Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given by Senator Coonan, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, this afternoon. One of the greatest challenges that this government has taken on is to make sure that this country receives the very best broadband opportunities possible. We are a very large country, and the challenges of that mean that there are some areas where there is great commercial value and great competition in the provision of broadband and in other areas there is basically market failure due to very high costs.

I think the latest OECD broadband figures are fantastic news for this country. They show that, in comparison to other OECD countries, we are embracing broadband at an extraordinary rate. We remain in the top five OECD countries in terms of the growth of broadband take-up, and the OECD report singles out Australia as an example of a country which is connecting broadband at a very high rate. Indeed, the report indicates that Australia and several other countries have added more than six subscribers per 100 inhabitants during the past year alone. Our broadband subscribers are now above the OECD average. At the end of June this year, there were some 3.5 million premises connected to broadband, and it is my understanding that now, on 16 October, we will be at or close to breaking through the four million mark. It is a great achievement, but it has come through good policy.

Broadband has been a national priority, and so it should be, because it is critical to Australia’s future, but the best broadband policy involves a mixture of private sector broadband rollout and targeted assistance, as I said earlier, for areas of market failure. Last week we saw the launch of Telstra’s Next G mobile network. According to Telstra, the network will provide high-speed coverage to an estimated 98 per cent of the Australian population. Where it is not economic for the private sector to invest in broadband, this government has been providing targeted subsidies to ensure that all Australians have fair access.

This government is investing billions of dollars—$3.1 billion, in fact—to stimulate sustainable broadband infrastructure development and to eliminate mobile phone coverage black spots, via the Connect Australia package. It is interesting that the debate about T3 and broadband media coverage in the last couple of weeks regrettably has failed to talk about this $3.1 billion program, which is the single largest investment in telecommunications in this country’s history. It includes the $878 million Broadband Connect program and the $2 billion Communications Fund to deliver an income stream to fund upgrades of rural telecommunications infrastructure into the future.

That is where the coalition is in relation to broadband. That has to be compared, I am afraid, to the Labor Party’s again failed communication policy, this time in relation to broadband. It is ironic that this broadband policy, which was to last seven years, lasted about seven days, because Labor’s broadband policy required the involvement of Telstra to ensure that it worked, that it could be delivered. Telstra made it very clear, shortly after the announcement of the Labor Party’s policy, that they would not be participating. Once that occurred, I am afraid that the Labor Party’s policy was dead and dusted, because it cannot be delivered. The great tragedy about the Labor Party’s view on this is that they gave some indication that there would be Australia-wide fibre to the node. In fact, we found out that it is not. It is based on (Time expired)