Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Wide Bay proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The failure of the Government to meet its timetable for the National Broadband Network.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In all of the discussion about the first year of the Rudd government—about the very few things that have actually been achieved in the midst of 168 new reviews and committees of inquiry, all the empty symbolism and the stunts, and the bungled response to the global financial crisis—we have not heard much about how different Australia would be if there were still a coalition government in place. Today we are going to talk about one area where there would have been significant difference in what has been achieved had the coalition remained in office. Had we retained government we would already be unveiling a nationwide fast broadband network. It would already be happening. Many people for the first time would have access to fast broadband speeds and others—in fact, most of Australia—would be looking forward to connecting during 2009 and, shortly after, 100 per cent of Australians would have access to high-speed broadband. No ifs or buts, the network would have been delivered. The contract had been signed and the work had started. How different it is under Labor.

Our plan, Australia Connected, was announced in June last year and would have made available fast broadband options to 100 per cent of the population in 2009. It would have used a variety of delivery methods and provided relatively low-cost broadband at speeds of up to 50 megabits per second. Strong broadband provider competition already exists in metropolitan areas. Where it does not exist in rural and regional areas the $958 million OPEL contract would have rolled out a high-speed metro-equivalent network. The coalition’s $2 billion Communications Fund, which had already grown to $2.4 billion, would have provided future-proofing for the time when inevitably technology moved ahead of what was available under this network. Fifty megabits a second may not cut the mustard anymore some time in the future.

We recognised that the provision of cable would not be economical right across the country, so there was a $2,750 subsidy for satellite and other similar technology that could have served the most remote areas. We were not only making provision to give all Australians access to metropolitan style broadband speeds but ensuring that for future generations there would be funding available so that new technologies would be made available not just in the wealthy areas of the country, not just where there are extensive populations that make that infrastructure economical, but to everyone. The Communications Fund future-proofed Australia. It ensured that there was funding available every year to advance technology in those places where otherwise it may not have been economical.

We had a plan in place not only to deliver fast broadband speed immediately but also to ensure that the whole of the country stayed together when it came to introducing new types of technology. That is what might have been. That is what we could have had. Instead, we have today one of the most appalling mishmashes I have ever seen in public policy. The government’s deadline for beginning—not concluding—construction of the national broadband network was to be the end of this year. We would have had ours substantially in place by the end of next year. Labor were only going to start at the beginning of this year. They have 36 days to get going. They have 36 days to honour their election promise. They are already six months behind with the calling of tenders. They have 36 days to get to work.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about Christmas?

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister said when he came in that his ministers were going to get Christmas Day off but they were going to have to work all over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Of course, they all had a holiday and went to other places. But the reality is that they are going to have to work very hard over Christmas this year because they have 36 days to start digging the trenches, to start putting up the towers and to start doing the work. But, of course, that is a nonsense, because the tenders have not even closed.

Labor’s $4.7 billion national broadband network was their single biggest election pledge in infrastructure—$4.7 billion. It was going to be a communications revolution. And we all know about the associated policies that hang off that promise, such as a computer for every student and Australia being some kind of global financial headquarters. They promised fibre to the node to 98 per cent of the Australian population. Let us not hear any further backslipping on these promises, revising of what was actually said. It is all clearly on the record; it is all clearly in Labor’s election manifesto—98 per cent of Australians were to have fibre to the node.

Pre-election, Labor much depended upon this network being seen by voters as a building block to Australia’s future. Post-election, the nation much depends upon Labor getting this right. But, sadly, Labor’s plan was flawed from the start. It was only a stunt, an attempt to trump what was already happening and what was being provided by the coalition. They did not realise that, instead of a mix of technologies, they were going to provide just a single technology: fibre to the node. They thought that it worked for everyone. That of course is fine, and I am sure everybody would love to have fibre to the node. If Labor honour their election promise of 98 per cent of Australians getting fibre to the node and getting it on time, I will be the first to congratulate them—and I will be particularly keen to congratulate them if they can do it for $4.7 billion.

Korea, I am told, spent $40 billion to deliver fibre to the node, and that is a little country. But this miraculous government is going to do it for the whole of Australia for just $4.7 billion. Nowhere in Labor’s plan before the election was there anything about dealing with those areas out of the reach of fibre. There was no mention of satellite services at all. Wireless seemed an afterthought rather than a genuine part of their solution. That $4.7 billion is of course nowhere near enough money to fund the promise that they have made. The speed of Labor’s network was going to be just 12 megabytes per second and it was going to cost more than $100 a month. So Labor’s plan was slower and much more expensive than what the coalition was already delivering. Labor offered slower speeds, more expensive connections and delivery of their broadband years later.

