10 September 2009 in Speeches
Speech to the House, TELECOMMUNICATIONS LEGISLATION AMENDMENT, 11 September 2009
Mr BRIGGS (Mayo) (11:17 AM) —It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 following the member for Braddon. I am sure we all look forward to the day when the member for Braddon can skype, and it will be an enjoyable experience I am sure for his family to have him dialling in each night and having his face over their computer screen. It is interesting to follow a member from a Tasmanian electorate, given that the whole farce of the government’s plan is being unravelled in Tasmania. It is interesting to note that, had the government continued with the OPEL program and not broken the contract as it did, by the end of this year the Braddon electorate would have had 13 new WiMAX base stations, would have had five exchanges, expanded to cell II-plus and would have been delivering faster speeds. Instead, we have this opportunity for a hard hat for the member for Braddon, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy to have their photos taken but not to have any actual services delivered.
But let us not let the spin get in the way of the substance, which highlights the biggest issue with the NBN mark 1 or 2 or 3 or 4, whichever one is to come. It highlights the approach of this government like no other issue, and that is the approach of spin over substance, the photo opportunity and the announcement over the detail. We saw in April this year the second mark of the National Broadband Network announcement, which was the new plan to spend, as I understood, 51 per cent of the potential value of the NBN—although the member for Braddon has just said that the government will spend up to $43 billion, which appears to be the total cost indicated in the back-of-the envelope calculation. So confusion reigns over on that side of the place on the economics of this plan. No business plan has been released. It is a $43 billion network without a business plan. There are no investors and there has been no information to market. If they were a company they would be locked up it is that badly planned and that badly thought through. But it does highlight like no other issue the spin-over-substance approach of this Prime Minister and this government. It is the New South Wales government’s way of doing business—the New South Wales Labor Party’s way of doing business—and we have seen the results in the state of New South Wales and what is happening there today with people like Senator Arbib from New South Wales and the minister for consumer affairs inflicting on the Australian public what they have done to that state.
This issue is a good example of that. We had during the last election campaign in April 2007 the NBN mark 1 announcement, which was that we would have a $4.7 billion spend for a fibre-to-the-node network of up to 12 megs per second. That promise, of course, was never deliverable to 98 per cent of the country. However, it was a good election promise; it was a nice pie-in-the-sky optic. Everyone thought that would be a nice thing for everyone to have—it sounded like it was new and fashionable, which fitted with the Kevin 07 mantra—but the problem was that it was never deliverable. So Labor get into government and they do a study. I think they spent about $50 million at looking at whether they could do it. There was great fanfare and it was all meant to be rolled out by the next year, from memory.
Mr Billson —Services by the end of 2008.
Mr BRIGGS —Yes, services by the end of 2008, that is right. But instead we had some delays because they started to work out that they could not actually implement what they had announced in April 2007 without any plans, with just an announcement, with a nice press conference with the then Leader of the Opposition and the shadow spokesman on the issue. There was no plan and no detail, just a couple of things about a five-page policy document.
April 2009 comes along and we have another plan—NBN mark 2. This time, rather than $4.7 billion—destroying along the way the Communications Fund, which was the fund set up to support regional and rural areas, the very areas that the member for Braddon was talking about and that would have benefited from the OPEL project by the end of this year—we have a new plan, which is the $43 billion fibre-to-the-home network to 90 per cent of Australians. That would be on their own planning without the business case, so we are operating in the world of guesstimates a little bit here, but they say it is an opportunity for a large part of our population—most of the big cities—to get access to 100 megs per second with a fibre-to-the-home network. It sounds like a wonderful idea. They have it in Korea. I think the latest figures there are that about 15 per cent of people have taken it up because the cost is quite high. They have implemented it in Korea, so you can tell what their business plan was, unlike in Australia where there are no business costings and no plan about how to spend $43 billion. Numbers these days with this government are so high that it does not sound like a lot of money, but it is a substantial amount of money without a business plan.
