people in rural and regional Australia has worsened in this time. The reality is that they have consistently been sold out by the National Party on this and so many other issues. The federal Labor Party and the Australians who live in rural and regional areas foresaw the situation we now face with regard to communications infrastructure and services. A reduction in services was one of the reasons why rural and regional Australians wanted the government to keep Telstra under government control. As a representative of these people, I voted against the sale of Telstra. I did it not only because it was the wish of the constituents I represent but also because I knew the sale would lead to a reduction in services—which, quite obviously, it has.

As I said earlier, I am constantly being told that the telecommunications services in the Richmond electorate are not up to scratch, and this has certainly got a lot worse since the privatisation of Telstra. To give an example, I have recently been told about a couple who had a six-month delay in connecting a landline phone. How absurd is that in this day and age? They were also paying the monthly connection fee while they were waiting—so: no phone but still paying the connection fee. Eventually Telstra provided them with a satellite phone which—surprisingly!—has very limited reception. You can just imagine the frustration and distress such a situation has caused. This is an example of the stories I hear from people quite frequently. There are numerous stories as well about service failures for internet, landline and mobile phones in regional areas. This was the anticipated consequence of privatising Telstra, and it was supposedly one of the reasons the Howard government established the $2 billion Communications Fund that this bill we are debating relates to. It demonstrates the ludicrous nature of this bill that there is legislation to establish this fund and then a bill to amend the legislation to ensure the fund is not used. It is certainly one of the more bizarre acts of governing by the Howard government.

By contrast, I again highlight federal Labor’s broadband policy for Australia: the $4.7 billion joint commitment with private enterprise to invest in a fibre-to-the-node technology which will be rolled out to 98 per cent of Australia, with comparable speed for the two per cent where this is not possible. It will deliver this with comparable cost to metropolitan areas, ensuring that people in rural and regional Australia are treated with equity. It is certainly an overdue investment and one which will have a dramatic impact on regional areas, helping them to access e-health and e-education as well as contributing to the continuing productivity and profitability of local businesses, whether they be independent contractors, small businesses or larger franchises and enterprises.

Such a commitment is essential to the continuing viability of so many regional and rural areas—my electorate of Richmond included—which really do depend so much upon small businesses. For an area such as my electorate, there is no doubt that small businesses are the backbone of our local economy. That is why the commitment is so vitally important to them, because this lack of access to the internet has had a severe impact upon so many of those small businesses.

I call upon all coalition members, but particularly those in the National Party, to vote in favour of the amendment put forward by the member for Grayndler. This amendment gives the National Party the opportunity to stand up for their constituents. It is a chance for them to show their communities that, when in Canberra, they will act in the best interests of their local constituents. Supporting the member for Grayndler’s amendment is perhaps one of the last opportunities for the National Party to prove that they do truly represent the bush. We see them time and time again selling it out, so I would certainly like to see them support the amendment and stand up for people in the bush. The National Party, in this instance, do not have to make a choice between being right and being popular by voting for federal Labor’s amendment; they have the chance to be both. However, knowing the past history of the National Party, I have doubts they will do that, but I will certainly call on them to take a stand. It is no good saying one thing once they are back in their electorates and then saying another thing when they are in Canberra and toeing the line of their Liberal Party masters.

As I have pointed out, there has been a very positive response to federal Labor’s broadband plan in terms of it making a real difference to people’s lives. Yesterday the government released another broadband plan; I think it is their 18th now. We saw the minister releasing some draft guidelines for a supposed process to build a high-speed broadband network. This will be of no assurance to the millions of Australians who for years have been crying out for better services in this area. What we see is another stunt by the Howard government in trying to look like they are doing something about broadband, but people have realised that they are not interested in or committed to doing anything about it. This is now the 18th plan and it is just another stunt designed to see the government through to the election. They are not actually committed to solving Australia’s broadband issues at all.

The guidelines that were released failed on a whole range of matters. They did not specify who the network would reach or minimum connection speeds; there was no detail about that. The guidelines were very vague right across the board. Given the government’s disastrous track record, I do not think anyone would take much comfort from the 18th broadband plan that they have put out. It seems that every other week they try and pull some sort of stunt to try to look as though they are serious about this issue. I do not think that they really understand the issue or how important it is, particularly to people in rural and regional areas.

Those of us in the federal Labor Party have been listening for a long time to the concerns of people living in regional areas, and we have responded to them with our broadband policy. We want to make sure that all of those people have equity of access right across the board, whether it be for educational purposes, for business purposes or for medical purposes. It is very important in this day and age that people have adequate access, yet we see that the Howard government, after 11 years in office, are not interested in these issues and are out of touch with the everyday concerns of people.

Let us face it: people have been crying out for years for something to be done in this area, but the government just keep stumbling from plan to plan. Now we see yet another plan, and I am sure we will see another plan in a couple of weeks time—another election stunt from them. In contrast, federal Labor’s policy is out there and we are continuously listening to the concerns of people and continually addressing them. We know it is about making a real investment in the future of our nation to ensure that there is equitable access, particularly for people in rural and regional areas such as those in my electorate of Richmond. Even though they live in a regional area, the people of Richmond deserve to have adequate access particularly to broadband.

Tweed Heads is not that far from Brisbane or the Gold Coast, but the issues that people there have with access to basic services like landlines are absolutely astounding. So many senior citizens have contacted me with their concerns, very distressed about not even being able to get decent access to a landline. In this day and age, if you are living in a major regional centre like Tweed Heads, it is absurd that people are having difficulties accessing decent landline facilities, let alone accessing the internet. People are very distressed and very angry and they are saying that the Howard government is out of touch on so many issues right across the board but particularly on this issue. So many people depend on having a landline service, particularly the elderly. A lot of people move to areas like Tweed Heads after they have retired. Not only is a landline connection their access for social and of course medical needs but, for a lot of them, having decent internet access is their link to the world, to their families and friends, and not being able to access it causes a great deal of difficulty. Some people are very isolated, and it has caused them a huge amount of distress.