Labor was in fact duplicating today’s technology in the cities, where our plan would provide new generation technology across the nation and, in particular, to areas that do not have access at the present time. We all know that Labor said that tenders were going to be concluded within six months of the election, construction would be underway by the end of 2008 and the entire network would be operational by 2013. No part of Labor’s plan did anything about the future-proofing of the network. There was nothing there to look after delivery of new technologies—maybe technologies that have not even yet been invented—or to future-proof telecommunications in those areas where the services might otherwise be uneconomic.

Indeed, Labor’s plan was to steal the money from the Communications Fund, to try and move it across to Building Australia to be spent to prop up flagging state budgets for their infrastructure projects. The money that was promised to people in rural and regional Australia as a part of the proceeds of the sale of Telstra—that was put aside in perpetuity so that the interest would be available every year for technology—has been stolen by this government and moved across to be spent on antiquated technology or on propping up state budgets that cannot be balanced. They have no long-term plan and had no forethought. They were offering Australians yesterday’s or today’s technology with no thought about what was going to be done in the future.

Where are we now with Labor’s plan? Tenders are supposed to close tomorrow. Tomorrow we will know whether there are any tenderers at all. We will know what consortia are willing to be involved. But the hopelessly confused manner in which this process has been conducted does not give anyone much faith. It is six months behind schedule and it is a shambles. No-one tendering has any idea what the rules are, what arrangements are going to be in place. How can you possibly tender for a project that will cost $10 billion, $12 billion or $20 billion if you do not know what the rules are? Yet Labor are asking people to go in blindfolded, put their money on the table and then be opened up to some kind of scrutiny as to how it might work. As the shadow minister for communications, Senator Nick Minchin, said just recently, we have:

… the ridiculous situation where proponents are expected to lodge their bids, in a difficult and uncertain economic environment, without the Government providing any detail or clarity in relation to regulatory arrangements, including access and pricing.

Senator Minchin also said:

Self-imposed project deadlines have been broken, the Government’s Request for Proposals farce has been widely condemned and there are genuine concerns this process will end in a train wreck.

It is unbelievable that … Senator Conroy expects proponents to fly blind into the starters’ gate.

Today, like many others, I guess, I received a package of information from Telstra which follows on from earlier public statements made by Telstra, the largest telecommunications carrier in our nation. They say that they will not bid if the government leaves open the possibility of functional or structural separation of the successful bidder. I can only take Telstra at their word. They have said it often enough. The government has not responded to their concerns.

Whatever you think about structural separation or its merits, why would a potential bidder such as Telstra be prepared to put their money on the line if they did not know what the rules would be? Why should Australia’s second largest company have to enter into a bidding process when they do not even know what the ground rules are? Why would TERRiA bid, when they do not have a clue what access other carriers will have to the system or what their role or capacity to participate in the arrangement will be? Why would Axia NetMedia bid? Why would any of those companies be involved when it is quite clear that the government do not know what they doing? They could have no confidence in their competence to actually address this sort of issue.

Kevin Day, a former adviser to the ALP on communications, told the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network that this process was ‘fatally flawed’. He said we might have a winner but the business case would rest on regulatory conditions that are not yet determined and that ultimately may be the responsibility of parliament to frame.

The better part of next year will be gone before we have any idea who is going to be the successful tenderer. There will have to be negotiations on critical issues like access and pricing. There will be dispute settlement mechanisms to deal with. There will be drafting, debating and passing of legislation. There will be partnership arrangements. Labor has taken over a year to bring its industrial relations legislation into the parliament—it arrived only today. This is the heart and core of the very existence of the Labor Party and it took them a year to do that. How many years is it going to take them to complete their tender negotiations for the broadband network—if they get any tenders at all?

Both sides of politics went into the last election campaign offering a national broadband network. I think it is fair to say that everyone in the House recognises how important fast and reliable communications are for the majority of Australian consumers and businesses. The internet is a place of information, a place to catch up with family and friends and of invaluable assistance to businesses in the 21st century. For people living in more remote areas of Australia in particular it is a lifeline; for others who are shut in it is their connection with the rest of the world.

The coalition in government had an impressive record as we worked with industry to provide the best possible service to the largest number of Australians. According to the Bureau of Statistics there are now more than 7.2 million internet connections in Australia, 78 per cent of which are broadband. But as always there is much more that needs to be done and time does not stand still for anyone. That is why we acted before the election to deliver a fast broadband plan to all Australians. Now all of that has come to a halt.

