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

I thank Senator Joyce for a very perceptive question. As someone who lives in rural and regional Australia, he actually has some idea what he is talking about. On Monday I announced, as Senator Joyce has since commented upon very favourably, that the Australian government is providing $958 million to enable the construction of a new state-of-the-art network that will extend high-speed broadband to 99 per cent of the population by 2009—and, I might add, with very minor consequential overbuild to be able to reach under-served premises. The government is strongly committed to the proposition that all Australians, regardless of where they live, should have access to high-speed, affordable broadband. Unlike the Labor Party, we would not dream of leaving out three million premises in any plan that we put forward for the Australian people to look at.