In conclusion, I certainly support the amendment moved by the member for Grayndler. I call on the National Party to support it and stand up for once for regional Australia

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to be able to stand here and support a substantial electorate that includes urban, rural and regional constituencies. I am very proud, of course, of what the Howard government has managed to achieve in telecommunications. Telecommunications, like much of the technology we use today, is a work in progress; things are changing dramatically all the time. We are seeing that now with the Next G mobile phone network and the things that it can do. When you think back to the old mobile phones we used to have, you realise that they were a pretty basic service. Representing an electorate that has both urban and substantial rural and regional constituencies makes the future of equitable telecommunications a very high priority for representatives such as me, and there are many others in this place who represent mixed electorates.

Adequate telecommunications services today are not optional extras. In an increasingly global trading environment it is just as important, probably even more important, for rural and regional industries as well as individuals to have access to fast, efficient telecommunications services as it is for those in the cities. I was therefore pleased when the government conducted the first independent inquiry into telecommunications in regional, rural and remote areas before the full privatisation of Telstra.

It is not a matter of who owns Telstra, as I have said many times to people in the constituency of Pearce. What is important to them is the timely, efficient, affordable and fast delivery of telecommunications. My constituents want affordable access and they want reliable, speedy services and the maintenance of their services in peak condition. They want a government that recognises that telecommunications and a lot of other technological advances today are works in progress, and we need to continue to move with the times and have the flexibility to ensure that our constituencies have the best possible options and that there is strong competition in the telecommunications industry.

Over the years that this government has been in power, telecommunications affordability has improved dramatically. The Besley report—the initial report that the government commissioned—recommended that the government continue financial and strategic assistance to areas outside the boundaries of cities and suburbs, and the government responded positively to that. Four years later the government followed up with a review of services in regional, rural and remote areas. The Estens report recognised that progress had been made following the Besley recommendations but reported that further improvements could be made to the delivery of telecommunications to rural, regional and remote areas.

This is a government that is sensitive to the needs of the community and that makes the necessary adjustments as the technology improves and is able to deliver better outcomes for all Australians. I am very pleased to say that the government accepted all of the recommendations made in the Estens report and committed $2 billion to be directed specifically to improving telecommunications services in rural, regional and remote communities. There has been a consistent commitment by the government to ensure that community service obligations, particularly in rural areas, are a top priority. The future-proofing of telecommunications in rural Australia included the establishment of the $2 billion fund once the Telstra sale legislation received royal assent. In addition, over $1 billion in direct capital was made available to invest in the Connect Australia initiative, which has been welcomed by the people in the electorate of Pearce. It will ensure nation-wide fast, affordable broadband connections for all.

It is very difficult to understand the unwarranted attack being made on the government by some members sitting on the other side when you consider that, since 2001, 4.3 million homes and small businesses have gained access to broadband services and the average price paid by consumers has dropped by more than 64 per cent. In regional Australia an additional 1.3 million premises have broadband access as a result of more than $500 million in subsidies that have been made available by this government. So the attack by the member for Richmond and others is totally unwarranted.

The aim of the government is to ensure that, by 2009, 99 per cent of Australian households and small businesses will be able to access high-speed broadband services with a capacity for live video streaming, five-second CD downloads and multichannel television. Most importantly, the plan includes fast-speed broadband to rural and regional communities at prices comparable to those charged in metropolitan areas. The establishment of the Communications Fund, a perpetual fund, means that moneys will be invested initially in a short-term deposit with the Reserve Bank of Australia until a framework can be established on a permanent basis, primarily investing in short-term, low-risk assets to ensure that there is a fund to continue to meet the undoubted changing needs of rural communities into the future. This is smart management of public money. It is smart management to have a perpetual fund, one that we invest a capital amount in and have the interest accruing to that going to continually update services to people living in rural areas. It is anticipated that the Communications Fund will earn interest of up to $400 million, and every three years that will be reinvested into telecommunications in rural, regional and remote areas of need.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 ensures the longevity of the Communications Fund and therefore ensures continuous improvement to rural, regional and remote area services. The priorities for the use of this money will be determined by regular independent reviews. The legislation to preserve this fund is in direct response to the opposition’s threat to abolish the Communications Fund and spend the entire capital on a broadband network in highly commercial and predominantly metropolitan areas.

This should ring alarm bells for those increasing numbers of Australian people living and working in rural, regional and remote areas of the country, as it would leave several million people and important industries—including mining, farming and pastoral businesses—without any targeted assistance for basic telecommunications services. It would be a bad day for all but a few Australians, perhaps those living in the leafy suburbs of some of the major capital cities. For a state as big and as diverse as Western Australia and for an electorate as large and as diverse as the electorate of Pearce, it would be a disaster.

Nothing hampers development and prosperity more than poor transport and poor telecommunications. This is something the Howard government understands deeply and has made considerable investment in. The government has demonstrated its commitment to delivering modern telecommunications to all Australians through HiBIS, the Broadband Connect incentive program and Metropolitan Broadband Connect. The Australian Broadband Guarantee provides subsidised broadband for very remote locations that may not be covered by the new regional network. I do not have very remote locations in my electorate, but there are many people in this big country that live in remote areas, and they are entitled to also share in the wealth and to have affordable services delivered to their regions. The Clever Networks and the CCIF programs support the latest in broadband technology to deliver virtual health care, remotely accessible interactive education services and integrated statewide emergency services.

While the opposition talks about the value of broadband, the government is actually delivering services and outcomes that are making a real contribution to remote area health and education services. The government has been thinking and planning ahead, with a $60 million investment in the Advanced Networks Program to ensure Australia’s active participation in global development of advanced networking technologies—applications, services and content. National ICT Australia has for some time been working on Super G and 4G mobile wireless technologies, which will provide faster data rates, larger coverage and terminals at lower cost, and will reduce network deployment costs.

Diverting slightly from the bill, I know that many people, including those in the country, are looking forward to using the impressive Next G technology, but there are still accessibility issues in many country areas. There is some alarm that Telstra intends to disconnect the CDMA network by January 2008. When the Labor government was last in office, Labor legalised an arbitrary switch-off date for the analog network, without any plans for an orderly transition, and left many regional and rural Australian without a replacement service. This government will not do that. The government remains alert and sensitive to ensuring that the needs of those living in rural, regional and remote areas are met and that there is a seamless transition from the current CDMA technology to the new Next G technology.

