Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Polley for the question. The answer to her question is that this government believes all Australians, regardless of where they live, should be able to have access to first-class telecommunications services. The announcement that I made today with the Prime Minister ensures that very high speed broadband will be available for 99 per cent of the population, whereas we of course know that, under the alternative announcement, it would be impossible to put fibre out to a lot of farms and locations that are simply unable to access a service and would be unable to access a service if they were waiting for fibre to reach them.

I am really glad that Senator Polley has raised this matter, because today is an exciting day for regional and rural Australia. Far from being a second-class outcome, we have overcome what would be a second-class proposal from the Labor Party and we will now have a world-class network with a minimum speed of 12 megabits to 99 per cent of the Australian population.