Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy. I refer the minister to statements provided by Optus to the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network:

The cancellation of OPEL was a lost opportunity for Australian business and consumers, particularly in the bush. Almost 900,000 premises across rural and remote Australia were to have been delivered metro-equivalent services at metro-comparable prices. Many of those premises would have been receiving services now.

Minister, isn’t Optus right? And isn’t it the case that rural and regional Australia would have had much better broadband services under the OPEL contract than they have today or are likely to have for years to come under Labor’s flawed and much delayed NBN proposal?