I urge Labor to rethink its plan to scrap the $2 billion Communications Fund. That is essential to keep faith with regional Australians. I urge Labor ministers to think beyond their tiny city electorates, to think of those people who have no broadband now and to get on with the job of delivering to all Australians this basic form of communication. Australia cannot afford another bungle of the scale that is looming on a national broadband network. What we want down the track is a broadband system that works. It should be there now; Labor must get on with it.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak as a representative of the Australian Labor Party, the political party which holds most regional seats in this parliament. So, when we hear the Leader of the National Party or the Liberal-National Party or whatever they are these days, we know that the confusion that we just heard explains why they are now surrounded by Labor members up and down the Queensland coast. It is because they were out of touch with the needs of people in regional Australia and with the needs of people in the business community.

Just this morning I flew to Newcastle accompanied by the member for Newcastle and the member for Hinkler. The member for Hinkler was pleased to accept my invitation to participate in the opening of the Australian Maritime Centre. I was doing a radio interview on 2HD, and the legacy of 12 years of neglect from the Howard government kicked in when the line dropped out. That is what happened when you went around regional Australia—the lines simply dropped out. They dropped out as regularly as voters dropped off voting for the coalition and the National Party. It is pretty clear every time you hear those opposite address this House that the people they are really angry with are the Australian public. They do not accept the verdict of the Australian public

Today we introduced proudly the legislation to rip up Work Choices—again, one of the other major reasons why we now sit on this side of the House. Work Choices and the opposition’s failure in regional Australia on broadband were two of the main issues. What did we do? We went to the election campaign stating that we would build a national broadband network. We argued that it was an important infrastructure investment for Australia’s long-term prosperity and we did it in the context of our position of arguing for nation building. Since the election we have backed up those promises that we made during the campaign with fulfilment. We have established Infrastructure Australia. We have got going on building the nation and part of that is our commitment to provide up to $4.7 billion to facilitate the rollout of the national broadband network—the biggest national investment in broadband infrastructure ever made by an Australian government. It is a network that will cover 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses and deliver a high-speed fibre based network.

We have made this a first-order infrastructure priority and we are moving forward quickly and methodically to implement our election commitment whilst ensuring the integrity of the NBN process. The practices of those opposite make it clear that they would not recognise integrity if they tripped over it. Two days in a row we have had questions in this House about the tender process, when the tender closes tomorrow. It would be entirely inappropriate and would subject the government to legal action were we to go into detail as to the tender process, but of course, when you are from the National Party, you do not worry about legal processes, you do not worry about probity and you do not worry about integrity. We have seen that in every one of the programs that they had control over. We certainly saw it with regard to their attitude towards broadband and modern communications.

We on this side want to build highways, we want to build railways but we also want to build the new communications highways of the 21st century. Those opposite introduced 18 short-term bandaids during their 12 years in office—that is, 18 different proposals in 12 years—but Australia was still standing by the side of the information superhighway while the rest of the nations in our region sped past. Australia was left behind while our peers around the world started to roll out high-speed fibre based broadband networks. The latest OECD figures for its 30 member countries rank Australia 16th on penetration levels and 10th on the most expensive subscription prices, yet those opposite have the audacity to accuse the government of not delivering on broadband infrastructure. Let us be clear: Australia’s lack of world-class broadband infrastructure is the result of too many years of bandaid solutions.

We had the suggestion by the Leader of the National Party that we were promoting yesterday and today’s technology. This is from a mob who wanted to go to wireless technology because they did not quite understand the whole concept of broadband. They just did not get it. They were led by a leader and a leadership team who were stuck in the last century and incapable of moving forward. They were stuck on industrial relations in the century before, the century of the master-servant relationship, but on the challenges of the new century they were simply unable to move forward.

Let us have a look at what they proposed while in government. They included: in 2002, a Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities; in 2003, a Higher Bandwidth Incentive Scheme; and, in 2004, a National Broadband Strategy, a National Broadband Strategy Implementation Group, a Coordinated Communications Infrastructure Fund, a Demand Aggregation Brokers Program, a metropolitan broadband black spots program, a Broadband for Health initiative, and a broadband pharmacy program. You would think that maybe they would have completed all their work, but, oh, no—in 2005, they were back in here with more bandaid legislation. In 2005 they had an NBSIG Australian action plan. They then had a Clever Networks program. In 2005 they also had the Broadband Connect subsidy program. They had the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program, they had the Communications Fund and in 2006 they had the Broadband Blueprint. When we got to 2007 they had OPEL, the fixed wireless broadband product that did not meet the terms of the contract that it had with the Commonwealth. And what about the Australian Broadband Guarantee in 2007? It was the very program that the coalition would not commit funds to in the lead-up to the 2007 election, even though the program was going to run dry in June this year, the very program aimed at improving broadband services to areas where there are no commercial metro-comparable broadband services—to people in places that the member for Wide Bay claims to represent. No amount of pleading from the National Party was going to convince the Liberals that the Australian Broadband Guarantee was worthy of long-term funding, so they simply got done over. And what is their response to years of being done over by the economic rationalists in the Liberal Party? They have joined them. With their tail wagging, they got their little pat on the head. They rolled over and had their tummy tickled by the Liberal Party, and now they are the Liberal-National Party or the National-Liberal Party or something else in Queensland.

