Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I too take note of answers by Senator Coonan to questions relating to broadband. I would like to start by saying that Senator Ronaldson has just exposed his complete ignorance and indeed the one-eyed Telstra-centricity of the Howard government’s thinking when it comes to telecommunications policy, because they cannot think of telecommunications policy without thinking about Telstra, without thinking about the Telstra privatisation and how they will help Telstra in the marketplace, as they have done for many years despite all the arguments they have had recently.

In this year’s budget reply speech, a Beazley Labor government committed to improving regulatory settings to encourage private sector investment on a pro competitive basis through a government-industry joint venture. Labor also committed to drawing on the $757 million Broadband Connect Program funding to provide an equity injection from the $2 billion earmarked for the Communications Fund in order to deliver the public funding of this partnership with the telecommunications sector. Despite Senator Ronaldson’s earnest assertions, Telstra does not equal the telecommunications sector. There is far more to the telecommunications sector than just Telstra; indeed, Telstra’s assertions at the time show how politically motivated they were in cosying up to the government to facilitate the privatisation agenda.

I would like to go back to some of the key points about the broadband debate. It is a very interesting study in how statistics can be abused when you review Senator Ronaldson’s comments today. The facts are that the OECD report released shows that Australia is ranked 17th out of 30 countries surveyed for the take-up of 256 kilobit broadband. This is despite growth off a low base, which I presume is the top five figure promoted by the government when they talk about the take-up of broadband. But Australia’s relative position in relation to broadband take-up has not changed for the previous two years.

The World Economic Forum ranks Australia 25th in the world in terms of its available internet bandwidth, and it ranks our network readiness at 15th and falling. So how come this does not add up? It is because the government continue to couch their interpretation of the statistics in the best possible light. The real story is clear when you look at this cross-section of overseas studies that continually rate Australia poorly. I will give another example: a recent World Bank study confirms that Australia’s average ADSL speed of barely one megabit per second is one of the slowest in the world, behind countries like Britain, at 13; France, at 8.4; Germany, at 6.85; Canada, at 6.8; and the United States, at 3.3 megabits per second. The Internet Industry Association of Australia is calling for 80 per cent of Australians to have access to 10 megabits per second broadband by 2010. The association says that the only way we will get there is through ‘significant and meaningful changes in attitude and leadership from the government and policymakers’.

The whole world looks at Australia and sees how poorly we have been performing. They look at the policies of the last 10 years, they look at the pathetic shenanigans of recent times in the lead-up to this final privatisation tranche that the government is attempting to put in place and they see a government that has neglected some of the most fundamental economic infrastructure for the 21st century. It continues to be neglected as the government flounders around, with funds sprayed all over the place and making no real impact on the real life experiences of home based businesses, small businesses and residents right round this country. I can tell you, Mr Deputy President, that I know this because I get a lot of feedback from people right round the country about the poor state of the network.

I would like to comment on things locally. Kevin Cox, who is a member of the Gungahlin Community Council, questions this latest promotion of Telstra and its Next G network. It was said by him and other experts that what is needed is fibre-to-the-home or fibre-to-the-kerb network that can have that massive increase in bandwidth as the demand arises, not the half-baked, stop-gap technology that Telstra puts in on the cheap and then pitches up to the Australian people and argues that this is somehow what we need. The fact is that we need real broadband. We will not get it under the Howard government. Only Labor’s policies will deliver the sort of economic infrastructure that this country deserves for the 21st century.