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

It is pretty obvious that the opposition are starting to run a bit threadbare in trying to find something wrong with a policy that delivers first-class broadband to all Australians, that ensures there is going to be universal broadband coverage regardless of where you live and that 99 per cent of the population will have speeds of 12 megabits per second—several years before the Labor Party will have the speed they are promising. For some reason, the opposition simply think they are technology experts. I have never met so many broadband prophets in my life. Rather than setting ourselves up as technological experts, what the government have done is to have a very rigorous and robust competitive grants process that has let experts make the assessments, not the government and certainly not Senator Conroy. The government lets the commercial market pick technologies because they are properly the experts. They are the ones who appropriately take commercial risk, and the two companies that are going to form the OPEL joint venture certainly have skin in the game to the tune of about $1 billion of their own capital funds.

As I have said, the government conducted a competitive assessment and an independent panel that, by expert advice from Consutel, has selected this company and this technology. It will use a mix of technologies to extend high-speed broadband to 99 per cent of premises. Alvari, for instance, a leading equipment manufacturer, recently advised that it has tested WiMAX technology in Australia of the type that will be available to OPEL, and the trials have demonstrated that this technology will provide broadband out to a distance of 20 kilometres at the speeds we have claimed. The government will ensure that Ernex, a specialist testing laboratory, will be able to fully verify OPEL’s coverage speed and service quality so that all consumers can be confident that these services are being delivered. This is in stark contrast to the fact that the ALP’s only foray into this, apart from a press release 90 days ago, with no supporting evidence, was a foray to support dial-up—