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

My question is to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan. Can the minister confirm her statement in parliament on 19 June that the electorate maps of coverage of OPEL’s broadband network were released to all MPs on the day of the announcement and that all this information was public? Is the minister aware that the department is refusing to release the same maps unless they are kept confidential? Will the minister now direct her department to put the full set of electorate maps on its website? Will the minister also immediately release the list of 426 exchanges that will be ADSL2+ enabled by OPEL?

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Wortley for the question. Funnily enough, it has an eerily familiar ring to a request I had from Telstra. That particular request has an eerily familiar ring to it, Senator Wortley. The request really relates to maps for the Australian Broadband Guarantee, not for OPEL coverage maps, which in fact have been publicly available. But it is interesting that Senator Wortley talks about maps. I wonder why we have not seen a map, a plan or any technical information—not one skerrick other than a flimsy press release—for 4½ months from the Labor Party.

The Labor Party cannot come in here and lecture the government about maps and plans when we have a fully costed, fully able to be rolled out, whole new wholesale broadband network for rural and regional Australia that not only will reach 99 per cent of the population but will look after the seven million households that Labor’s plan simply fails to address—simply because the Labor Party has not got its head around the mix of technologies that is necessary to deliver a range of solutions for a range of circumstances in rural and regional Australia. When Senator Wortley comes clean with some maps from the Labor Party, perhaps I will consider some further Australian Broadband Guarantee maps more broadly.

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

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. The minister has again failed to answer the question, but I will put my supplementary. Is the minister’s refusal to make the maps and exchange details publicly available because they show that 90 per cent of the exchanges getting OPEL ADSL2+ already have ADSL and that 40 per cent of exchanges getting OPEL ADSL2+ already have it? Don’t the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program guidelines say that coverage should be provided to under-served areas and those that do not have access to metro-comparable broadband? Hasn’t the minister breached her own guidelines?

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say to Senator Wortley: if you are going to ask technical questions, try to get them right. It is actually ADSL2+, not ADSL+. When we are looking at Labor’s broadband plan, we see that Labor falls at the first fence. Mr Rudd says that policy should be evidence based, and Labor does not have the courage, does not have the policy bottle, to do the hard yards. It just hides behind Telstra. Come out. Show us your plan; show us your maps. Then, as another person says, we can have a real conversation.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.