By contrast, Labor’s election commitment was crystal clear, and in this year’s budget we announced $270.7 million for the program over four years. Once again, it is Labor funding regional programs, something that the National Party failed to do. If the coalition’s record on broadband was not bad enough, I would like to remind the Leader of the National Party about his commitment to regional Australia, because it is astonishing that he is prepared to criticise the government on the biggest injection of funds into broadband this nation has ever seen when he was prepared to deliver a two-tiered solution. There are some new members here who might find it astonishing that there would be a two-tiered solution proposed to broadband, but that is precisely what they proposed. If you lived in an electorate such as mine, you got fibre to the node for the cities but, if you lived in a regional community, you got a different system. You got a weaker system. You got a cheaper solution, a second-class solution. You got a fixed wireless system for the regions. One of their proposals did not take into account that you were fine as long as you lived on a plane—as long as there was not a hill or a building in the way you were fine. Meanwhile, through the NBN and other measures specifically targeting the remaining two per cent of Australians, the government has committed substantial new funding to improve telecommunications services in regional Australia.

On top of the $270.7 million allocation to the Australian Broadband Guarantee, a further $400 million has been made available to fund the government’s response to the Glasson report. Australia certainly deserves much better than the short-term political opportunism of those opposite. We on this side of the House have stated that we expect that the NBN will facilitate competition through open access arrangements and provide affordable services to consumers. We have gone direct to the market to ask what it can deliver so that proponents have the chance to put forward the regulatory changes necessary to facilitate their proposals. It is up to proponents to demonstrate how best to meet or exceed our objectives within the competitive process. We remain open-minded on the regulatory solutions that can achieve our objectives, and we are certainly not in the business of killing creativity and innovation.

When these proposals close tomorrow we will then be in a position to make further comments about the way forward. But we know that broadband infrastructure is absolutely critical to nation building. The opposition are stuck in the past on broadband. For the benefit of those opposite, high-speed broadband is not just about faster internet. Broadband is a critical enabling technology that will change how businesses serve their customers, how government delivers services and how the community interacts. The need to act decisively to remedy Australia’s broadband infrastructure problems is well understood by Australian businesses. When I go around the business boardrooms in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other centres, I am continually reminded by businesses how they were let down by the former government’s neglect of this critical area. Indeed, the CEO of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, has stated that any political party that did not understand the need for the NBN should ‘get themselves into the 21st century’. But, of course, Heather Ridout is now sledged by those opposite—

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘Absolutely’ says the bloke who helped write the Work Choices legislation—the member for Mayo. It is extraordinary. On this side of the House we are getting on with the business of nation building; on that side of the House they are incapable of achieving the gains and direction that we need as a national economy to advance through the challenges of the 21st century.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have got to love the member for Grayndler—he can stick with a message regardless of the facts. Regardless of the reality all around him, he can still keep punching through those messages. He is sticking with this message because he knows the Australian public have been conned. They have been conned by Labor, who went out and campaigned their little tails off on broadband sound bites without any sound public policy to implement what they were talking about.

To get a sense of that, listen to the member for Grayndler. During the election campaign there was promise after promise: fibre to the node, minimum 12 megabyte speeds and 98 per cent coverage. There was even a proposition for a 50-50 equity share, where the government would muscle its way in on the delivery of telecommunications services and then demand a commercial rate for the return. Why would you not just leave it to business to get on with the job? Because Labor needed something that it could hang its shingle off. It did not matter how it got there or what it said in the lead-up to the election, it wanted to make broadband a big issue.

Why? You heard the member for Grayndler talking. He attempted a critique of what the coalition government did. The coalition actually made the term ‘digital economy’ something that mainstream Australians now understand. The coalition actually supported the evolution of technology and recognised that you need to change and adapt to innovation as it becomes available, and as customer services and expectations improve.

Some of the new Labor members might have forgotten that it was the Labor Party running around wanting mandated dial-up speeds. While that was going on the coalition looked to the future and recognised that broadband was the way forward. We have also seen wiggle room on the language—it is now no longer ‘fibre to the node’. Did you hear what the Labor government said? It is now a ‘fibre based network’. Well, hello, we have got that already! The current network is already fibre based. I think there are all bar two exchanges in this vast continent of ours that are not connected by multiple fibre optic connections. We already have a fibre based network. Those cheer squad members of the ALP that just soak up everything the frontbenchers say without even looking at it should look around the capital cities of Australia. If you look around nearly all of the areas that Labor played to, where they hoped to offer higher speed broadband, you will see something called a heat map. That actually shows you what available speeds are there now, in many cases exceeding the 12 megabytes and—not in all cases—already operating on a fibre based network.

