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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, to questions without notice asked today relating to broadband telecommunications infrastructure.

What we have seen yet again today is a minister struggling to understand the technology issues in her own portfolio. She exposed herself yesterday. Yesterday she put out a press release called ‘Wireless is great for the bush—just ask Labor’. Let me read to you from a paragraph that she included:

What the Coalition Government has very clearly said is that we will provide broadband coverage to 100 per cent of Australia through a mix of technologies and regardless of the technology that is used, we are guaranteeing a minimum speed of 12 megabits per second.

Let us be clear. When challenged on this, Senator Coonan went to her website, without issuing a correction, without putting out a press release to say, ‘I made a mistake,’ and she amended one paragraph on her website to change it to:

What the Coalition Government has very clearly said is that we will provide broadband coverage to 100 per cent of the population. The rollout of a new, independent, competitive and state of the art national broadband network—the OPEL network—will extend high speed services out to 99 per cent of the population and provide speeds of 12 megabits per second by mid 2009. The remaining 1 per cent of consumers will be served via a $2750 satellite subsidy.

That is fine. Everybody is entitled to make a mistake and everybody is entitled to correct the record. But the problem the minister has here is that she repeated that in question time yesterday. So, on the quiet, last night she slipped the old paragraph out and put the new paragraph in—no correction of the record in here, no standards from this government. The Leader of the Government in the Senate should be saying to Senator Coonan, ‘Look, I’m sorry, Helen; I know you don’t have a clue about technology, but you’ve got to go in there and correct the record.’

Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Patterson interjecting—

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

Yes, that is actually part of the rules, Senator Patterson. When you mislead the Australian parliament, when you mislead the Australian public, you are meant to correct the record at the first opportunity. Let us be clear: this is a clear breach of parliamentary standards, it is a clear breach of your government’s alleged standards and you should be doing something about it, Senator Minchin, as the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Let us get onto some equally substantive issues. It would not matter if the minister had learnt her lesson, but she was at it yet again this morning, on the 9am with David and Kim show. She was misleading the Australian public again. She said that everyone will get the same speed by 2009—that is, 12 megabits per second. She had to correct the record last night because she knows she cannot give 12 megs to everyone. God could not deliver 12 megabits by satellite.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce interjecting—

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

Senator Joyce knows it—he lives out in rural Australia—and any other senator here who is on satellite will tell you that they cannot deliver this. The minister, having not made the correction yesterday, then proceeded to go out and do it again today. But let us be clear about the technology that is being used here. According to the technology chief of phone giant Ericsson, the technology‘could be equivalent to the ill-fated Beta video’. It is what you have signed up to, Senator Barnaby Joyce. That is what you are delivering—the Beta equivalent—

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy, address your comments through the chair, please.

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

Sorry, Mr Deputy President; I accept your admonishment. Senator Joyce has delivered the Beta option instead of the VHS option. Australians who live in regional and rural Australia, the mil-lions of families who are going to be trapped in this cul-de-sac, will not forgive you for trapping them in this area. The minister has demonstrated that she has no grasp whatso-ever. Do you know what the minister said the other night? When challenged by Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report, the minister said that fibre is affected by the number of users. It is actually so embarrassing you do not know what to say next. The minister for technology has not got a clue.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All of this bluff and bluster from Senator Conroy is simply trying to hide the fact that Senator Coonan, on behalf of the Howard government, has announced a broadband access program that is far superior, far more detailed, costed and technologically savvy than the shallow announcement by Labor some three months ago. The fact is the policy announced by the government provides world-first policy initiatives and it will ensure that all Australians, regardless of where they live, will have access to affordable broadband—quite a contrast to what Senator Conroy said today. And of course, in contrast to that, the policy Labor released about three months ago is uncosted, untested and undeliverable. They have misled, or attempted to mislead, the Australian population into thinking that they can deliver fibre to the node to 98 per cent of Australians. You only have to look at their flimsy costings to demonstrate that this simply does not add up.

It is generally recognised that $4 billion alone will be required for the cities that cover 36 per cent of our population. So if you are quite generous and assume that you can get another 36 per cent in the less populous areas for another $4 billion, you still only have a total coverage of 72 per cent for $8 billion. That is nowhere near the 98 per cent the Labor Party have promised in their policy. What that means in practical effect is that, under Labor’s policy, some three million premises will be left without a broadband service, and they will have absolutely no prospect of getting one in the future.

