Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to make some comments about the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Protecting Services for Rural and Regional Australia into the Future) Bill 2007. I do so because, quite simply, if the government had not moved to introduce this legislation, rural and regional Australia would have been completely disadvantaged and would have lost out as a result of the Australian Labor Party—there is no way around that; there is no other way of saying it, but that is it.

The National Party and the coalition government introduced a $2 billion Communications Fund to ensure that rural and regional Australia would have telecommunications to a level that they needed into the future. It was fairly simple and obvious to those people looking at it. Senator Conroy on the other side of the chamber would have you believe that the Labor Party’s plan is going to deliver for rural and regional communities, so I rise tonight to let the people, particularly of rural and regional communities, know that this is not the case. The government has put in place a $2 billion principal Communications Fund to ensure telecommunications for regional communities. Interestingly, Senator Conroy fails to tell the Senate that they have no plan for rural and regional Australian telecommunications whatsoever—absolutely none. As I have referred to before, I do not think Senator Conroy has actually been out of Melbourne and into regional Australia, because I live out in a regional community, Mr Acting Deputy President, and I can tell Senator Conroy that there are no nodes where I live and no nodes anywhere nearby, and I live in a reasonably populated part of rural Australia.

Their plan will not work. What is fascinating about this is that all we have had from the Labor Party so far on their grand plan for broadband rollout in rural and regional Australia—actually all of Australia—is one media release. There are no costings, there is no detail and there is no substance. There is absolutely nothing except this superficial commentary about the great things they are going to deliver. It is absolute rubbish and there is no substance whatsoever, which is like a whole lot of other Labor policies at the moment—there is absolutely no substance to them whatsoever. We have from Labor a plan for broadband for the nation which, if it were not so sad for rural and regional communities, would be absolutely laughable. Interestingly, their fibre to the node—and I think that side of the chamber got so caught up with the actual word that they cannot get past the phrase ‘fibre to the node’ because it is all really exciting—does not get to more than about 75 per cent of Australians.

I represent rural and regional communities and they are the most important thing to me as a National Party senator. The very simple message for our rural and regional communities is that, under Labor’s plan for fibre to the node, 25 per cent of Australia is going to miss out and that includes every single little bit of rural and regional communities, because fibre to the node is exactly that; fibre to the node. Senator Conroy—‘No Nodes Noddy’, on the other side—again: there are no nodes out there. I do not know if Senator Conroy does not ‘get’ the technology of what fibre to the node is—maybe that is true; I am not quite sure. It does not go to rural and regional communities. I can stand here and talk for 20 minutes and say 27 million times how this is not going to get to rural and regional Australia. But it is simple—Labor’s policy will not deliver to rural and regional communities. There is nothing; there will be no broadband and no fast speeds, because it is all about ‘big city’ Labor and making sure that everything is okay in the cities. Well, that is not okay, because rural and regional communities are the ones that are going to miss out and that is not fair and it is not right.

Labor are going to steal the very money from rural and regional communities that was put there to ensure that they had telecommunications services. It was put there by the National Party and the Liberal Party to ensure that it was guaranteed into the future that we would have those services for regional communities, because we recognise how important it is that we have them. Those on the other side in the Labor Party have absolutely no idea. I might be wrong, but I would imagine that every single person living in a rural and regional community at this moment, tonight, is aware that, if they have a Labor government after the election, they will have no capacity for faster broadband speeds because Labor want to steal the money from the very fund that is going to help deliver to those rural and regional communities. I do not think it is right for them to take that money and put it into the cities when, by the way, private commercial companies are delivering broadband services to the city anyway. The Australian Labor Party want to steal that $2 billion and put it into the cities. I defy anybody around this country to tell me why that is right, because it is not—it is absolutely wrong. As I said earlier, Senator Conroy should be ‘No Nodes Noddy’ because there are no nodes; they cannot deliver. Most people probably do not realise that the speeds of broadband delivered from the nodes go 1.5 kilometres. That is fine if you are living in the middle of Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, but it is not fine if you are living in Young, or Albury, or Mendooran, or in Tamworth or on the north coast.

It is not fine and it is not right. We are talking about a distance of 1.5 kilometres. The Australian Labor Party are dealing in ‘fraudband’. They are not being fair and they are not being truthful with the people living in our rural and regional communities. The Labor Party would have people in our regional and rural communities believe that they are going to deliver this great broadband speed that the government cannot possibly deliver. That is rubbish. It is absolute rubbish. They are leading the people of rural Australia down the garden path, because they cannot deliver what they say they are going to purely by the dint of technology. I know that, and many of my colleagues on this side know that. Certainly my National Party colleagues know that. My National Party colleagues in the House who have spoken on this bill—Mrs Hull, Mr Scott and Mr Neville—all made the point that the Australian Labor Party were going to steal from rural and regional communities. That is exactly what it is.