This is the reality we have now, and this is one of these remarkable promises made by the Labor Party: they do absolutely sweet nothing in government in relation to broadband and claim an outcome. That is the kind of spivness we see from the Labor Party, where they create this fiction about a problem that is there. They describe and exploit it in an election context, but when they get to government it is a totally new world. It is a bit like creating a new inflation figure. Do you remember the one where they created a new domestic inflation figure—a benchmark that has hardly been used in this country for decades and now Labor hangs on to that? It is a bit like cooking the growth figures to make it look like the economy is not tanking. We have got a new one: the broadband plans.

When the Labor Party said that the coalition had 18 different proposals, no-one really bothered to look at what they really meant. They grab a headline of a strategy and call that one plan, then they say that the elements within that strategy are another plan. They ignore the fact that technology evolves and so do customer expectations of broadband networks. The ultimate irony is that they then hang onto most of what the coalition government did. The minister trots around the country patting himself on the back for clever network initiatives that were actually implemented by the coalition. He was down on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, heralding WiMAX—this wireless technology that he called ‘a dog of a technology’—and taking credit for this dog of a technology that is leading the way in the delivery of reliable, affordable broadband across the globe, particularly in vast areas like our continent, where a mixture of technologies is important.

Labor walks away from its promises and now calls them ‘ambitions’. They are ambitions. They are objectives. They are expectations. No, they are weasel words; they are wriggle room designed to give Labor an opportunity to do a fix—not to deliver what the nation needs, not to do a sober assessment of what would drive our economy forward, not to recognise the opportunities in health service delivery, in education, in e-commerce, in home based businesses, in smart grids—all of the things where a government would describe the performance and the objectives that are being delivered through the technology. No, they have not done that; they have prescribed the technology: 98 per cent fibre to the node. Do you know what that means? It means that, once you get past about 90 per cent of the Australian population, you get into areas where, industry experts tell me, for every one per cent beyond that 90 per cent, it costs a billion dollars.

By being hairy chested and prescribing a technological platform, after trash-talking a wireless technology that is leading innovation, the government is building enormous cost into this project without actually describing why the government needs to be involved in the first place. Governments should get involved when markets fail, when the private sector cannot deliver a reasonable level of service at an affordable price. That is what OPEL was about. That is exactly what OPEL was about—delivering metro comparable broadband to rural, remote and regional Australia. What I am wondering is whether all the people who live in rural, remote and regional Australia who would have benefited from WiMAX are telling their kids who are starting secondary college this year that, rather than having the benefits of high-speed metro comparable broadband to help them with their studies now, they will probably be enjoying schoolies week, finishing their secondary education, before anything is delivered under the Labor Party plan.

That is what is going on in broadband. It is fraud. It is a monumental con. But guess what? The charade will finish and the curtain will open shortly, because the bids need to be delivered tomorrow. And think about the proponents. Imagine their dilemma: a tender document that talks about objectives but does not actually talk about the regulatory environment. Could you imagine in this economic climate going into a bank and saying: ‘Could you lend us $10 billion? We can’t tell you what the competitive environment looks like, what our obligations are to others who might want to access the network, what the universal service obligation might look like or what the price controls might be.’ Imagine going to a bank and saying, ‘Just trust us; give us the $10 billion.’ And when challenged about this what do you get from the minister? He says they are not interested in ‘regulatory totems’. These regulatory reforms are not totems; they are channel markers. They tell proponents where to direct their bids so they do not run aground and make this an extraordinarily expensive con of the Australian public. They let proponents know that we do not want to see upward pressure on the costs of broadband services that some premises, some households, might not want. There are expectations of what those prices might look like for the consumer, because the biggest contest outside the tender bid is the contest for ‘most neglected status’. ‘Most neglected status’ under the NBN is a contest between the national interest and consumer interest, two key objectives that should be part of any government policy, any public policy initiative. But they do not even get a look in, because this is all about electioneering and politicising.

It should not be a surprise. For those who have not had a look at The Latham Diaries, this is its critique of the current communications minister, Stephen Conroy.

Stephen ConroyTold me he doesn’t have any strong policy interests, and maybe he would like the Communications portfolio, which I gave him. It’s a frank admission; machine men aren’t interested in policy, only factions and patronage.

How accurate is that, when you think about the process that has been put in place? This is a process Robert Mugabe would be pleased to call his own. You get a tender document that is so vague that it has no mandated performance requirements. It has a list of objectives, but they are not ranked and there is no statement about the must-haves, the nice-to-haves and the gee-it-would-be-really-good-ifs—none of that, just a great long list. So proponents have no guidance on the regulatory structure; no clear understanding of what the government actually want, because they are walking away from their election commitment; no opportunity to engage in an open debate, because the process has been gagged; and you wonder why across Australia, wall to wall, industry experts are describing this as shambolic.