Clearly, Labor’s proposal is demonstrably flawed. It is already unravelling because not long ago we heard Labor’s shadow minister for defence, the member for Hunter, Joel Fitzgibbon MP, bell the cat in a media doorstop when he was asked by a journalist, ‘Who misses out in that region’—his own region—‘under your plan?’ He said:

Well those things are yet to be tested; we will roll out fibre to the node right throughout the Hunter region. Obviously there may be some people excluded from that. We haven’t ... don’t have the technical backing to make those final conclusions.

So there we have one of Labor’s senior shadow cabinet ministers confirming that many are going to be left behind, including in his own Hunter region. So this is not a plan for the future. This is a fraud on the Australian people attempted by the Labor opposition. That is absolutely clear again today from what Senator Conroy said, and it reinforces the fact that we have an inexperienced Labor team. They do not have the necessary economic or policy clout. They still have not done their hard yards on policy development after how many years opposition?

Russell Trood (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Eleven.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

More than the 11 years in opposition and still no hard, detailed facts in terms of policy development. How hopeless the Labor opposition are in this area of communications. They simply do not have the capacity to deliver in this area, just as they do not have the capacity to manage a trillion-dollar economy. All they are going to do is raid the Future Fund, put at risk Australia’s future prosperity and bandaid over their lack of hard policy work.

Let us see their costings. Where are their costings? All we have is a one-page summary announced three months ago. There is no further detail. There are no costings, no coverage maps, no back-up detail of the technical cognisance of their program. They are simply not competent in this area. There is nothing to support their wild claim that an $8 billion outlay will bring fibre to the node to 98 per cent of the population. Until they release the details of their plan, particularly with regard to people in rural and regional Australia, we simply can have no confidence that they are an alternative government, both specifically in terms of delivering communications networks and, more importantly, in terms of managing our economy and managing the Australian community.

We heard Senator Conroy refer to the Ericsson criticism of the WiMax facility. Of course Ericsson are going to criticise that. They have a direct interest in HSDPA or 3G mobile phones, which is a direct competitor with the WiMAX technology. So—surprise, surprise—of course they are going to criticise the WiMAX technology: it is their direct competitor. It is purely a business decision on the part of Ericsson to promote that criticism. In contrast, we ought to have a look at what Nokia have said. They are the world’s largest mobile telephone manufacturer and, of course, a competitor of Ericsson, but they have said that there is a very strong business case for the introduction of WiMAX. (Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers to questions today by Senator Coonan, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, and I am more than happy to take up the line used by Senator Chapman and talk about hopelessness. If you want to talk about hopelessness, Senator Chapman, then let us talk about 11 years in government—

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Sterle, address your comments through the chair.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Through you, Mr Deputy President, there have been 11 years of hopelessness. The government have been playing catch-up to Labor’s announcement about a broadband plan for Australia. In 11 years they have done nothing. They have sat on their backsides for 11 years and tried to fool the Australian people, but the Australian people will not be fooled. I will continue my comments about hopelessness by referring to the hopeless answer by Senator Coonan today when she was asked about the promise she made to John Laws and 2UE listeners about government funding on infrastructure duplication. She threw around a few weasel words and finally got to ‘minimalise’. What a hopeless effort that was. I take it from the minister’s answer that she did mislead John Laws and the listeners of 2UE.

Another example of the government’s hopelessness being uncovered was an article that I read with interest today on the front page of the Australian from that very professional and well-regarded journalist Mr Sid Marris. He certainly is very clear in his mind in what he says in the opening paragraph:

Optus will make significant inroads into potentially lucrative broadband markets in Brisbane and Perth—

and these are the key words—

despite the Government’s claim that taxpayers would not be used to build networks where the market should fight it out.

Well, here we go: hopelessness for 11 years has been uncovered. This minister dithers. In answer to question after question, we get five minutes of psychobabble from the minister. We never get a definitive answer. She has perfected psychobabble. And on the subject of confusion, this minister, as Senator Conroy remarked, sneaks around after hours and makes changes to websites—I think we are on mark 4 of the government’s broadband plan. But I could not make any sense out of the answers—and I feel like I am misleading the Senate in saying that, Mr Deputy President, because they were not answers; they were absolute embarrassments to this government. The government had a clean-out of their frontbenchers a few months ago but I think they stopped short before they got to the last quarter.