Having conveyed to Minister Coonan the concerns raised with me by people in the Pearce electorate about the lack of adequate cover at the moment through the Next G mobile phone network—there is certainly a lot of anxiety about that in the country—I am pleased to hear of the minister’s quick response. The government’s decision to issue a draft licence condition on Telstra, requiring them to keep the CDMA network open until the government is satisfied that Telstra has made good on its promise that the Next G network provides coverage and services as good as, if not better than, those of the current CDMA network, will be very welcome.

Those living in rural, regional and remote areas are relieved that the government has intervened to ensure that country mobile phone users are not left high and dry, as they were by the actions of the previous Labor government, when they were in office. They will not be left high and dry with this government’s proposal to make sure that that transition is seamless and that there is not a premature closure of the CDMA network.

In making the announcement, the minister has directed the Australian Communications and Media Authority to undertake independent coverage audits of both the CDMA and Next G networks. ACMA requires 12 weeks to complete the audits and the government needs time to consider those findings in order to ensure that services in rural and regional areas are protected. There is no doubt, judging by some of the comments I have heard in my electorate, that there is a high level of anxiety at the present time about the coverage at the moment.

Coming back to the bill that is before us today, the amendment legislation protecting the future of the Communications Fund and the delivery of broadband services, it is clear that Labor does not have a genuine broadband strategy for those people living beyond our major capital cities. The Leader of the Opposition has no detailed plan, no technical backing and no plan for the 25 per cent of people living outside the metropolitan region. They will be left abandoned and stranded without the services available to those in the cities if Labor is given a chance to act on its promise to scrap this fund.

By way of contrast, the government is committed to responding in a timely way to provide up-to-date services to those living in rural Australia. The massive investment made available through the Communications Fund will provide certainty and security for the increasing population and for important rural and mining industries operating outside the metropolitan area. It will mean services in rural Australia will keep pace with the rest of the nation and remain affordable. This bill secures the Communications Fund to protect the long-term interests of rural, regional and remote Australians so that affordable telecommunications can be delivered to all Australians.

I have to say that I think Minister Coonan, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, is doing an absolutely outstanding job in constantly looking at the current requirements of all telecommunications users and making sure that Australia has a comprehensive policy to deliver these services and to ensure that there is competition in the market. So, where services have not always been delivered very speedily in the past, they will be delivered because there will be competition to make sure that telecommunications companies are out there making sure that the public are getting value for money with the services that they deliver. I commend the work that our minister is doing in telecommunications. It is a very important service which the Australian public are entitled to. I very strongly support this bill, which protects the future of this fund to continue to deliver affordable, relevant services to all Australians, particularly those living in rural, regional and remote Australia.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate today, because it gives me another opportunity to raise the problems with, and the inadequacy of, access to broadband internet in my electorate of Capricornia. It is one of those issues that consistently comes up in phone calls and emails to my office. I am pleased that once again the focus in the House is back on broadband and that, inevitably, the focus is on the government’s failures in this important area and on the ALP’s plans to bring Australia into the 21st century with a world-class broadband network.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 provides for amendments to the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. The aim of the bill is to protect the $2 billion Communications Fund so that only income or interest earned on the investments of the fund will be available to implement recommendations proposed by the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee.

Throughout this debate, members from the Liberal Party and the National Party have been lauding the Communications Fund, telling us about how this fund is the be-all and end-all and the answer to all of those problems that have built up after 11 years of neglect of this important infrastructure area. But we need to look back to where this fund actually came from. The fund was the fig leaf, the pay-off, from the Liberal Party to the National Party for securing the votes of the National Party members for the full sale of Telstra back in 2005.

So the Communications Fund, which the Liberals and Nationals are lauding so generously in this debate, was really nothing more than a bribe to the National Party. It was a fig leaf—something that the National Party members could go back into their electorates with and sell to their constituents after they had sold out their regional and rural constituents so comprehensively by backing down on their longstanding commitment to keep Telstra in government hands. When the Nationals rolled over to the Liberals and sold Telstra, they needed to have something to try to cover up the fact that they had been rolled by the Liberals and had sold out so easily and cheaply.

It is interesting to note when you listen to Liberal Party and National Party members heaping praise on the Communications Fund that if you look back to when it started in 2005, you see that, back then, the Liberals bemoaned the fund. The Treasurer actually called the Communications Fund financially irresponsible. At the time Senator Barnaby Joyce claimed that the $2 billion that was being put into the Communications Fund was inadequate. Back in those days, when Senator Joyce was pretending to have a bit more backbone, he threatened to cross the floor on the Telstra sale. At that time, Senator Joyce wanted $5 billion for the fund, because he knew what we all know: that the government’s funding level was not going to be enough to fix the shambles that is broadband and telecommunications infrastructure around Australia.

We on the Labor side always knew that the expected income from the Communications Fund would be inadequate to cover the amount of investment required to ensure Australia’s broadband future. These concerns were matched by the member for Calare, who labelled the fund a con. So it is interesting to contrast the praise being heaped on the Communications Fund at the moment by National Party and Liberal Party members with their views about it back at the time of the Telstra debate in 2005. When you look at the history of where the Communications Fund came from and what the government is trying to achieve through the introduction of this bill, you realise that this is very much a stunt. It is something to try to cover up and deflect attention away from the government’s woeful performance on high-speed internet in this country.

Through the introduction of this bill and this debate, the government wants to highlight the fact that Labor want to use the $2 billion in the Communications Fund to build a national broadband network. We want to use that money to do something serious, genuine and long lasting. The fund, as it is set up, is expected to deliver about $400 million every three years to put towards telecommunications infrastructure in rural and regional Australia. We do not see that as being adequate. We think that we need to get serious and give access to broadband internet to everyone right across the country, wherever they live, and that needs to be made a national priority because that infrastructure is absolutely essential if rural and regional Australia—indeed, all of Australia—is to keep pace with the demands of the modern world.

