Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment moved by the Greens in relation to the availability and affordability of the NBN throughout this country. Senator Birmingham has called for a fair dinkum debate. If you listened to what Senator Macdonald has just gone through, that is anything but a fair dinkum debate. It is not really a debate to attack the minister for trying to achieve what the coalition failed to achieve for 10½ years—that is, a policy that can take this country forward into the new era of telecommunications.

What we see with the coalition is typical of them ever since they were defeated at the last election. We see them in wrecking mode. They are nothing more than wreckers. They want to wreck every positive government policy that comes before this parliament. That fact could have been shown more clearly than it was in the Leader of the Opposition’s instruction of the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, to demolish the NBN. So we know exactly where the coalition are coming from in this debate. It is not about being constructive, it is not about the public interest and it is not about the future of this economy; it is simply about wrecking and about short-term political gain based on fearmongering and personal attacks against the minister, the only minister in the last decade who has managed to bring a policy position forward on this issue.

The coalition failed for 10½ years to have a policy for telecommunications in this country. If you look back over the 10½ years of coalition government, the coalition’s telecommunications policy was a three-line position: the three amigos in charge of Telstra. What a disaster that was. It was a disaster for the shareholders of Telstra and it was a disaster for providing decent broadband access to this community. That was the coalition’s position, a position of no capacity to deal with this issue. They put in place a management team at Telstra that did nothing except what the coalition are so good at—that is, wrecking and not making progress. There is quite clearly market failure in relation to this whole approach to broadband.

The Howard government continually had warnings about what they needed to do. There were reports about how they should deal with the emerging new technology, and yet they failed to deal with it—they did nothing. It was the same when we were facing the global financial crisis. The coalition’s view was that we should wait and see what happens. Senator Macdonald’s contribution—‘Just let us wait and see if the existing copper network will suffice to bring decent broadband to regional communities and to all the communities of Australia’— is similar to that view. It is an untenable position for the future. It is a position which really lays the coalition out for what they are. Senator Macdonald’s contribution simply exposes the coalition as the wreckers and Luddites that they are.

They really are the Liberal Luddites in relation to telecommunications policy. They will do anything to stop the new technology coming in. This is the technology of the future. This technology will drive our health systems, our productivity and our capacity to trade effectively with the rest of the world. It is about ensuring that we have a framework for the future that ensures our education system can match it with the best in the world, and yet the coalition—and the Luddites in the Liberal Party in particular—simply want to demolish this.

One of my duty electorates is New England. The local MP, in case I need to remind the coalition, is Tony Windsor.