Someone should throw this minister a lifeline. This minister is clearly out of her depth. She really has no idea what mark we are up to at this stage. I urge those on the other side to do your mates a favour, for God’s sake, and interrupt, help her out—do something—because I learned one thing in my previous days: when you are in a hole, you normally should stop digging.

I also want to talk about the minister for communications—but maybe that should be ‘the minister for leaked communications’, when we find out that 40 Liberal Howard seats were targeted for this plan in some sort of kit. There had to be 40 Liberal held seats. In my home state of Western Australia, those seats—I will share them with you, Mr Deputy President, and with honourable senators opposite—are Hasluck, Stirling, Kalgoorlie and Canning, four Liberal seats. Let us not talk about Brand, Cowan, Swan, Perth or Fremantle, which are all in dire need of a quality high-speed broadband plan. No, they do not get a mention. They do not get a mention because they are Labor held seats.

There is an article in the West Australian that I would like to bring to your attention, and it was written in today’s paper by Mr Nick Butterly. The heading was ‘Broadband plan stays secret’. So, not only are we confused and not only can we on this side of the chamber see what is actually going on—a poll driven, tired, arrogant, out-of-touch government playing catch-up politics—but the newspapers around the country have got it and the voters of Australia have got it. They know damn well that they do not have a quality broadband plan or broadband access, and they can see through this government’s rhetoric. Mr Butterly says that some of the fastest-growing parts of Perth, which is the capital of my home state, including ‘the booming centres of Rockingham and Mandurah’ are ‘likely to be denied’ world-class services.

Just to let you know, Mr Deputy President, down in Brand, according to the data collected in the 2001 census, there were 15 secondary schools, 56 primary schools and 12,268 businesses in a population of 188,000 people. Quite clearly, why should the people of Brand be denied access to quality broadband? I will tell you why: because it is not a Liberal held seat. (Time expired)

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know what the Labor Party are on today, but if they had tested them for it at the door they would not have let them in! Something has really got to Senator Conroy. He was coughing, he was spluttering and he was drinking water. He pivoted, he turned, he frothed at the mouth, and he walked out. Then he was followed by Senator Sterle. Senator Sterle has just informed us that Perth is his home state. That is very interesting. I thought it was a town in his home state, but it is actually his home state. They are under pressure. The pressure is getting to them.

And then we have this Labor pluck-a-duck technology and the Labor pluck-a-duck policy—‘We’re just going to try and morph some policy, completely uncosted; we’re going to foist it out there’—because they have to come up with something. This is ‘Captain Kevin’. Captain Kevin has given them something to talk about. Right now, Senator Conroy is back with Captain Kevin saying, ‘I can smell burning flesh, and I think it’s the Labor Party’s.’ He will be talking to Captain Kevin, saying: ‘Look, Kev, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s coming unstuck.’ And Kevin will be saying to him: ‘Mate, this is your baby. If it doesn’t float, you go down with it.’

I sympathise with Senator Conroy because he is not a bad bloke, but he has just blown this one. It has blown up in his face, and he does not know what to do with it. He came up and said, ‘It’s the Beta option,’ but I think he meant to say, ‘It’s the better option.’ It is those notes—they are letting him down again.

This $8 billion to 98 per cent of Australians is fascinating. The Labor Party policy is based on the premise of your having a node, a post in the ground from which the fibre gets to you. They must believe that these nodes are interspersed through the countryside like tree stumps—that you just wander around and up pops a node. Here’s a gnome; there’s a node! It is the Labor Party pluck-a-duck policy. The trouble is that there are not nodes just randomly associated around the countryside. That is why you have to go to a wireless technology. If you do not use the wireless technology, you do not get delivery.

Look at some of the comparatives. They talk about 98 per cent of the population. I do not know why they did not say 100 per cent. It is the premise of the attitude. It is the reasoning behind their logic. There is no reasoning, just their pluck-a-duck policy: pluck a figure out the air, jot it on a piece of paper, walk it into the chamber and start praying. And then, when it comes unstuck, pivot, drink water, cough, splutter, acknowledge that the pressure is on you, then spin, pivot and walk out the door, like Senator Conroy has done.

