Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak tonight about Labor's cruel broadband hoax on the people of Brisbane. In a speech to parliament on 28 May, the member for Griffith made a number of false claims about the coalition's broadband policy. These included his claim that the previous Howard government had 16 separate plans on broadband and did not one jot of work in all of metropolitan Brisbane. This reflects the member for Griffith's mentality. In his Monthly essay in February 2009, he wrote about returning governments to the centre of the economy. The idea that no-one in Brisbane has access to better broadband in 2007 than they did in 1996 is fanciful. In fact, in my electorate we have access to ADSL2 services and a hybrid fibre-coaxial network that offers speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, the highest speed currently offered on the NBN, and for comparable prices. And, unlike the NBN, no HFC network operator is seriously proposing to triple wholesale revenue from each customer over the next decade.

Labor has decided to pay Telstra billions of dollars to shut down their HFC networks, and Optus $800 million to shut down its HFC network. The member for Griffith knows that in 2007 he had a policy to provide government subsidies to upgrade broadband where the market clearly failed. Now he has inserted the government at the centre of the broadband market and has exposed taxpayers to billions of dollars in liabilities that are unlikely ever to be paid off. Every other country in the world encourages infrastructure based competition. Only in Australia are we paying billions of dollars to drive out competition.

The member for Griffith also talked about a 10 per cent rollout in his electorate. He said that this is 10 per cent more than would have been delivered under the coalition's so-called broadband plan. This is just plain wrong. The coalition will deliver faster broadband sooner than Labor to everyone in Brisbane. We are committed to ensuring that all Australians have access to minimum speeds of 25 megabytes per second by 2016 and minimum speeds of 50 megabytes per second by 2019. These are minimum speeds. People will actually be accessing speeds much faster than that. This is in addition to allowing the private market to compete.

The member for Griffith then went on to say that if you happen to live in suburbs like Coorparoo, full of high-rise developments, there is the bizarre policy of wanting 75 per cent of all of the occupants of the high-rise to reach an agreement through body corporate before connection occurs. This is an absolutely bizarre claim and utterly false. In fact what the member for Griffith is talking about is literally the opposite of the truth. The coalition has advocated the exact same solution for high-rise buildings, known as multi-unit dwellings, that the NBN Co. themselves have advocated, but which is illegal, because this incompetent government thinks they know best—that is, hook the fibre into the main distributor frame or the MDF in the basement rather than take the fibre through every riser in the building, drill a hole into every resident's wall and then hook up three connection devices in the resident's property. There is very little difference in the performance, if any at all, and the savings in time and cost are enormous. There are many, many inner-city apartment dwellings within the CBD in the electorate of Brisbane that would benefit greatly from this.

The member for Griffith should stop misleading parliament and consider which solution most body corporates would be most receptive to. Of course no-one is happy with Labor's solution and this is reflected in the NBN's own performance in hooking up high-rise buildings. As of 7 December—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The facts speak for themselves—and the members opposite might interject—but by 7 December 2012, more than one-third or 35 per cent of residential MDUs passed by the NBN either had an active service or were able to order an active service. The member for Griffith then said:

It is also important for the schools in my electorate ... All these will now be connected to the National Broadband Network, but under 'fraudband' there will be no possibility of connection whatsoever. Consider what will happen with our local hospitals—for example, the Mater Hospital and the PA Hospital?

This is an absolute and blatant untruth. Not only does the coalition policy specifically state that we will connect fibre to all schools and hospitals but the vast majority are already connected. Hospitals in my electorate like St Andrew's, Brisbane Private and Brisbane— (Time expired)