Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan. We have had 11 long years of the Howard government, and it is without doubt that the state of telecommunications infrastructure and services across Australia has suffered as a result. Senator Birmingham, let me say that I have spoken to people in our home state of South Australia about their ability to get high-speed broadband. I have spoken with small businesses which can no longer compete because they cannot access high-speed broadband, and I have met with students who have thrown in the towel on accessing lessons on the internet because it was just too unreliable, too difficult, too time consuming and too frustrating. As it stands, our nation’s lack of high-speed broadband is hurting and holding back Australian families and small businesses. We lag a long way behind the countries we consider to be our international peers, yet the coalition has sat on its hands for years, only cobbling together a plan in the shadow of a looming federal election. Even now the result is unsatisfactory on many levels.

The federal government has thrown $958 million of taxpayers’ money at the problem in the lead-up to an election. The trouble is that this $958 million, awarded to the Elders consortium OPEL, is going towards building a second-class broadband system. Having had 17 previous attempts at devising a broadband plan for Australia, the Howard government’s 11th hour effort has raised more questions than answers. Perhaps the minister does have the answers to these questions but will not reveal them because she knows the answers are not palatable. It certainly is not due to the lack of opportunity.

Today, the minister responded to specific questions from Senator Conroy by saying that the government has a comprehensive plan. There were no answers, just a sweeping statement. Here we have one of the largest government grants to a private company in our history and yet three months on there remain so many unanswered questions. These questions are as basic as what the real minimum broadband speeds will be, what the technical specifications of the network will be, where the 1,361 new towers will be built, what the maximum retail price will be and just how much money OPEL will in fact be contributing. The fact is that the government made the announcement that it would award OPEL the job in June this year. So, surely, it is not unreasonable to expect that in September, some three months on, Australian taxpayers be provided with at least some of the answers. After all, it relates to $958 million of taxpayers’ money being spent.

When the government announced that it had awarded the tender to OPEL, its purpose was to build a broadband network for underserved areas—those who had long been ignored. However, those people living in such areas, which include but are not limited to rural, regional and remote Australia, are going to be let down under this proposal. The network, which is based on the obsolete technology fixed wireless WiMAX, will not reach the claimed 99 per cent of Australians. Optus has admitted six-kilometre penetration from the base station, not the 20 to 50 kilometres stated by the minister in her release in June. OPEL states that its network will serve 3.7 million phone lines in underserved areas, but there are in fact only two million phone lines. So this statement by OPEL appears to be completely false and misleads the Australian people. OPEL does not own the transmission spectrum. The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has admitted that actual coverage will not even be known until the network is turned on.

Adding to the coverage conundrum are the fraudulent maps being mailed out by the government without the disclaimer issued by the department. The disclaimer reads:

The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts makes no guarantee about the suitability of these maps for any purpose by any person whatsoever.

Along with the deficiencies in the coverage by the government proposal come disappointments in the area of speed, a basic requirement of an appropriate broadband network. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.