I said at the outset that access to broadband is an issue that often comes up when I am out and about in my electorate. You would have thought that, after 11 years, the government would be using the time in this House to address some of those concerns rather than using the time to take pot shots at Labor’s comprehensive plan. I will share with the House some examples that have come to me recently which highlight where we are at and what the government has to answer for after 11 years of not taking telecommunications infrastructure seriously. One example comes from Janine Bennett of Eton, which is west of Mackay. It is not very far west of Mackay. It is only about 20 or 30 minutes down the road from Mackay. So we are not talking about a rural or remote area. Janine sent me a copy of a letter that she sent to Telstra in response to their telling her that she was not able to access ADSL broadband in her area. In her letter, Janine laments the fact that she is stuck with dial-up internet and states:

Let me make it really simple for you to understand how frustrating it is. It takes us about 4 hours to bring our email in, I actually go into my webmail and delete messages that are over 1 MB because it just takes too long to download. We can ‘t even get on our bank sites some days and when we do, I can do my housework while it opens each page, takes me all morning to do any little thing, and we often get kicked off as it times out. We never surf the net cause we can only have one page open at a time, it’s just too hard. We have to take our computer into Mackay and pay the dealer $25 to do our updates because there’s no way we could download them on dial-up.

Janine was offered wireless access on the Next G network but had this to say:

Yes very good thing and yes we can get it. But again it’s totally unaffordable for the average person and not recommended for heavy users.

Janine continued, saying:

I’d like you to just take a minute and think about what it would be like for you to not have broadband for just one day. I think that would be an impossible thought for most people in the city areas who have had access to affordable broadband for years now.

Another disgruntled resident is Mr Neil Hoy of North Rockhampton. Mr Hoy contacted Telstra about getting broadband and was told that he could not get ADSL and that his only option was to use wireless on the Next G network. Mr Hoy was shocked to discover that he could not access affordable broadband in a major regional centre such as Rockhampton. Mr Hoy is one of thousands who cannot understand that very point, including me. Around Rockhampton and the fast-growing areas on the Capricorn Coast are the areas where this is raised with me the most often. So we are not talking about places that are in outback Queensland; we are talking about new estates close to a major regional centre.

Adam Humphries of Yeppoon—a fast-growing seaside community about 30 kilometres from Rockhampton—recently moved into a new residence. Upon applying for broadband through Telstra, Adam was told that there were no ADSL ports available and that he was unable to gain access to broadband. Adam’s next-door neighbour, on the other hand, has ADSL broadband. But, because Telstra does not find it commercially viable to put in the necessary infrastructure, Adam has to miss out. Adam’s wife runs a small bookkeeping business but is now unable to run this business from home without broadband.

Another constituent, Shane Woods, has contacted me in relation to the inadequacy of the government’s Australian Broadband Guarantee. Mr Woods is also unable to access ADSL broadband but is within the Broadband Guarantee area and did investigate this option. Mr Woods stated that he was initially content to see that the Broadband Guarantee offered a ‘metro-comparable’ service but was later dismayed to discover that he would have to pay much more than a ‘metro-comparable’ price. Shane stated that he would pay each month under the Broadband Guarantee for the offered one gigabit download limit the same as he would pay for a download limit of between 15 and 30 gigabit with an ADSL service. For this size download under the Broadband Guarantee, Shane would have to pay $440 per month. Who can afford to pay those kinds of prices for something that is an essential facet of today’s life? People in the city would not dream of having to pay those prices.

That is just a snapshot of what is going on in my electorate, and I am sure the situation is replicated right around the country. While in those examples Telstra’s name came up quite a bit, we have to be clear about where the blame for this lies. This is a national priority. This is essential infrastructure if our country is to develop and stay competitive with other countries around the world and if we are to make sure that people have the business, education and health opportunities that life in the 21st century demands. The government has been sitting back and not keeping pace with what has been going on in the rest of the world. We have had something like 17 broadband plans put into place by this government. Government members want to stand up and laud the government’s initiatives in this area, but they should talk to people like Shane Woods and Janine Bennett, who are not able to get the broadband services that they need, whether it is for education, for their home businesses or for government and banking services—services that people with broadband can take for granted. So while Telstra’s name came up in those examples, I am certainly very clear about where I see the responsibility lying—and it is with the government, which has let this major national infrastructure priority pass it by.

It really comes back to the government always seeing things as political problems that need to be fixed—’Let’s throw money at this plan’; ‘Now we’ve got the Communications Fund’; ‘Now we’ve got the Broadband Guarantee’. It is about: ‘How do we get out of our latest political fix and how do we cover up the fact that we just have not been on the ball for the last 11 years in this important area of national infrastructure?’ As I said, we have had 17 broadband plans, yet the latest OECD figures show that we are still ranked only 16th out of 30 countries that have been surveyed by that organisation. They are the OECD figures, but the sense that I am getting from my electorate is that we are being left even further behind, being in a regional area.

After 11 years of fiddling around on this, the government has come out with its latest plan, which is a complete insult to people in my electorate and to people in rural and regional areas because it proposes a two-tiered system. The government’s plan, which involves giving $1 billion to the Singapore government, amongst other organisations in the consortium, Optus and Elders, will create a two-tiered system. Australians living in the inner suburbs of one of the five major cities will have access to a fibre-to-the-node network, but Australians who do not live in those areas will have to put up with a substandard service.

The proposal put forward by the OPEL consortium will deliver fixed wireless WiMAX to regional areas. That is regarded as obsolete technology by many experts in this area. Connection speeds are shared and industry experts predict that the average broadband speed will be 512 kilobits per second. Again, it comes back to the government grabbing whatever straw is handed to them five minutes before an election to try and get over the fact that they have done nothing about this for 11 years. It is becoming a critical political problem for them because people are not getting the broadband access and speed that they want and deserve.

