Labor and Liberal Trade Blows Over Regional Broadband Plans
Labor and Liberal Trade Blows Over Regional Broadband Plans
October 18, 2007: With the federal election just around the corner, Communications Minister, Helen Coonan and her Labor counterpart, Senator Stephen Conroy have exchanged blows in a salvo of attacks on their opposing broadband plans.
Senator Coonan used yesterday’s announcement that internet service provider, Internode would be providing wireless broadband services to regional South Australia as an opportunity to lash out at Labor’s broadband plan.
“We all know that the Labor Party’s proposal for broadband in a complete farce. Australia will be left waiting until 2013 for broadband and at least 25 per cent of the Australia population will miss out altogether.” Coonan said.
Senator Coonan focused her attacks on Labor’s $8 Billion Fibre-To-The-Node plan, which aims to bring 12mb/sec broadband to 98% of Australia and provide wireless broadband for the remaining 2%.“Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party plan to rip $2 billion from the Communications Fund to help fund a network that industry has said it will fund itself” she said.
Labor defended this by pointing out that the use of the “Communications Fund to build a network that will provide broadband access to all Australians including those in rural and regional areas is in keeping with the purpose of the establishment of the fund.” Conroy said.
Senator Conroy then used the opportunity to step up its attack on the Governments own plan to commission a $958 million wireless broadband network, which has been spearheaded by a partnership between Optus and The Elders. “The Howard Government has neglected Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure over 11 long years which has left us lagging behind the rest of the world. They have wasted $1 billion of taxpayers money on a second-rate wireless service that has so many black spot holes in its coverage that it looks like Swiss cheese” he said.
Labor followed this up by releasing maps which show that “the Howard Government has assumed the earth is flat and has ignored critical issues such as topography” Senator Conroy said.
According to Conroy the maps and research released today by the Labor party demonstrate the inability of the Governments offering to provide the speeds or coverage needed. This has been an ongoing campaign by the Senator who has been opposed to the Liberal plan from the very beginning. Conroy claimed that the Governments plan has “coincidently been targeted at the 40 most marginal Liberal and National seats, which must have been complete coincidence” when addressing the AFR Broadband conference in August.
What is important to note here is the two parties are really trading blows over their broadband schemes as a whole; the funding announcement for Internode is just being used as a platform for both parties to attack each other. Internode is using Australian Broadband Guarantee funding to bring wireless broadband to the Yorke Peninsula and the Coorong region in South Australia, which were previously unable to access it.