We do not know how much it would cost per household—somewhere in excess of $200 per month, most probably—and it would miss most areas. It would miss most areas in my electorate. Even on the government’s own plans, which I take very sceptically, they say towns with over 1,000 in population would receive the service. That would mean that at least 24 of my communities—American River, Balhannah, Birdwood, Carrickalinga, Clarendon, Echunga, Gumeracha, Hindmarsh Island, Houghton, Kersbrook, Macclesfield, Meadows, Middleton, Milang, Mount Compass, Mount Pleasant, Mount Torrens, Normanville, Oakbank, Penneshaw, Springton, Somerton, Uraidla and Yankalilla—would all miss out. I suspect there would be more. I suspect Mount Barker, Nairne, Littlehampton and Stirling could be added—you name it. The reason is that it is not an actual policy or a thought-through plan. It has no business plan attached to it and no costings. It is a bit of spin. It is a bit of politics. It is designed to get a headline. It is designed to spread a message about being forward thinking and being for new technologies. We heard that all through the speech from the member for Braddon, who talked about the new service being the productivity lifter for the country. I agree with some of the things that the member for Braddon said; they are very true.
The internet provides an opportunity for our country to move to new and exciting industries and new and exciting ways of doing business. However, the problem is that, when you mislead the Australian people to the degree that those on the other side have, eventually someone is going to work it out. That time will come. You cannot just announce NBN mark 3. What will it be—$100 billion? This is the lunacy of this proposal. There is no detail. There is no outline of how the business case would work and yet we still have the farce of those opposite coming into this place and singing the virtue of a plan that just will not go ahead. We have just seen that from a member from Tasmania, where it has been outlined writ large today.
The service is already two years delayed and it will continue to be delayed. This bill relates to provisions which the government sees it as necessary to pass as far as allowing access to important network information goes. We have seen a bill similar to this in this parliament before with NBN mark 1. We will potentially see another bill similar to this with NBN mark 3, mark 4 and maybe even mark 5. It depends on how long they can keep putting off the promise, making spin over substance. This bill seeks to allow access for, as I understand, a period of 10 years. We have moved an amendment on this side of the House to restrict that access to a certain period of time and I certainly support that amendment.
I think it is important that we put the challenge of broadband in Australia into context. Those opposite talk very often, and have for some time, about the fact that Australia lags behind in its service compared to the rest of the world. In some places that is true. In my electorate that would be true. We have significant challenges with broadband in Mayo, in the Adelaide Hills and outer metropolitan areas. Aberfoyle Park has some particular challenges. That relates to a couple of things. There is the history of the area in the way that Telstra first invested in the services many years ago. It also relates to the topography which, as many of you would be familiar with, is a similar issue as far as digital TV goes; that is another area where this minister seems to have some problems at the moment.
There are some challenges in certain areas, particularly outer metro and regional areas of our country, because we are so vast. The cleverness of the OPEL plan was that it addressed these issues in a way such that future technologies could be built onto it. The issue we should be dealing with in relation to broadband is that where the government can assist, have some real impact and help Australians is in areas such as mine, regional areas and outer metro areas where broadband fibre services are not likely ever to be viable; therefore the market is not going to go there. That is where government can assist through a range of technologies.
In some places investing in fibre will work where there is enough of a scale. However, in most regional and outer metro areas internet delivery will be via a mixture of wireless, ADSL2+ and these types of services. That is where OPEL was very clever in that it addressed these issues across the board and brought most Australians up to reasonable speeds—I think up to 98 per cent of Australians to speeds of 12 megs per second. Let’s be honest about this. Twelve megs per second is actually quite fast. I suspect very few people in this place actually have faster speeds than 12 megs per second at their house and, if they did, they would not know the difference. When you get past 12 megs per second, you are starting to talk about downloading videos and watching TV live across the internet. That is where a lot of this is being driven from. A fibre-to-the-home network is another way into the house for a communications company which can then start to deliver on-demand services—a fifth TV station, some would allege.
That is all very well where there is market and, frankly, that is happening in some places already. Many new housing developments in suburbia have fibre-to-the-home networks. In fact, on Hindmarsh Island—which is an outer part of my electorate in the Lower Lakes, for those of you unfamiliar with my electorate—there is a new independent living retirement village which opened late last year with fibre-to-the-home services. The residents have TV through the fibre-to-the-home services and they get on-demand videos et cetera. They get the benefit of those services. However, there is no possible way for the government to build that network across this country. We are already seeing speculation that if they go ahead in some parts there will be overhead cables along streets. Those sorts of battles in my area will be interesting ones for this government to deal with.
