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

There is widespread acceptance throughout Australia that the federal government’s National Broadband Network is critical infrastructure that needs to be rolled out around Australia. Indeed, in many places there is great excitement about the fact that it is being rolled out. It is obvious now, of course, that the opposition does not believe Australians deserve to have access to technology of the 21st century, and it continues to dither from one failed plan to another.

The NBN will lift Australia to the top of the broadband rankings and allow us to compete with countries like Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Using fibre technology it will deliver 100 megabytes per second to 93 per cent of Australian premises, while those outside the footprint will receive next-generation satellite and wireless service.

It is very clear that the coalition is happy to stay in the past, where things move slowly, where broadband lags behind and where Australia will fall even further behind—in fact, where the coalition left us after 11½ years in government. They had 11½ years in government and that is where we were left. The coalition went to the election with a cobbled-together policy to deliver broadband with a patchwork of old technologies that would have left Australia falling further behind the rest of the world. They had 19 failed broadband plans, and now we understand they are developing the 20th broadband plan.

The government commissioned expert independent advisers McKinsey and KPMG to conduct a detailed implementation study of the NBN, which undertook detailed modelling of the revenue and costs that could be expected from the project given the government’s objectives. The government released this study on 6 May 2010. After eight months of detailed analysis, the implementation study confirmed that under a range of realistic scenarios the NBN Co. will have a strong and viable business case. It also confirmed that the project can be expected to generate a return of six to seven per cent and that the government can expect to generate a return on its investment to cover its funding costs. NBN Co. has finalised its three-year corporate plan and its 30-year business plan, and the company submitted its plan on 6 November 2010. The government is currently considering the document and will make a range of information from it publicly available in due course.

As the Prime Minister has made clear, NBN Co.’s business plan will be released in December. To do a formal cost-benefit analysis of the NBN would take many years and require many heroic assumptions, and you do not have to be Nostradamus to tell us what we already know—that Australia does need a greater investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure. The NBN is critical infrastructure that will connect our rural and regional centres back through our main cities and the wider world with world-class broadband. It will offer high-speed, affordable broadband services to all Australian homes, businesses, schools and hospitals, no matter where they are located in Australia. And I know that constituents in South Australia, particularly in Willunga, are very excited about their access to broadband. There is an overwhelming level of support: 84 per cent of people in Willunga in South Australia have signed up for a fibre connection in the mainland first release site. Other states have equally impressive results. (Time expired)