Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was listed in the Queensland parliament, but—surprise, surprise—it is not coming on in the Queensland parliament. Would you believe that? Here we have a party that in the debate on this legislation is claiming to be the saviour of rural and regional Queensland and what do they do in Queensland? They destroy the government at the local level that gives local people a say. Councils might have said: ‘We don’t like Labor’s broadband policy,’ or ‘We didn’t like the way they shut off the analog network in our place,’ but the Labor Party know that they will not have to face those sorts of objections and criticism anymore, because they have taken the easy way out and abolished the councils in rural and regional Australia. For the Labor Party to quote the ALGA in support of their propositions regarding this bill is unbelievable. For the Queensland Labor government to stop people having a vote on their own local situation is beyond belief. Perhaps Senator Conroy in the committee stages could tell us why a Labor government destroyed the analog network back when it was important and why it has destroyed local government and free speech in Queensland.

I drive around Queensland a lot. I was amused to hear the previous speaker’s reference to climate change. Just last week, I was up in Nebo and Murrumba and Middlemount in the Bowen Basin coalfields. There it is well known that the ALP, with the support of their mates in the Greens, would shut down those coal mines because they want people to sign a bit of paper called the Kyoto agreement. What they are intending to do is to destroy the jobs of hardworking Australian families—people who labour in those mines but are well rewarded. The Labor Party, with their mates in the Greens, would shut them down. The reference to climate change and Labor’s approach to that is humorous. If you shut down every power station in Australia and turned off the engine in every motor vehicle, it would make less than 1½ per cent difference to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

What Mr Howard so cleverly and professionally did during the APEC meeting was to get the big emitters, China and the United States, to the table to talk about these things in a sensible way. That is not the way that the ALP would do it. They would shut down the mines and destroy the livelihoods of many hardworking families in rural and regional Australia—and particularly in the electorate of Capricornia, where the Liberal Party has a great candidate in Scott Kilpatrick, and in the electorate of Flynn, where the Liberal Party has a great candidate in Jason Rose. Those two gentlemen will be fighting to ensure that the jobs of the miners in the Bowen coalfields are saved from the ravages of the Labor Party and the Greens.

This is a very important bill because the interest from the Communications Fund, up to $400 million every three years, will be able to be used to provide telecommunications. On top of everything else that Senator Coonan and her predecessor Senator Alston have done for country Australia, there will be a permanent commitment of funds to providing real telecommunications support in rural and regional Australia.

I get to my conclusion on the same basis that I started. I do not read my speech from something that has been prepared by an adviser to Senator Conroy who lives in Canberra. Unlike Senator Conroy, I do not live in Melbourne and pontificate about telecommunications in the bush. I actually live in the bush and I travel widely in the bush. I know how telecommunications have improved under the Howard government. Anything and everything the Labor Party might say has to be judged against reality. The reality is—and I entered this debate to bring the reality check to it—that, when the Labor Party were in charge, they did nothing for the bush. You can understand that, because they hold no seats in rural and regional Australia. Even if we were to be defeated at this next election, which I think would be a sad and unlikely event, Labor would still not hold seats in rural and regional Australia.