Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure where the hot water is coming from, but I would have to say that if that contribution is the basis for the hot water I do not think we are lukewarm yet. I would have to say that on this particular matter you have on one side the Labor Party, which has shown foresight, and on the other you have the negative, nitpicking opposition, who are opposing everything. That has been made clear by their new leader—the fourth leader since the election, is he?—Mr Abbott, whose position is to oppose everything. So we are going to get this negativism on every single issue and we are going to see the coalition padding out the speakers list on the bill before the chamber. They are filibustering in that debate so it does not come to a vote, but they have indicated that they are going to vote against it—yet another filibuster. We have had two filibusters on the CPRS: one on each of the occasions the bills have come to this chamber. It was the same thing on the fairer private health insurance legislation. The coalition know they are going to vote against every bill that comes here. They seem to say, ‘Not only are we going to do that but we are going to take the maximum amount of debating time and be as negative and frustrating as possible.’

Returning to the issue of the National Broadband Network, I go back to the days of former Premier, now deceased, Jim Bacon. When the natural gas rollout was taking place in Tasmania he made sure when those pipelines were laid in the ground that laid with them was fibre-optic cable for the future of networks just such as the National Broadband Network. It was a bit of Labor foresight. And what did we have then? The negativism of the Liberals saying that it would never work, would never come to use and was a waste of money and asking why we were spending this money.

Let us see why. Tasmania is getting, and will be the first to get, a national broadband network as part of a national Labor government’s foresight initiative to provide 21st century-and-beyond assistance for the state of Tasmania—a state that has gone, when the Bacon Labor government came in, from the worst unemployment in the nation to better than the national average. That was through the foresight and hard work of Labor. Of course, it will be said by those opposite that we should not take account of that; there are reasons that they should be elected. In the period before the Bacon government, Tasmania with a Liberal-Greens arrangement fell behind even further than it was before. And, if they get their way, what are we going to be looking at after the election? They will not get majority government. It will be a Hodgman-McKim government. That is what they are aiming at.

We think that we will get a majority Labor government, and we are working hard towards that. But they on the other side will be keen to do whatever deal they can to get into government. When it comes to the National Broadband Network, until Mr Abbott made his statement that the federal Liberal Party would oppose the network, Mr Hodgman, the leader of the Tasmanian Liberals, supported it. He thought it was a good idea. He thought it was in the interests of Tasmania. Since then he has gone quiet on the issue. He is now in the position where, whenever he says something about it, either he is opposed to the development of a 21st century network for Tasmania—and the Tasmanian people will judge him on it—or he is going to contradict his federal leader. He is not strong enough to do that, let us be frank. So I suppose he has been rolled.