Broadband fiasco highlights Rudd's failures
22-January-2010
The criticism last week of the Rudd Government’s National Broadband Scheme by one of the Government’s own hand-picked telecommunications experts selected to give advice on the project has confirmed my fears about the failings of this scheme.
Professor Reg Coutts was right in saying that there has been “worryingly little discussion of how the 10 per cent of the population not covered by the fibre network will get their broadband…to my mind, there will be no credible national broadband network policy and plan unless the solution to the 10 per cent of premises is addressed”.
Under the Government’s guidelines for the rollout of the NBN, towns with a population under 1000 will be excluded under the scheme, meaning more than two million regional Australians will be “left in broadband wilderness”.
In April last year I warned that more than 10,000 people in the Parkes electorate will be barred from accessing the proposed fibre optic broadband network. Included in the list of towns are Baradine, Boggabilla, Collarenebri, Coolah, Dunedoo, Mungindi and Rylstone. My concerns were predictably dismissed by Country Labor, who proclaimed that for every person in regional Australia the “value of the NBN is obvious”. That argument did not sit too well at the time with those who will be missing out, just as it is not sitting too well now with Mr Coutts.
Since it was first touted, the NBN has been dogged by a series of spectacular blunders, most notably the blow-out in the predicted cost of the project from $4.7 billion to $43 billion. On top of that the Government has been repeatedly unable to answer simple questions such as when it will reach regional areas like the Parkes electorate and how much it will ultimately cost.
Once again the Rudd Government has failed the test when it comes to services for regional areas.
Last Friday marked a milestone in Australian politics. It was on that day 90 years ago that 11 members came together to form an independent political party dedicated solely to representing the interests of regional Australia. Since the Nationals were formed in 1920 under the banner of the Country Party it has enjoyed nine decades of unbroken representation in the Federal Parliament.
During that time the growth of regional Australia has been inextricably linked to the passionate and uncompromising representation of regional Australia by the Nationals. However, the challenges facing regional Australia today are as great as at any time in the party’s history. The imminent reintroduction of the Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the changes to Youth Allowance and our ailing health services are just a few of the battles my Nationals colleagues and I will be fighting on your behalf in 2010.