Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, to questions without notice asked today relating to broadband telecommunications infrastructure.

What we have seen yet again today is a minister struggling to understand the technology issues in her own portfolio. She exposed herself yesterday. Yesterday she put out a press release called ‘Wireless is great for the bush—just ask Labor’. Let me read to you from a paragraph that she included:

What the Coalition Government has very clearly said is that we will provide broadband coverage to 100 per cent of Australia through a mix of technologies and regardless of the technology that is used, we are guaranteeing a minimum speed of 12 megabits per second.

Let us be clear. When challenged on this, Senator Coonan went to her website, without issuing a correction, without putting out a press release to say, ‘I made a mistake,’ and she amended one paragraph on her website to change it to:

What the Coalition Government has very clearly said is that we will provide broadband coverage to 100 per cent of the population. The rollout of a new, independent, competitive and state of the art national broadband network—the OPEL network—will extend high speed services out to 99 per cent of the population and provide speeds of 12 megabits per second by mid 2009. The remaining 1 per cent of consumers will be served via a $2750 satellite subsidy.

That is fine. Everybody is entitled to make a mistake and everybody is entitled to correct the record. But the problem the minister has here is that she repeated that in question time yesterday. So, on the quiet, last night she slipped the old paragraph out and put the new paragraph in—no correction of the record in here, no standards from this government. The Leader of the Government in the Senate should be saying to Senator Coonan, ‘Look, I’m sorry, Helen; I know you don’t have a clue about technology, but you’ve got to go in there and correct the record.’