It is time the Labor government put aside its political interests and its rhetoric and actually focused on the national interest and the interests of consumers, who are very vulnerable in this process—a process that is way overdue and a process that should have seen construction start before the end of this year. Thankfully, the minister has been frank enough to say it is unlikely we will see any work commence before the end of next year. This is fraud. This is a con. (Time expired)

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today’s matter of public importance is the height of irresponsibility. The opposition come in here and say that we are hanging onto their policies, yet they oppose the national broadband network in the Senate. It is shameful opportunism from an utterly irresponsible opposition. For 12 years they did nothing about a national broadband network, but for the past 12 months they have done everything they can to prevent a national broadband network. The opposition are nothing more than spoilers on broadband—arrogant, focused on themselves and their own ideology, contrary to the national interest.

As usual, the opposition are trying to walk both sides of the street on this issue. This mob have taken to opposition like ducks to water, and they have lifted the art of walking both sides of the street to new heights. They claim that they believe that broadband is important infrastructure for the Australian economy, yet for 12 years they did nothing about it. As usual, you need to look at their actions, rather than what they say, to see what they really believe. For the last 12 months the opposition have done absolutely nothing but try to undermine the government’s national broadband network. It is much the same as what they did over the past 12 years: nothing. They did nothing to deal with the serious issue of a national broadband network and Australia’s future related to that network. They have been desperate to obstruct the government’s efforts to implement this very important infrastructure project at every possible opportunity.

We just heard the member for Dunkley say that governments should only step in when markets fail. Well, in terms of the national broadband network, I would challenge him to show me where the markets have succeeded, particularly when we talk about the bush—rural and regional communities.

At every opportunity this opposition has tried to use the parliament to jeopardise the live commercial process that the government has been implementing to select a builder for the national broadband network. It is a proper and considered process in consultation with the community and the sector—a complex process but one that we are determined to see through.

They have established stunt Senate inquiries. They have knowingly pursued lines of questioning in Senate estimates that were designed to jeopardise the integrity of the government’s process, and they have done that at every single opportunity. Today, in a final desperate ploy, they are again trying to undermine the process just as bids are about to be lodged. Their views and actions are, and continue to be, about destroying the program. The view of the opposition is that if you cannot win it then you must destroy it. Those opposite have been happy to do everything in their power to attempt to jeopardise the government’s open and competitive process for rolling out a national broadband network, yet at the same time they claim to support the need for broadband in Australia. But it is only broadband in their image; it is only broadband where they see fit. It is not a truly national broadband network, nor would it deliver.

In reality, the opposition, through their actions, never want to see a national broadband network built in Australia. They do not want to see the Rudd government deliver on its election commitment to bring Australia’s communications infrastructure into the 21st century. They are spoilers—stamping their feet, banging on the table, preferring to burn the house down rather than let anyone else build it.

While the government has taken a long-term approach to delivering a major infrastructure project that is critical for Australia’s future economic prosperity, those opposite have engaged in nothing more than short-term political point scoring—12 years of doing nothing and 12 years of doing everything to prevent something being done. What have we seen in any policy work from the opposition when it comes to broadband? Very little, to the point of nothing. They have merely clung desperately to the failed policies of the past Howard government. They will be tested soon on whether they cling to other policies, such as Work Choices, which was clearly rejected by the community. As opposed to the rejection those opposite received, the community ticked off not only on what we are doing in terms of a national broadband network but also on Work Choices. Those opposite had policies that left rural and regional Australia trailing their metropolitan cousins, that left the nation trailing our international competitors and that left Australia 16th in the OECD in broadband penetration and 10th in the OECD on broadband subscription prices. We like to consider ourselves part of a clever country, part of a country that is at the forefront of technology, but the reality is that we have gone backwards in a very fast way over the past decade. The opposition offer the Australian people nothing but very silly political games.

The fact that today’s MPI has been moved by the Leader of the Nationals demonstrates the hypocrisy of those opposite. The National Party were willing accomplices to the Howard government’s neglect of rural and regional telecommunications, not to mention other areas where they failed the bush dismally. In almost 12 long years in government, those opposite introduced 18 failed broadband policies. No matter what screeches we hear from the opposition about whether it was 18 or just 18 line items, whichever way they want to describe it, over 12 years they had 18 attempts at doing something but achieved nothing—no way forward, no movement—and the evidence is fact: we slipped behind while the rest of the world moved forward. Their legacy was a trail of broadband bandaids and pork barrels, something that has become a hallmark, a trademark, of the coalition in government and that will now be the trademark of the coalition in opposition. They viewed rural and regional Australia as nothing more than a political problem that needed to be bought off with short-term political fixes. They were never prepared to do the hard work of implementing a long-term solution for rural and regional telecommunications beyond one election cycle.

