Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Social and Community Affairs)) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, wish to take note of the answers provided by Senator Coonan to questions today in question time. I really despair. I am very glad that Senator Coonan was in Goulburn today. I wish she had told me she was coming because I could have arranged for her to meet some of the people who live in the suburb of Bradfordville, in Goulburn, who cannot access ADSL and who have been very frustrated. Maybe she could have met some of the residents in the villages such as Marulan and Tarago, who cannot get reliable connections to the internet at all and some do not have mobile telephone service. Perhaps she could have talked to those people about what she has in mind. Or perhaps she could have met some of the parents of the homeschooled children who are struggling to participate in some online learning activities. But, no, she was there to launch what is really a pup of a program. It is certainly something that we could say is a broadband, whiteboard bandaid and nothing more. It really is about clearly defining a divide between rural Australia and the rest of the country.

I do not quite know what Senator Coonan thinks about country people, but she certainly seems to think that there may be country bumpkins who cannot see what is really going on with this announcement. I was very pleased that Senator Joyce was able to understand that she was condemning country people to a second-rate system. What we will end up with in this country is a two-tiered system of communications that will leave country communities behind. This policy is one of the most cynical vote-buying exercises we have seen. If the Prime Minister were really genuine about helping country people, he would look at funding the services which the government wants to be delivered through technology. He might like to fund some of these services on the ground so that we do not have a community like Temora advertising a half-a-million-dollar incentive payment for a doctor to come to the town. Temora is only a couple of hours drive from here, but it is a community that is desperately short of doctors.

How credible is the Prime Minister’s commitment to IT? As we heard in the chamber, what is the real grasp of the technology that is being talked about today? Who is going to benefit from the faster broadband that is being offered under this regime? Not too many people, I can tell you, until at least 2009. The minister for communications was very keen to say that, regardless of where someone lives, they will have access to broadband for between $35 and $60 a month. Perhaps the minister does not pay for her broadband plans. Perhaps she does not understand the costs of downloading and uploading or how people are reaching their download limits so quickly that they are being penalised by the uploading costs that are coming from video streaming, movies and the multichannel televisions that Senator Eggleston was so keen for us all to take up.

We heard about the WiMAX network today. We all know that there are real problems with this wireless technology. The OECD report was quite scathing about it. Our problem with it is that those communities and farming families who are living 20 to 50 kilometres from the exchange will be stuck with a system that degrades with the number of users on it and also according to the weather. If you have regular seasonal weather problems, you will be very disadvantaged by that when using this system. So, let’s think about what we are condemning country Australia to—a two-tiered system that will leave regional Australia very disadvantaged in the longer term.