If we are going to be serious about broadband and are not going to treat it with political spin, as an optics issue rather than looking at the substance of the issue, we should be looking at the mixture of technologies which will deliver the fastest and best services available to all people—not just those who are fortunate enough to live in the confines of the city but those who live in the outer regions of our country, as you would understand, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams. For those who live in my area and in the Deputy Speaker’s area, the services are underdelivering. In fact, for the first 14 months that we lived in Mount Barker we could not get broadband. That was because of the pair gain system that occurs in Mount Barker, a problem that affects my area.
However, the truth is that, if you want to really compare our speeds and availability of speed, most of our metropolitan capitals actually have very good speeds by international standards. Most of our metropolitan capitals have reasonably low-cost access to speed, because competition is working there because the scale exists. Most of our population centres have access to fast broadband speeds—or fibre speeds, in some cases—and the market is working quite well. Telstra provides a very good, competitive service, as does Optus and some of the smaller internet companies. Of course, another outcome of the government’s flawed plan is that, if they do build this network, they will destroy competition completely. All it will leave are Telstra and Optus, with the big scale of their operations, to offer plans which will just destroy anyone who wants to compete.
So at the moment we have good access in our major population centres—in most cases; there are some exceptions—but not in the outer metropolitan and regional areas such as that of the shadow minister at the table, the member for Dunkley, who still has issues in his area that relate to scale and distance. Australia is challenged by the tyranny of distance in many areas and this one is probably the greatest. That is why it needs an approach such as the WiMAX solution that was looked at in OPEL or the 3G solution which now operates so well throughout my electorate. In most parts of my electorate I now get downloads on my Blackberry very quickly, and that is how the competitive market has worked. This intervention by the government, this $43 billion pipedream, is all about politics and not about substance. It is missing the point of the challenge of broadband in our country—that is, the challenge of investing in the areas which are underserviced.
It is also the challenge of delivering the services that people want. A few years ago—I forget the exact year—there was a study done which showed that, even when fast speeds were available, about 60 per cent of people still chose dial-up or dial-up-equivalent speeds. That will change in time as more services are delivered over the internet, but many of my constituents and many of those in the constituencies of those opposite—it is probably a little bit different for Minister Plibersek, who is at the table, with a constituency such as Sydney, where they probably do access faster speeds more often given the nature of her electorate—still choose to go for the slower speeds because all they want access to is email and maybe some internet banking or a small amount of surfing the internet.
So the government is planning a network which most people do not want, which has not been thought through and which is going to spend a large amount of taxpayers’ money without any detailed business case and without being honest with the Australian people and saying, ‘If you want this network, you are going to be paying about 200 bucks per month.’ How many constituents will be willing to pay $200 per month in my electorate? I can tell you that it will be very, very few. In fact, I have some interesting statistics about my electorate from the last census—which, granted, was a few years ago now. Sixty-four per cent of people in my electorate have access to the internet but only 29 per cent take up access to broadband. Some of that will be because they cannot get access to broadband but some of that will be choice. Some of that will be that they do not want to spend more money than they would on what they think is a service that they need or want.
Of course, we have a plan for the future in this space. There is huge opportunity in this area to increase our productivity and our productive capacity for new businesses to enter the global economy. For small businesses based in small regional towns I think that is a wonderful, fantastic opportunity. If the government were serious, they would not have destroyed the $2 billion Communications Fund which was there for futureproofing the underserviced areas. But they have already done that.
Mr Billson interjecting—
Mr BRIGGS —They would not have killed OPEL. They would be thinking about how we genuinely deal with the areas which are underserviced in this country. The government do not need to invest in the inner cities. The inner cities are looking after themselves.
Ms Plibersek —Oi!
Mr BRIGGS —The minister at the table is disappointed with that but the truth is that, if you went to Sydney today, you could get fast broadband. That is a good thing. It is because there is scale there and it is working. However, if you come to my electorate, in many parts you cannot get fast broadband. You would have had it by the end of this year had the government gone ahead with the OPEL solution; they did not. They have chosen to use this as a political bludgeon tool. It is going to fail the government and it is going to fail the Australian public. The government have announced a $43 billion plan without a business case on how it will work. It is going to cost Australians. It is very disappointing that the government have done it and they stand condemned for their lack of thoughtfulness on this issue.