Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the motion to take note of the answers by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, to the questions today in relation to the government’s broadband plan—a plan that is very much wanting. Senator Birmingham talks about it building a future. It is unfortunate the only future that the government seems to be concerned about is its own. This is a plan that is very much wanting, a plan that has been exposed as nothing more than a plan for the government’s re-election. The government’s broadband announcement proved, once again, just how arrogant and out of touch it has become. It proved yet again that this is a government that is willing to sacrifice the best interests of the Australian people to suit its own power hungry political agenda. It proved that this government is short sighted, with its focus only extending as far as the next election and with no real vision for the future. If we needed any further evidence of this, we only need to go to the minister’s office itself. In a leaked email from the minister’s office, it laid out its priority. Is the national interest the priority? No. Is good governance the priority? No. Surprise, surprise, its priority is votes in marginal seats. So desperate is this government, so self-serving, so obsessed with its own interest, that the national interest goes out the window. Good government policy goes out of the window and we are left with a broadband plan that is very much left wanting.

The minister today seemed to backflip and belatedly add Hobart to the FTTN list. That is a commitment we will hold the minister to. But what about Launceston? The government’s announcement has left the state of Tasmania and rural and regional Australia out in the cold. The announcement would lock millions of Australians into a second-class service. The government has slapped together a quick fix, a short-sighted bandaid plan that will only deliver high-speed fibre networks to the inner areas of the capital cities, leaving families, students and small business operators in other areas to struggle with inferior wireless service.

Unlike Labor’s high-speed fibre to the node national broadband network plan, which will be rolled out to 98 per cent of Australians and deliver service that would be a minimum of 40 times faster than that which is currently provided, the government’s plan is to only deliver such services to the capital cities, leaving the rest of Australia with a second-rate wireless service. As the OECD recently found, there are serious questions over the reliability of wireless to deliver adequate services to rural and regional Australia. Current users of the wireless network in such areas already know all too well that it is unreliable, to say the least, suffering from slower speeds, slower upload and download times and weather interferences. Why should people in rural and regional Australia be left out in the cold and be made to put up with a second-rate service? Why, if the government plans to provide, as it claims, a complete and comprehensive broadband solution for Australia, are families and business operators located outside the cities, who are due to receive the FTTN, being neglected? This is a disgrace. Under this plan, my home state of Tasmania has virtually been left off the map. The government plan means that Tasmania will be classified as a rural and regional area and we will not receive the fibre to the node network.

The government plans to treat Tasmania, along with other areas outside the cities, as broadband backwaters not worthy of receiving a first-class service. Simply, it is a disgrace. The government, with its head in the sand, is naive to think that all that is at stake for people living in these areas is slow access and a few hiccups due to bad weather. The Australian Local Government Association found in its State of the regions report last year that the cost of inferior broadband services—that is, wireless—in 2006 alone was $2.7 billion in forgone gross domestic product and 30,000 regional jobs. Why should areas where people live, such as areas in Tasmania, be forced to suffer such a fate? And where were the Tasmanian Liberal senators when the plans were being hatched to dump Tasmania and relegate Tasmanians as second-class citizens? I will tell you: nowhere to be seen, just as they were for the Blundstone workers and just as they were for the Telstra workers. They were nowhere to be seen. The government cannot see— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.