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

you do have to know where it is going to be installed and you do need to know what is already there. So certainly my department has worked for months and months on what the Broadband Connect package will deliver for all Australians, regardless of where they live, particularly those in rural and regional areas. A point that has absolutely no basis but seems to be a mantra of the Labor Party—but they are completely wrong about it—is that this is just some poll driven exercise. Unfortunately, the Labor Party have belled the cat on this. I actually went back and had a look at the records. The money for this initiative that we have announced today was in the portfolio budget estimates, the supplementary budget estimates, for September 2005. And Senator Conroy asked a question on notice about the government’s intention to roll out broadband policies right across Australia in October 2005. Then last year, in 2006, I announced, together with the Deputy Prime Minister, the holding of the competitive grants process that was open to everybody, open to all Australians. In all of this process the prospect that we would not know where the technology was required, where there were underserved areas, is just absolutely fanciful. The proposal that we have now will cover an additional nine million residences and another three million residences by ADLS2+. That is not specific to any particular spot.