On the other hand, some months ago, well before the government decided to play catch-up, Labor presented its plan for this important infrastructure. Labor wants to build a national network of fibre to the node which will deliver internet speeds of at least 12 megabits and have the ability to be scaled up even further than that so that it will evolve as demand and technology grow. Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world in this important area, and Labor has identified this as an absolute national priority if we are going to maintain the level of prosperity that we currently enjoy, thanks to the mining boom.

There is plenty of evidence about what broadband means for the productivity of our economy. Labor’s broadband network will deliver benefits such as $30 billion in additional economic activity each year, making Australian small businesses more competitive, creating new markets for businesses and new jobs for Australians and extending media diversity. If Australia is to prosper after the mining boom we have to be smart about what we do. We need to focus on not only being the best educated country in the world but also our information and communications technology abilities through greater investment and innovation. Labor has a plan for the long-term prosperity of the nation while the government consider only the short-term prosperity of their own political interests. This is the defining difference between us and the government.

As noted in our New directions for communications policy document, several studies have shown the sheer importance of broadband in stimulating economic activity. Some of these include the economic modelling by the Victorian Department of Infrastructure that shows that, by 2015, the IT industry, with 21st century broadband, has the potential to add $15 billion to the state’s economy and create 153,000 new jobs. True broadband in Queensland alone would boost that state’s economy by $4 billion and create 1,200 new jobs. A New South Wales broadband network would boost that state’s economy by $1.4 billion a year, increase employment by 3,400 and raise exports by $400 million over the first decade. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology found:

The assumed (and oft-touted) economic impacts of broadband are real and measurable.

And:

Broadband does matter to the economy. Broadband is clearly related to economic well-being and is thus a critical component of our national communications infrastructure.

The Australian Local Government Association in its State of the regions report last year found that the cost of inferior broadband for 2006 alone was a staggering $2.7 billion in forgone gross domestic product and 30,000 regional jobs. The report estimated that my home region of Central Queensland could have added at least $56.9 million per year in additional exports had we had a high-speed broadband network. That is $56.9 million that businesses in my region would have loved to have been able to have accessed but were denied the opportunity due to the neglect of this government and its failure over 11 years to understand the importance of this infrastructure and the importance of maintaining parity between regional and rural areas and metropolitan areas.

There is no doubt that broadband is vitally important to the Australian economy and is a cornerstone in ensuring the future prosperity of this nation, especially in the inevitable event of the current mining boom coming to an end in the coming years. We cannot afford to rest on our laurels and expect the boom to continue indefinitely. This government should have acted a long time ago to ensure that we are insulated from any downturn in the resources sector. (Time expired)

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 before us today is the key to ongoing locked-in protection for rural, regional and remote telecommunications services for all Australians. Note that I say ‘all Australians’, not the 75 per cent of Australians who might be covered by Labor’s program.

The bill amends the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 to establish permanent protection for the $2 billion principal of the Communications Fund. It stems from the government’s response to the recommendations of the regional telecommunications independent review committee regarding the adequacy of telecommunications services in regional, rural and remote areas.

In effect, this bill locks away the Communications Fund’s principal of about $2 billion so that only the interest earned from that amount—up to $400 million over three years or so—can be drawn upon to fund telecommunications infrastructure upgrades in regional areas. Earlier this year, the opposition criticised the creation of a perpetual Communications Fund for regional Australia and alluded to it being created just to assuage the rural voters about future services for the bush. Dead right it was! It was meant to assuage the rural voters and their concerns over the years.

We do not seem to realise that the whole field of telecommunications is changing dramatically. When I came into this place—I can remember campaigning back in 1993—the telephone that used to hang off my waist and half pull my trousers down was about the size of a bottle of tomato sauce. Today mobile phones are tiny little things that you can put in your pocket and they can almost be unseen. The same thing applies to computers. We thought some of those early kilobit speeds were just marvellous. I do not dispute what the member for Capricornia said about greater speeds being required in the future, but she spoke as if that had always been known. It was not known to be so. Even after we have made these decisions this year—and even assuming that the opposition become the government and they implement what they propose—in another three or four years that will all change again. It is a moving feast.

We in the National Party understand that millions of people who live outside the major capital cities make a huge contribution to the wealth of this nation and that without communications technology that is comparable to the cities these communities will be choked off from any further development. That is not just a wide claim from a National Party country member; that is really what happens. To me it always beggars belief why anyone would want to have the top telecommunications ports and abilities in the capital cities and then deny the same level of service to those at the far extremities of the services in regional and rural Australia. Trade is a two-way thing. I have met some graziers in recent times, including one grazier who turns off 170,000 head a year and another who turns off 240,000 head. They are constantly on the internet. They have to arrange for live cattle exports. They have to track slaughtered meat: they have to track cattle to feedlots and from there to abattoirs and to marketing organisations. They have to buy chemicals. They have large payroll obligations on their properties. Of course they need high speeds. They need high speeds just as much as any business in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide or Brisbane.

That is why I find Labor’s plan somewhat deficient. Theirs is going to take longer to implement. As I said, in four or five years time the whole thing will have changed again, so that by the time the Labor scheme is in place the agenda will have moved on. Not only that; the Labor plan covers 75 per cent. In our scheme, we are now drilling down to the last one or two per cent of Australians; we are looking at the 98-plus per cent area. That is why I found the member for Capricornia’s dismissive disregard for the OPEL proposal so disappointing. For a start, it requires only $950 million of government input, and it leverages up a comparable amount. So, all in all, it is a $1.9 billion service. In her speech the member for Capricornia quoted some people from Rockhampton. I come from that same Central Queensland environment. I know the sorts of problems people are having, but we all know by now that ADSL will only go out 4¼ kilometres. We all know that, so we look for other alternatives.

I have not seen the maps, I must admit, for the electorate of Capricornia, but I have certainly seen the ones for Hinkler—as I said, we are in the same general environment—and just about the whole of the new Hinkler electorate will be covered. There is a small corner in a place called Didcot that will not be covered, but the whole of the rest of the electorate will be covered, including three large areas at Bargara, Dundowran and Hervey Bay that will have ADSL2+. If I were the member for Capricornia I would be wondering how people in my electorate might engage with WiMAX. I do not know where she got this dismissive idea that it is obsolete technology. I know that there is a debate going on about the unallocated spectrum aspects of WiMAX, but not about the basic technology. In fact, I took the time, the week before last, to meet an international expert on this who came Australia. I met this person in Sydney and spent some time with them to understand where the rest of the world is going with WiMAX. It is clearly not going where the member for Capricornia thinks it is going.