When the issue of fibre to the node first emerged in Australia, those opposite never even tried to make this important new infrastructure available in the bush. They just disregarded it. They were prepared to sell out rural and regional Australia with a two-tiered system—something first-class for people in the cities and something very much second-class for people in the bush. For us, that simply was not good enough. They were happy to accept a fibre-to-the-node network that covered, as stated in their own policy, only the ‘capital cities and major regional centres’ while leaving the bush to a second-class, fixed wireless system, which could be described as expensive and patchy at best, a wireless system which was later shown not to meet required service coverage as set out in the funding agreement with the Commonwealth.

Those supporting this motion should be aware that rural MPs, who understand the communications needs of their constituents, support the government’s actions on rural and regional telecommunications. Former senior National Party and Howard government minister Bruce Scott, whom I acknowledge is in the chair, stated that the decision to terminate the former government’s OPEL contract was ‘sensible’. I agree; it was very sensible. Similarly, former National and now popular Independent Tony Windsor supported the decision, noting that ‘fibre-to-the-node infrastructure is the best option’. And he is right. Support for the decision also came from National MP John Forrest, who was noted as saying, ‘I did not support OPEL getting this contract in the first place.’ These views reflect those of the member for Wide Bay’s own party colleagues, Senators Nash and Joyce, who, in 2005, released a report on behalf of the National Party think tank—there is something to think about—the Page Research Centre. The report recommended that the then government consider a five-year rollout of fibre-optic cable across non-metropolitan areas. These members of parliament, while hypocritical, at least understood that the infrastructure needs of rural and regional Australians could not be fobbed off with some short-term political fix. More needed to be done. They knew that a long-term approach was needed to deliver world-class infrastructure to rural and regional Australia. And we agree with them. We support them. And that is what we are doing: we are talking about a real national broadband network. They knew that a long-term approach was needed to deliver world-class infrastructure out in the bush as well as in the cities. It is time those opposite started listening to their colleagues, to the community and to the sector and started to recognise the importance of a national broadband network for Australia, a job that we are prepared to continue with.

As part of our election commitment, the Rudd government has committed up to $4.7 billion, will consider regulatory changes to facilitate the rollout of a national broadband network and will work in conjunction with the sector. This will be the biggest national investment in broadband infrastructure ever made by an Australian government, certainly a lot more in 12 months than was ever delivered in the 12 years of the Howard government. Tomorrow, the government expects to receive proposals from bidders vying for the right to construct the national broadband network. Yet today, we see the future of that being jeopardised by the opposition, because they are not committed to Australia’s national interests, to Australia’s future, to a real national broadband network. They are only committed to themselves. (Time expired)

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

Broadband communications is the infrastructure of this century. There has been a lot of talk today about this century, last century and the century before. This is the infrastructure that all of Australia requires for this century, so I endorse what the current government are attempting to do. I realise they are a little bit behind schedule and I hope that they hurry it along, but the concept of quality, high-speed internet broadband services, particularly to country areas, or fibre-to-the-node services, is something that we should all get behind. There has been some discussion about the quality of previous services. There have been advancements made, and I do not think anyone can suggest that the previous government did not do anything. But we do have world-first technologies that can be introduced and country people, in my view, should have equity of access to those services. The only way that that can really be achieved is through fibre-to-the-node delivery.

Mr Deputy Speaker, this form of infrastructure, as you would be well aware, is the one thing that negates distance being a disadvantage of living in the country. It actually equalises the equation and in fact puts country people in front of their city cousins in terms of many of the advantages that broadband can deliver, particularly in terms of both national and international business services. If we can achieve equity of access and equity of price right across Australia then we will deliver a means to decentralise some of our cities. We have had a continual movement towards our major cities, not because people particularly want to live there but because of their economies of size and scale, which mean people feel they have to go there to find work. This technology in this century can release us from that equation and from having to pack people into cities. So I think this issue should be looked at in terms of the climate change debate as well and the need for people to move—to have to leave their country communities to go to the big cities for health and educational reasons, for instance. These sorts of infrastructure services can actually assist not only the business community but also in health, education and many other ways. They actually remove distance as being a disadvantage, as I said, of living in the country.

