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

My question is to Senator Coonan, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. I refer the minister to her claim that she is delivering a ‘state-of-the-art national broadband network’ for rural and regional Australia. Hasn’t this claim been totally discredited by evidence that the minister’s second-rate service will not work properly if you live in a hilly area, it is raining, you are using the microwave, someone in your house is on the phone, you are using a baby monitor, your garage door is being opened, your neighbours are online at the same time or you are using a laptop? Don’t these most basic problems show that the minister has failed to deliver anything more than a second-rate service for much of outer metropolitan and rural and regional Australia? You should get a lesson in WiMAX.