Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I thought the motion that we were debating today was about taking note of answers to questions asked today. You cannot have it both ways, Senator Barnett. You simply cannot come in and say, ‘The minister didn’t answer questions I didn’t ask.’ We have a process at question time here where you get to ask a question and the minister only gets four minutes to answer it. You then ask other questions, or interject by asking other questions, and complain if the minister cannot answer everything in four minutes—indeed, he cannot.

I think Senator Humphries, again, also made quite a confused contribution today. In fact, much of what Senator Humphries said I can agree with. He actually talked about this being the largest investment by a long shot in internet infrastructure—and indeed it is. It is something the previous government, the Howard government, mucked around on—could not come to a policy position on—over 12 years. All that time we watched our education facilities, our health facilities and our businesses start to lag behind where they would have been if a proper investment had been made when it should have been in those 12 years. They never had a policy. In fact, that is probably not true—I withdraw that. They had many, many policies. I understand they had 20 or so policies over the 12-year period. But, even though they had that many policies, they never actually struck a blow. They never struck a blow to implement any of them and they never struck a blow to improve the internet infrastructure of this country—something that our educational communities, our health communities, our businesses and individuals are absolutely crying out for. The opposition had no vision when they were in government and they have no vision now.

Senator Humphries made this criticism: Minister Conroy has a determination to make this happen. Well, I can agree with that. Minister Conroy has an absolute determination to make this happen, and that is something we on this side, this government, are absolutely proud of. It is a shame that those on that side of the chamber did not have any determination when they were in government—if they had, we might have a half-decent broadband system now. But they did not. They had no determination. So I do not see it as any criticism whatsoever to say that Minister Conroy has an absolute determination to make this happen.

Then, true to form—and this is what the Liberal coalition always falls back to—there were the words that Senator Humphries used. He said that we should all be fearful about this exercise. We should be fearful about a fast internet! We should be fearful about this government actually doing something to improve the internet! That is just so typical of the opposition. When they do not have a reasonable argument, when they cannot do or say anything that has vision or is going to actually benefit this country, they turn around and say that Australians should be fearful. We should be fearful! And there it was again today, about the internet—fearful about fast internet! They say we should be fearful about all sorts of things: we should be fearful about climate change, we should be fearful about doing anything about climate change, we should be fearful of immigrants—we should be fearful of all those things! But now the coalition says we should be fearful of fast internet as well—good Lord! All the opposition want to do is say no, so they say we should be fearful about things.

The Australian people deserve a lot better from their opposition—from an opposition that claims that one day they may be seen realistically as an alternate government. Instead of having policies which they never implement or policies that they have no intention of implementing or that will never work, they should sit down and try to develop some vision for this country and try to catch up with what this government is doing about making this place a great place to learn, a great place to do business and a great place to use a fast internet system.