Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have heard today yet another great spiel from Senator Conroy attempting to flog his dead horse of a policy, and I am being generous by even calling it a policy. He is trying to flog his dead horse of a press release, a press release that he likes to call a policy, which he and the Leader of the Opposition pretend is a policy statement. It was nothing more than a headline-grabbing media stunt earlier this year. I applaud them for their success in grabbing the headlines at the time but since then it has been demonstrated that the policy, the media release, lacks substance, any substantive follow-up and—as the government has outlined with its far more comprehensive plan to deliver broadband services to the people of Australia—it is flawed as well.

Senator Conroy spoke of taking the laptop down to the shed. I am wondering whether he has been spending a little too much time in the shed and not enough time actually out there talking to people in industry, talking to small businesses and talking to the community about the flexibility that is required to deliver appropriate broadband services. Perhaps, rather than sitting in the shed, Senator Conroy should in fact be calling the Broadband Now service set up by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, and the government recently. He should be checking it out on the web to see the sorts of services that are available that will ensure Australians get access to the type of wide-ranging, high-speed broadband that they require.

Under this government, 4.3 million households and small businesses have already accessed high-speed broadband. Our plan is to ensure that it is rolled out to be accessible by 99 per cent of Australians—no ifs and buts but the right blend, the right mix, of technology to ensure that that is available to that 99 per cent. To do so, we firstly start with the OPEL network. I particularly welcome the OPEL network, a combination of a consortium involving both Optus and Elders. I know that Senator Wortley would join me in welcoming the hundreds of jobs that that successful consortium, based in the home state of Elders, will create in our home state of South Australia—great news for South Australia. The importance of the inclusion of Elders in this consortium is not only that it creates jobs in Adelaide. Most importantly, it provides shopfront services right around Australia—a pre-established network of services for this wholesale product that will be used by Elders as well as other ISPs in the delivery of the broadband service.

OPEL will be operational with six megabits per second increasing to 12 megabits per second by 30 June 2009. Contrast that with Labor’s fibre-to-the-node plan which, whilst reaching fewer people, will be fully operational to that smaller number of people no earlier than 2012. Knowing that it will be a publicly funded infrastructure rollout of the type that we have seen state Labor governments—and federal Labor governments of the past—operating, no doubt we can be confident that the cost will blow out and the time will drag out and the technology will be outdated by the time they even get around to finishing it.

So we have the OPEL network as the first important part of the package. It is not the only part of the package. We are also looking to establish a network within the cities, looking to ensure that, in addition to that, we provide, through the Australia Connected program, broadband that goes beyond just OPEL and actually provides a mix of ADSL2+ and fibre technology as well as the WiMAX technology used under that contract that has been signed. This will ensure that we are using the right range of technologies for different areas. Contrary to what we have just heard, Labor’s fibre-to-the-node plan will actually leave many people in regional areas worse off. It will ensure that they do not get the services that can be offered by the flexibility of WiMAX where there are not nodes to which to deliver the fibre. That is why this is an important policy. Instead, we are seeing from Labor old-style policy investing billions of dollars of public funding to deliver something that the private sector, working in tandem with government, can deliver for much less, ensuring that we on this side of the house reach 99 per cent of the people with high-speed broadband, compared with an opposition policy that will not— (Time expired)