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

I thank the senator for her question. I know she has a genuine and longstanding interest in this issue. It is tragic that she was not able to convince her colleagues of one of her own broadband plans, because it would actually have been a significant advance on the debacle that was the now opposition’s broadband plan. It was quite a visionary plan. It is, I am sure, to her eternal disappointment that she was not able to convince her colleagues.

As part of the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to boosting Australia’s productivity, the Rudd government gave a commitment to provide up to $4.7 billion and introduce regulatory changes to roll out a high-speed fibre broadband network. This will be the biggest national investment in broadband infrastructure ever made by an Australian government and demonstrates our commitment to invest in infrastructure vital for Australia’s future prosperity.

The new network—just to make sure that those opposite understand what the debate is around—will reach 98 per cent of Australia’s homes and businesses and deliver speeds of a minimum of 12 megabytes. This will be an open access network to promote competition in the telecommunications market and will be 40 times faster than anything proposed by those opposite and than most Australians have access to at the moment. The government is working to deliver this as fast as it can. As I commented earlier, there has been a lot—