The opposition have been trying to woo the people of rural and regional Australia, but their take on the matter of protecting telecommunications for these people is emblematic of a very myopic commitment to non-metropolitan Australians. If the opposition had a genuine understanding of the needs of regional Australia, they would back this Communications Fund to the hilt. They would say in office, ‘We will build on it.’ But, no, what did they say? Did they say, ‘We will go out and build some more mobile towers and do things like that’? No, they will throw $4.7 billion at it. Where will they get it from? Will they be leveraging up what the private sector should be doing or will it just be Christmas Day for one lucky telecommunications company that ends up with $4.7 billion? Where will it come from? It will come from a fund that was designed to provide protection for country people into the future.

There has always been, as I have understood it, a certain protocol in politics, whereby if you set up a fund to do things like this the other side respect it. They may not agree with it or with every aspect of it. But, where it is of a perpetual nature, you tend to respect it. You do not say, ‘Forget those guys in the bush; we’re going to have that fund.’ Everyone knows where the immediate beneficiaries will be. They will be in the capital cities and the larger provincials: Gold Coast, Geelong, Wollongong, Townsville. I am not against those people having top-grade telecommunications, but I want to see it happen across Australia in an orderly fashion. The other $2.7 billion that will make up this $4.7 billion that the Labor Party is proposing to spend would come from the Future Fund. We all know what that is meant to guarantee in the future.

Successive Commonwealth governments, in good times, have never made provision for their liabilities into the future, especially in matters like superannuation. The one thing that the Queensland government, of all political colours, has done over the years is look to the future and cover its liabilities. It has done that with, for example, workers compensation and superannuation. That will be a great boon to the state as it moves forward. The current Treasurer, realising that we were going through a time of prosperity, said, ‘This is the golden opportunity for Australia, for the Commonwealth government, to do the same thing—to make provision for our liabilities—so that, as the Australian population ages and there are fewer taxpayers, we will have funds put aside to cover that superannuation.’ Labor will raid it. Some have said, ‘If you raid it for one thing, the next time you get into a tight corner, what do you do? You raid it again and again and again,’ and then you come back to where you were in the first instance.

We can see the mess the states have already got themselves into in a very short time. Within the next five years they will be carrying $70 billion worth of debt. There are people out there today, when we have seen interest rates go up a quarter of one per cent, saying, ‘There are no inflationary factors.’ Well, that is an inflationary factor, and that has been brought upon us. It will be even more so if things like the Future Fund are raided. As I said, this $4.7 billion is not guaranteed to cover the whole of Australia. It is going to be a slower roll-out. Optimistically, it will cover about 75 per cent of people.

We recently announced the Australia Connected program, which is designed from the grassroots to meet the specific needs of regional and rural people. The government will spend $958 million, and that will be complemented by $970 million from the OPEL conglomerate, which, as we all know, is Optus and Elders. People have made the crass statement, ‘We are giving a billion dollars to Singapore.’ We do not say that to companies that are operating in Australia in other fields. Why would we make such a crass statement? People come here to invest in our country and build profit centred units of various sorts, with various companies in manufacturing or delivering various products and services. On an open tender basis, they agree to do a certain job for this country; when they win the tender, you do not turn around and say, ‘You are giving a billion dollars to Singapore.’ That is crass. That is unworthy of the Labor Party. We all know on both sides of the House how these things work. That is not the way the government acts and that is not the way I believe the opposition would act either.

I heard the member for Capricornia talking about people in Central Queensland and people in North Rockhampton and just west of Rockhampton. As I said earlier, we are going to try to get to 99-plus per cent of the people of Australia at speeds of 12 megabits, and we will do it by 2009. That is a far more optimistic view than that of Labor. What they will do is slower, its coverage is not as wide, and to get there they raid two important funds—the Communications Fund and the Future Fund.

I am delighted that we have got ADSL2+ broadband going into Bargara and Dundowran, and Torquay, in Hervey Bay. In my old electorate there will be two sites at Gladstone, with 25 other wireless tower sites around the Hinkler electorate. That is going to provide amazing coverage and it will give people who have never had it before access to 12 megabits. I would have thought that that was a good basis for starting a roll-out rather than just dismissively saying, ‘It is old technology and we are paying a billion dollars to the Singaporeans.’ The Australia Connected package will not raid the Communications Fund, it will not neglect the three million households and small business who make up the 25 per cent who are not covered and it will not take four years to establish. As I said before, at the end of the four years, we will probably see a change in technology anyhow. I was interested to hear what the President of the National Farmers Federation, David Crombie, had to say. David, like me, is originally a Warwick boy. We grew up in a country area. We know what the needs of country areas are. I quote his statement on this:

... the funding injection of some $1.8 billion will help ensure rural and regional Australians can keep pace with new technologies as they come online ... The choice of Wimax wireless technology, supplementing the additional ADSL2+ technology, to deliver services ‘from the exchange to the farm’ is vitally important, but also provides the opportunity for scalable high speed broadband into the future.

That is an optimistic view not of someone who is sitting on the sidelines as a critic or a theorist but of someone who comes from a farming and grazing background and who would know on a day-to-day basis what the needs of his members might be.

In the few minutes remaining I would like to say a bit about mobile telephony. I accept that that too will have a lot of changes in the future. I accept that there will be bigger, better and more empowered forms of handsets coming on stream, and I accept that 3G, or Next G, technology—whatever you like to call it—will deliver that. But, equally, we need to be sure that, as we roll out a new technology like that, it gets the coverage of all regional and rural Australia. I am not yet convinced. I have constituents, particularly in the Wallaville and Childers areas of my electorate, who tell me that they are not getting the same coverage from Next G as they have been getting from CDMA. We all have the memory—those of us in the country, anyhow—of the Labor Party turning off analog before GSM had been properly tested. Despite the protestations at the time, GSM, although a good technology, did not have the coverage for regional and rural people. That caused, in a period of about 18 to 21 months, the roll-out of CDMA, and CDMA has been good technology for regional Australia.