The other issue that has been in the news of late is the bid that is currently taking place in relation to the national broadband network and the antics of Telstra in particular. I publicly encourage Senator Conroy to ignore the bullyboy tactics of some of the Telstra board and the CEO in relation to their demands that the government not implement a structural separation arrangement between the network itself and the providers of the service. I would encourage the minister to ignore them. If they do not put in a bid then so be it, because in terms of getting equity of access to these services there will need to be structural separation. That does not mean Telstra’s service delivery of mobile and other services has to be structurally separated; but if this is to be a truly national broadband network where other telcos can actually access the network in a competitive sense then the provider of the network cannot be the major player. We have made that mistake in the past. The provider of the network cannot be the major player and wipe out the competitors. It has been shown time and time again—and the member for Oxley talked about it a moment ago—that competition will not deliver in a lot of country areas. Since the privatisation of Telstra there has been very little activity in terms of mobile towers in country areas, for instance, because they do not have to do it any more. In fact they say, ‘It’s not our business to deliver services into these areas that we do not believe are profit making in a four-year capital return cycle.’ There are many of these issues out there.

In conclusion, I would encourage Senator Conroy not to be bullied by these belligerent people just because they run a private operation now and they have a number of shareholders. Not every Australian is a shareholder in Telstra anymore—but the minister is the representative of all Australians. (Time expired)

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the comments from the member for New England in terms of his understanding of the needs of his region. I would like to acknowledge that there is a lot of emotion in this particular debate today. We heard the member for Wide Bay talking about Queensland and the lack of infrastructure and a whole range of things. He was a Minister for Transport and Regional Services in a government that was in power for almost 12 years. So what did they do? Let us look at the electorate of Forde, where I come from, a seat that sits behind the Gold Coast—in fact, the member for Moncrieff, sitting over there, is a very proud Gold Coast member. The electorate of Forde at its northern point sits within 40 kilometres of the city of Brisbane. This is an area that you would expect to have a lot of infrastructure in place. I can tell you that even now people have problems getting any type of ADSL simply because a lot of that area has dial-up services. That is at the northern end. My electorate stretches at the southern end to probably 120 kilometres out of the city.

I can tell you that there are still cables running along the side of the road. In fact some of the junction boxes had been eaten by the cattle that also graze that area. So the reality is that the infrastructure we currently have is poor. We can talk about fibre to the node and a whole range of infrastructure. The member for Dunkley talked about the technology that was provided and put in place by the previous government. Well, I can tell you that it did not exist. Their plan for a two-tiered system in fact just will not work, simply because they do not understand the existing infrastructure, and the existing infrastructure that they are depending on just will not work. As I said, this is in the electorate of Forde, which is so close to Brisbane and so close to the Gold Coast, yet our infrastructure is so poor. Just getting some basic phone services in place would be very much welcomed.

In fact, there was emotion from the member for Dunkley. He talked about the ‘spivness’ of the Labor government in wanting to roll out a major fibre network—spivness! He said that we were hairy chested and that these were all weasel words that the government is good at putting out there. I tell you, we are serious about what we are doing. In fact, we went to the election with a commitment to provide the national broadband network. We planned it, we said how we would do it and we promised and committed to a level of rollout.

Looking at the technology behind that, they say it was the Howard government that really made a lot of inroads. That is not true. Let us go back to the Hawke and Keating years. Let us go back to the decision to roll out the fibre networks and introduce Optus as a provider to roll out broadband cable. This is something that previous Labor governments understood very well. In fact, not only was it a case of rolling out the infrastructure but it was also an understanding of this country and its move towards technology—and I am now talking about the early nineties. They said: ‘Okay, we can roll out the technology. The world wide web is now being rolled out around the world. How would we as a country be able to tap into that?’ Essentially, through the rollout of fibre networks, the role of Optus in its early days was all about the initiative of the Labor government to ensure we had adequate infrastructure, particularly for communications and data.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a pay TV cable. It wasn’t for data—it was a pay TV cable.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It even went one step further. It was about content and Creative Nation, if the member from the other side would understand the significance of Creative Nation—a Keating initiative which was about not only building the hard infrastructure but also establishing the content that we needed to put down that particular network.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Losing credibility rapidly!

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moncrieff might say that. He sits back and talks about the lack of infrastructure they have on the Gold Coast. As a senior member of the previous government, he was in power for nearly 12 years, and the fact that this—

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker: I have never said any such thing.

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

That is not a point of order.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would certainly suggest that there are many words said about the lack of infrastructure on the Gold Coast. But, if the Gold Coast is suffering, so is the seat of Forde. Listen to the rhetoric now espoused by the other side, certainly by the member for Wide Bay in his passionate plea about what we as a government are going to do. He wants to get involved in the process of deciding who we should give the tenders to. The reality is that, if you look at a TV these days and watch The Howard Years, I would suggest that, with their lack of understanding of infrastructure and their lack of understanding of the needs, it should probably be called ‘Luddites in power’.

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

Order! The time for the discussion has expired.