What we have under this government is a very solid plan for the delivery of broadband around this nation. It is not just about regional communities getting the level of service that they need. It is not just about our regional communities being able to communicate with the cities around this nation. It is about our regional communities being able to play on the global stage—we are part of the world; the barriers have broken down—and we need that ability. This government actually has a plan to make sure that those people in regional communities have the telecommunications services that they need. We are putting $958 million into the rollout of a broadband network that will reach 99 per cent of the country. The last one per cent of the country, as everybody knows, out in those very remote areas, needs satellite capacity to get this broadband network there. We are going to ensure that 100 per cent of the country is covered. That 99 per cent figure is not some pie-in-the-sky, Senator Conroy style grand plan of absolute rubbish; it is a substantive, costed, sensible, measured rollout of broadband capability for this nation. We are doing the right thing in ensuring that this nation gets the broadband capability that it needs.

It really concerns me that we see a scare campaign coming from the Australian Labor Party, denigrating what the government is doing. If the Australian Labor Party were really concerned about telecommunications in this nation, if they were really concerned about telecommunications in rural and regional communities, they would actually say how they are going to deliver their fibre-to-the-node plan—because, quite frankly, one media release does not cut it. The people of this country deserve more. They deserve to know how it is being costed. They deserve to know where it is going to be rolled out. They deserve to know where all these nodes are going to be, given that it is only 1.5 kilometres from the node that this technology is going to deliver to. I can almost hear people around regional communities laughing about the 1.5 kilometres, because they are tens of hundreds of kilometres from nodes and they know that that is not going to deliver.

What is also really interesting is that the $958 million, which this government is putting in to roll out broadband around this nation, is there because this government has the economic credentials to be able to afford it. It is a bit like running a household; you cannot spend money on things if you have not saved it up. This is the money the government has very carefully saved because it has managed the economy of this country well. While that phrase sometimes gets lost on people, what that actually means is that this government has money to spend on things that are important to the people of this nation—and one of those things is telecommunications. When I came into this place, and for a long time before, I was very aware of the fact that we had budgets in deficit. There was no money. We came into this place with a $96 billion debt from Labor. And it was not just $96 billion of debt; along with that came an $8 billion a year interest bill. That meant that there was no money to spend on things like telecommunications broadband plans for the nation. Now, because we have finally paid off that debt—and it took a lot of hard work and a lot of good management—we have that money in our household budget, in this country’s household budget, to spend on telecommunications. It is all very well for Senator Conroy to stand on the other side and talk about his grand plan about fibre-to-the-node blah, blah, blah but under Labor there would not be the money to pay for it. That is not just a throwaway line; there is a track record.

You only have to look at all the state Labor governments right around this nation to know that Labor cannot manage money, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that federal Labor would be any different because the philosophy is entirely the same. For state Labor, federal Labor, Labor people and the unions it is exactly the same. To suddenly expect that, because Mr Rudd says, ‘I’m an economic conservative,’ all will be okay in the economy is wrong. It will not be okay, and people in rural and regional Australia in particular need to know that Labor cannot manage money. It is because they cannot manage money that they have never been able to do things like roll out a $958 million broadband plan, which is what we are doing.

The fibre-to-the-node proposal from the Australian Labor Party means that they have to steal $2 billion from rural and regional communities. I find that absolutely abhorrent because, at this moment, an enormous percentage of the nation—including 75 per cent of New South Wales—is going through one of the worst droughts on record. People in those areas are doing it very tough. I take my hat off to them because they battle and battle to provide food for this nation and to provide an economic powerhouse for us as a trading nation. On top of that drought, we see Labor wanting to rip out the $2 billion Communications Fund that was set up purely to help rural and regional communities. We do not know where technology is going to go in the future, but The Nationals and the Liberal Party know that we have to make sure that we look after those rural and regional communities and we look ahead, we think and we prepare. We know there may well be changes in technology and technology delivery down the track, and we have prepared by setting up a $2 billion fund from which $400 million every three years is going to go to rural and regional communities. It was set up to be substantive and ongoing.

We need to protect that $2 billion fund, which is why this legislation has been introduced. If we protect that $2 billion fund, then rural and regional communities will have $400 million every three years in perpetuity to go towards their security of telecommunications. It is a sensible, practical measure that will ensure telecommunications in rural and regional communities. But, oh no, Labor want to get rid of it. Very simply, the Australian Labor Party want to take $2 billion from rural and regional communities and put it in the cities. That is not fair. It is not right. Private enterprise is going to deliver broadband to the cities anyway. How the Australian Labor Party can sit on the other side of the chamber and say, ‘This is fine; we will steal this money from the bush and give it to the cities,’ I do not know. I do not know how they can possibly think that is right, proper or fair, because it is not.

The government has had to bring in this legislation because, if we had not, rural and regional communities around Australia would have missed out. We have had to do this as a safety net because we know that the Australian Labor Party would steal the fund. We will not stand for it. We will not wear it. We are going to secure the future of rural and regional communities. We are going to secure the telecommunications needs of rural and regional communities into the future.