Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister explain why his government has failed to keep its election promise to complete a tender process for a national broadband network within six months of taking office?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government welcomes questions on education and the government welcomes questions on infrastructure because in both of theses areas we saw such a litany of inaction for 12 years. If you come to government, as we did in December last—and we have been in government for less than nine months—and you are confronted with the state of the broadband network in terms of speed and available bandwidth, then the requirement for government to act is huge. I constantly lost count of the number of attempts the previous government had at doing anything constructive about broadband. There were 18 separate proposals; 18 separate programs—it was impossible to follow them. All I know is that every community that I went to across regional Australia would say, in one of their first presentations to this government, ‘Will you please act to do something on broadband because the previous government has let us down.’

Because we have embarked on such a significant national program involving potentially billions of dollars of public funds, we will go through the most rigorous, comprehensive public tender process to ensure that probity is honoured so that we can get on with the business of rolling out this network. We are committed to a digital revolution in Australia. We are committed to a digital education revolution in Australia. It is the pathway to the future and we are confident of the progress we have made.