Jodie Campbell (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the importance of high-speed broadband for Tasmania and the nation?

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

I thank the honourable member for her question because I know that she, being a Tasmanian member, has a deep commitment to the rollout of this infrastructure in the great state of Tasmania as do, I believe, government members generally with the rollout of this infrastructure across the nation. As I have travelled across Australia, the number of individual communities and businesses that have asked me the simple question, ‘When can we get access to high-speed broadband?’ has gone through the roof, because this represents a huge new turbocharging opportunity for productivity in the Australian economy and new business opportunities across the nation.

The government’s plan is clear-cut. That is why we have established the National Broadband Network company to invest up to $43 billion on a high-speed optical fibre broadband network, in partnership with the private sector, with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. In Tasmania we currently have the lowest proportion of households with access to broadband—39 per cent compared with the Australian average of 52 per cent. The National Broadband Network will connect 200,000 Tasmanian premises at speeds of 100 megabits per second. This is good news for Tassie. The remainder of the state will be served by the next generation wireless and satellite networks, offering minimum speeds of 12 megabits per second.

In July of this year the Tasmanian communities of Smithton, Midway Point and Scottsdale were announced for the stage 1 rollout of the NBN. Construction work for stage 1 is underway and the first services are expected to be available from the middle of 2010—good news for those communities, good news for Tasmania and good news for Australia.

Today I am pleased to inform the House that stage 2 planning for high-speed broadband in Tasmania has commenced. Today, together with Premier David Bartlett, I can also announce seven new regional, urban and outer-urban locations across Tasmania that will be next to receive high-speed optical fibre broadband connections. Work will begin on detailed planning for stage 2, including timeframes, numbers of premises and technical and procurement details for the following communities: Sorell, Deloraine, Georgetown, St Helens, Kingston Beach, South Hobart and others. I am sure the member for Franklin, the member for Denison, the member for Lyons and the member for Bass will be keenly involved and interested in the rollout of these projects. These are good projects for Tasmania; they are good projects for the nation—infrastructure to turbocharge our productivity growth for the 21st century.

We recognise that Australia needs a strong telecommunications market that fosters innovation, competition and high customer standards, especially before the NBN is built. But if we are to deal with the 12 years of inaction on telecommunications, we must now confront what constitutes Liberal Party policy today, because what they have indicated today is that they do not want to progress the reform of the telecommunications industry in Australia; they want a recipe for further delay to push this off, somehow, into next year and to ensure that we do not in fact get a resolution of this matter while the parliament sits through to the end of this year.

I note that Senator Barnaby Joyce is supporting the government’s approach. He said today:

… I’m not convinced we’ll listen closely to the argument that structural separation is not a good idea. I strongly believe it’s something that we should have done.

There you have the Leader of the National Party in the Senate fully supporting the government’s policy on strucutral separation of Telstra. What does the Leader of the National Party in the House of Representatives say? What is his policy?

Government Member:

Who is he?

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

It is not just, ‘What is his policy?’ The question from the backbench on the government side is, ‘Who is the Leader of the National Party in this House?’ So there we have the coalition once again split right down the middle on the question of a core piece of economic policy for the future of the nation. Senator Minchin has indicated his opposition to the government’s approach. If the Liberals had their way, Australians would be left using carrier pigeons for the future rather than accessing an internationally competitive broadband network.

The government is getting on with the job. Our policy is clear. After 12 years of neglect on this critical piece of infrastructure those opposite are simply floundering and flailing in the wind looking for a policy. Leadership on this matter is being provided, curiously, by Senator Joyce, the Leader of the National Party in the Senate—leadership having again been abandoned by those representing the National Party and the coalition in the House of Representatives. The government’s plan is to build nation-building infrastructure for the future. Jobs today, infrastructure for tomorrow: that is our plan. I would suggest that those opposite get with the national project.