I am not a stick-in-the-mud—I know that new technologies have to roll on—but I want to be absolutely sure that we take regional and rural people with us as we do that. I am a sceptic. I do not want to see the CDMA turned off until that coverage is there. The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has said that an audit will be carried out by ACMA to make sure that we have at least equivalent, if not better, coverage from Next G. I for one back her to the hilt on that. I know that Telstra have had some other problems in the roll-out of Next G—and I am not critical of that—in that some of the handsets were not suitable to Australian conditions, and I compliment them on going ahead and designing a new handset with a navy blue tick on it. I think that is a good idea. But I would also say to them: if, as you are tuning up this new technology, people who have surrendered their CDMAs find that they cannot get the same coverage as they might have with Next G, those handsets should be returned until such time as Next G has been fully proven. I think that is an essential part of this mobile agenda. I compliment the government on this bill. (Time expired)

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is essential that this legislation is passed through the House, because the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 has had to be introduced in response to the Labor Party’s policy to abolish the $2 billion Communications Fund, thereby abandoning rural and regional Australia. This bill will ensure that rural and regional premises are not left stranded without reliable and up-to-date services in the future.

We have significant issues right across Australia and we need to resolve many of those issues. That is what our Future Fund was put in place to do. Our $2 billion investment in the Communications Fund was to be preserved to provide an income stream for future telecommunications improvements in regional, rural and remote areas, yet we see a proposal from the Labor Party, the opposition, that completely disregards our needs in rural and regional Australia. It is a proposal that is aimed primarily at the major cities and, obviously, the major voting areas for the opposition and disregards, as per usual, the issues of country people.

In these circumstances and under these conditions, this promise that the opposition is making is partly funded by hard-fought-for money that has been set aside by The Nationals and rural members to ensure that we have a stream of income to adequately update rural and regional services from the very low base that they have operated from in the past. We are starting to move forward a little at present, but we need to improve telecommunications services in rural and regional areas for the future. The promise is a fibre-to-the node network and it is simply not possible. It is impractical and it is not possible to provide a fibre-to-the node broadband network to the vast majority of rural and regional Australia for the costs that Labor is proposing—and there are plenty of statistics to back up my assertions here today in the House.

Under the Labor Party’s proposal, I can imagine that we will have, at best, up to 70 per cent of people connected at a competitive price, leaving around 30 per cent who will not get any benefit. And you know where those people will be? Those people will be in rural and regional Australia. They will be in places like the Riverina, which I represent. I simply cannot stand by, having fought on behalf of my constituents for so long, and let this happen. At The Nationals Federal Council on the weekend, we passed a resolution to extend the cut-off date of CDMA. I congratulate Minister Coonan for exercising the licence condition over Telstra to ensure that this happens. I moved that motion at The Nationals Federal Council on the weekend because I feel very strongly about it. My office is very often in touch with people who are having significant problems. Fibre to the node, which is Labor’s proposal, is simply not going to happen, because the infrastructure out there will not enable it to happen.

In April this year, one of my constituents applied to be connected to BigPond broadband in his new home. He was told that the connection would be made in 10 working days. In May he phoned and was told that no connection was available and that an upgrade to the exchange was required. In June he phoned again and was told that there was no estimated time for a connection and that his case would be investigated. Then he was told that ADSL would be available in July. He then received a phone call from the provider on 13 June and was told that they could not meet the request for an ADSL broadband line and would be withdrawing my constituent’s order. There has been no time frame given to him for availability, and it could be anything up to two years before this upgrade is completed.

The constituent then phoned Telstra Country Wide, regarding his broadband options, and was informed that they were unable to connect him to broadband and that the telephone line was on a split connection. This is the point that I am making: most people in my electorate are on hubs, rims or split connections. This particular Bourkelands hub has no ports available and an upgrade is required. However, they could not give my constituent any information as to when that will happen. His options are to wait for an upgrade—and who knows when that would be—or connect to BigPond wireless at $100 a month.

I am not talking about somebody sitting out in the bush 100 kilometres from any major community wanting to plug in at every gum tree; I am talking about somebody who is in one of the largest and most rapidly expanding subdivisions in Wagga Wagga. They are about three kilometres from the old post office. I am not talking about somebody who is isolated out in some corner of the world; I am talking about the largest inland city in New South Wales having this kind of service offered to its residents. This is not an isolated case. I have plucked this one out because it is the most recent one with no possible options or responses available—except for wireless at $100 a month. My constituents are entitled to better. That is second-rate service delivery at a first-rate price. They are being penalised because they live in the largest inland city in New South Wales. I wonder what happens to you if you live in a more remote area or a smaller area.

We have had numerous complaints from businesses that are losing money. There is a particular coach company in my electorate that has been losing significant amounts of money. It used to be contactable through CDMA, but it is now not contactable through the current service that it has been provided with under Next G. I know that Telstra have done a fabulous job in rolling out Next G in the time frame that they put upon themselves. But it is not equivalent to CDMA signal strength and coverage. I have copious proof of that in my office. These people cannot all be in conspiracy against the carrier. This is actually happening out there. The coach company is losing thousands and thousands of dollars because once it could get these calls and now it simply cannot get them. There is a major winery near Griffith that employs approximately 450 people. They have an account that covers around 150 mobile phones. They had to go through a lot of drama in order to finally get some resolution to their problems, with the winery offering free land to put a tower on so that they could service their business. The largest exporter of wine in Australia runs this business, and the problems caused a significant downturn for them. We have been having problem after problem.