It is going to be interesting. I am looking forward to the Labor Party actually tabling the statistical analysis, the costings and the relevance of their policy. It is going to be interesting to see whether anybody on that side of the house has actually done the homework. Or is this what we are looking for as we walk towards the election: these sorts of random assertions about general directions, about possible outcomes that might happen if certain things all line up? It is just rubbish.

The government has delivered an outcome that will get to more people. That is what we want to do: get to more people—as opposed to Labor’s outcome, which gets at more people! So this is the position. They always talk about 98 per cent. The Labor Party, the party that want to close down the Regional Partnerships program, then use this sense of concern. They always talk about the 98 per cent. Well, I am one of those people who live in the other two per cent. I am the senator in this chamber who lives furthest from the coast. They always seem to want to leave us out. Whenever you get a minority, the Labor Party’s approach is to marginalise it even further.

The position is that we are actually delivering something that can assist people in the remotest corners of our country. The other thing is that the Labor Party believe that this is just a line in the sand, that it all just stops here, that there will never, ever be another—  (Time expired)

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

I also rise to take note of answers provided the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan. It is easy to see who is under pressure—boiling point, I would say. In the past week, Senator Joyce has been reported as saying, ‘There’s a lot more that needs to be done.’ Last week he said that he was concerned that the government planned to deliver fibre to the kerb in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and wireless options in the bush. He went on to say that wireless has inherent limitations; it cannot deliver the same quality. Well, Senator Joyce, your colleagues have left you out in the cold on this one. The Australian people are unhappy with the government’s inaction on broadband. We know that. That is what their polling has obviously told them. That is why they are now attempting to do something about it.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I do not think I did say that the federal government was going to deliver fibre to the—

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you taking a point of order, Senator Joyce?

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am—and whether it is correct. I know that Senator Wortley is not endeavouring to mislead; I just want to check that.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

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

There has been 11 years of inaction by the Howard government and now, only months away from a federal election, they have a plan. Let me correct that. They have two plans: one for the city and one for rural and regional Australia. The government’s proposal will create a two-tiered system using fibre-optic cable in the cities and wireless in the country. It is a second-rate system for rural and regional Australia, a cobbled-together broadband plan, that only delivers high-speed fibre networks in the areas of five major capital cities, leaving students and small business operators in rural and regional areas to struggle along with an inferior wireless service. The government now have to deal with misleading gaffes, where they have tried to hoodwink the Australian people for their own political agenda.

The communications minister has said that Labor’s broadband policy was irresponsible. What Australians would like to know is: how can improving every Australian householder’s access to broadband speeds be irresponsible? Why is it irresponsible to invest in the pathway to our future? Why is it irresponsible to strengthen our position in the global economy? Why is it irresponsible to provide improved communication standards to Australians? Labor has steadfastly taken the initiative on broadband policy after inaction by the communications minister. While it is good to know that Labor’s plans on broadband have finally pushed the government into some action, although it is somewhat stumbling, the reality is that one cannot turn vinegar into wine. The government’s catch-up broadband policy is simply a poor second to Labor’s solid initiative on this issue.

Mr Howard says that working families have never been better off. Well, the government’s handling of broadband reflects a government that has lost touch and become arrogant. The fact is that the performance and reliability of wireless suffers because of the distance issues, bad weather, geography and congestion problems with the number of people using the service at any one time. A letter from a Queenslander, which appears in today’s Australian newspaper, says:

Living in regional Queensland, our only broadband option was a ... wireless internet service provider who placed an antenna on our roof which picked up a signal from a receiver tower ... When it rained, no internet, or occasional interrupted services, sometimes for days if there was a prolonged wet period. The ISP technical support admitted to us that “signals can’t travel through water”. The service is great in prolonged drought periods, but unreliable and often non-existent in downpours. As our business is internet-dependent, we required constant service. So we cancelled and are now back to dial-up speed ...

The regional wireless solution is a second-rate, unreliable service. That’s John Howard’s future broadband vision. Maybe he should advise the bush to stop praying for rain.

This is the 18th time the government has claimed it is going to fix Australia’s broadband problems, and now, in the government’s poll-induced terror, they have come up with a second-rate plan for rural and regional Australia. As part of it, we had the minister stating on Monday, as Senator Conroy pointed out, that her government, under wireless network, will deliver up to 12 megabits per second for 99 per cent of Australia. Then the minister changed her tune. On Tuesday she said that it was a minimum of 12 megabits per second, and then later on the same day she said that it was a minimum of— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.