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

You are so deluding yourselves that you are sending around information in pamphlets like the one I have here issued by Ms Fran Bailey. While you are in the chamber, let me take you through some of your self-delusions. The pamphlet starts off by saying:

Did you know?

Labor says its plan to roll out fibre to every home—

that’s funny; I thought we were rolling out fibre to the node—

will cost taxpayers $4.7 billion.

However, South Korea—a country half the size of Victoria—used the same system, but it cost $50 billion.

As Senator Coonan continually says—and accuses us of doing—Labor is rolling out fibre to the node. Labor has no plan to roll out fibre to the home, but that has not stopped Fran Bailey from distributing this nice, colour brochure.

She then goes on in her brochure to talk about all the wonderful things about the WiMAX product. There is only one problem with that: you bought an obsolete version of WiMAX. You bought fixed wireless. The brochure tells us that WiMAX chips will be incorporated in a whole raft of electronic devices, such as computers and laptops. That is true: WiMAX chips will be incorporated in those devices. But there is one problem: you bought an obsolete version of WiMAX. Not one computer or laptop in this country produced today or that will be produced in the future will actually receive your dog of a product of OPEL—not one laptop. You will not be able to take it for a walk down to the shed, like Senator Coonan told you in the party room. I am sure she said, ‘Don’t you worry; we’ll be able to pick up a laptop and walk down to the shed.’ It is not true. Not one laptop will receive it. And of course there are those very colourful maps that you all had distributed. I note that not all of you have taken the option of posting them out, like Fran Bailey has. Some of you probably looked at them and said, ‘Umm, that can’t be right; that can’t possibly be true.’ Let me be clear: this government is offering Australians, particularly the millions and millions of Australians who live in regional, rural and outer-suburban Australia, a second-class plan designed to lock them into an outdated, obsolete technology that they will not be able to upgrade from in their lifetime.

But let us go back to the issue of coverage. I will read from the government’s panel in Australia Connected, as distributed by you and by the minister, which says:

Coverage—Proven to reach 100% of the population.

Actually, the minister is only claiming 99 per cent. So that is the first mislead. The second is:

Speeds—12-50 mbps.

I know it may seem like the words ‘up to’ are not important but, if a company was not using the words ‘up to’, it would be fined by the ACCC. WiMAX, particularly the OPEL fixed wireless, cannot deliver 12 megabits. OPEL themselves have admitted that actual speeds will be less due to distance and traffic. If you want 12 megabits you will need to be standing underneath the tower at midnight on a Saturday and praying that you are the only person using it. That is the only way that you are going to get 12 megabits out of this dog that you have bought. But I will continue quoting. The next point is ‘Radius from each site’. The maps in the brochure are particularly important at this point. The nice green circles are around base stations. What did the government claim? The government claimed:

Minimum 20km from base station.

What does Mr Peter Ferris, the General Manager of Technology and Planning for Optus, say about the reach of the OPEL product? He says that the systems trial by Optus requires line of sight—and I will come back to that—connection between tower and user and then six kilometres from the towers. (Time expired)