There is an advertisement that tells us that we can speak to anyone from Coffs Harbour to Mt Isa or wherever. That simply is not happening in my electorate. I thank the minister for exercising this licence condition to do with CDMA, because my electorate is being severely penalised. While Telstra has been willing to attempt to resolve these issues, it is not happening at this present time. My people are not getting an equivalent signal strength and service to what they had with CDMA. We have been told that some of these problems are in the hardware. But that is not what my constituents are told when they walk into an outlet. They are encouraged to go to a new phone and are told that they will get equivalent or better coverage or better outcomes, but they do not. They may get data that they were not getting on CDMA, but they want to make calls and receive calls, because that is what their businesses and lives exist around. They do not want to be walking around getting a signal at every gum tree in the Riverina—that is not what they are asking. They are saying, ‘Let me have the same coverage with Next G that I had with a hand-held phone on CDMA.’ That is what they are asking.

If you require a car kit and significantly powerful aerials and a hard-wire kit for CDMA, you will most definitely have to invest in exactly the same type of equipment for Next G. That is not what Telstra promised. They did not tell you, ‘We are going to provide you with Next G and you are no longer going to have a car kit or a hard-wire attached to a high-signal aerial.’ That is not what they said. They said that you would get the equivalent—that is all we are asking for. We want further access to better handsets, hardware and car kits. We want more variety and a bigger range of equipment to cope with what we require in rural areas.

I have personal experience of this issue. I took the option of a PDA because I am on the road all the time. I have done 9,700 kilometres in six weeks in a new car doing my normal July tour around my electorate and I want to have a mobile to help me do my business whilst I am out meeting with constituents and doing interviews in the smaller communities, but I can no longer have a PDA because it is not suited to rural and regional conditions. I had to go back to a normal Next G phone and, to Telstra’s credit, I have fabulous reception with the Next G phone that I currently have, but it does not have data. I as a rural member believe that I am being discriminated against. Under the future Labor proposal and also under what currently exists, my city counterparts can walk around and access their communications and data from their offices, wherever they are. But I cannot do that. I am out on the road covering far greater distances than city members. That is the way not just my constituents but I as their member get treated when I am trying to do business. As I said, Telstra has worked very hard to try to resolve the complaints that we have, but we cannot leave anything to chance—everything has to be working properly.

In the short time that I have had available, I have taken the opportunity to come into this House to raise the concerns of my constituents. I congratulate the minister for exercising her licence over CDMA. I call on the House to pass this bill and to recognise its intent and to recognise that Labor’s proposal will be at the expense of rural and regional people. My constituents have had enough expense. I do not accept there should be any further downward pressure on their services, including the fact that they are unable to carry out any substantial business. A system is being rolled out at the moment on the instructions of the minister. I trust her to deliver to the people I represent. But I need this Future Fund in place. It cannot be raided by anybody. It has to be in place so that the people whom I represent, and others, can get adequate services in the future. I commend the bill to the House.

Pat Farmer (Macarthur, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, Science and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all the members who spoke on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007, especially the members for Riverina, Pearce, Maranoa, Grey, O’Connor and Dobell. In particular I thank the member for Riverina for her passionate plea to protect and improve telecommunications for people in the bush. It is in the interests not only of people in the bush but also of the whole nation that we provide the bush with the services that they need for the expansion of our communications networks and to assist with the nation’s wealth.

We live in a country that has the same land mass as Europe. We have a population of around 22 million people and of those people about nine million are taxpayers. We are expected to provide services to the whole nation. I would like to think that both sides of the political fence would see this country as being the greatest nation on the face of the earth. We punch well above our weight in medical research and in many other fields. We do this because we have a government that provides the people of this nation with the opportunity to be the best that they possibly can be at whatever it is that they choose to do. In saying that in this debate, I draw everyone’s attention to the needs and the plight of the people in rural and remote areas of Australia and to how important telecommunications is for them. It once again shows that the Howard coalition government has a vision for the future of the whole nation.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007 has been brought forward by the Howard government to ensure that its $2 billion investment in the Communications Fund is preserved in perpetuity to provide an income stream for future telecommunications improvements in regional, rural and remote Australia. This bill protects by legislation the $2 billion principal of the Communications Fund so that only the interest earned on the fund’s investments—around $400 million every three years—can be drawn upon. It will also provide certainty for people in regional and remote Australia that improvements in their telecommunications services will keep apace with those in the rest of the nation.

It is important to note that Labor has committed to drain the entire $2 billion from the Communications Fund—to rob the bush of its ongoing funding—and squander it on a commercially viable network in built-up metropolitan areas. Rural areas would be stranded without future services or upgrades under a Labor government. Ironically, it is rural and regional Australians that the Communications Fund was established to protect. The whole Labor Party will end up abandoning them. Taxpayers’ funds should be used to deliver equity in underserviced areas to ensure that regional and rural Australians are not left behind in the ongoing telecommunications technology revolution.

The Communications Fund was established by the government in 2005 and provides a guaranteed income stream to fund services and infrastructure for regional communities, such as additional mobile towers, broadband provision and even fast fibre capabilities. (Quorum formed) Interest earned from the Communications Fund is used to implement the government’s responses to recommendations made by the triennial independent regional telecommunications review. This bill will prevent a future government covertly abolishing the Communications Fund, and any future government that wants to abolish the Communications Fund will have to publicly introduce legislation to do so. This whole process provides certainty for people in regional and rural areas and remote parts of Australia that the improvements in their telecommunications services will keep pace with those of the rest of the nation—and this is in stark contrast to the Labor Party’s policy. The bill ensures that the Communications Fund cannot be pillaged. It protects the long-term interests of regional and rural and remote parts of Australia and it will protect rural and regional Australia from the gross economic irresponsibility of the Labor Party.

This bill has a raft of applications that will support the nation’s communications needs. To give an example, out of this fund will come $113 million, which has also been allocated to the Clever Networks initiative, that will see improved delivery of services in regional and rural and remote parts of Australia through innovative broadband projects. It could allow an Australian company to use Australian qualified radiologists based in Israel, for instance, to support area health services by receiving patients’ scans overnight and providing expert diagnoses while the rest of Australia is asleep. This bill shows a vision for the future. It shows the Howard government’s vision for the future prosperity of this nation and I commend it to this House.

Question put:

That the words proposed to be omitted (Mr Albanese’s amendment) stand part of the question.