Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, these questions have been repeated ad nauseam by Senator Birmingham and Mr Turnbull. They try to pretend that the 2010 corporate plan is still relevant. It was outdated two years later. The new corporate plan, with a start date that included nine months of extra negotiating with Telstra to get the best possible deal for taxpayers, has just been wished away. The global financial crisis did not happen! Nine months of extra negotiations with Telstra did not happen! The ACCC's decision on points of interconnect did not happen! So when the 2012 plan came out we said we would meet 758,000 under construction or completed, and that is what we are doing. Those opposite keep trying to pretend that you can just plug fibre into the house and connect it to the network. You have to build the core infrastructure first. (Time expired)