Queensland Nationals’ Senator, Barnaby Joyce, said today the first real delivery by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, was not to improve services, but to remove services to remote and regional Australia.

“The removal of the Opel contract leaves Australia with a virtual monopoly in regional areas, held by Telstra, and this will not lead to delivery of new and improved services.

“The Opel contract would deliver broadband to 99% of Australians yet, even by his own admission, the Minister’s much talked about and yet to be seen, in real fibre terms, broadband network will only deliver coverage to 98% of Australians. For people in remote and regional areas, this means a 100% increase in Australians not covered and an immense increase in the area of Australia not covered.

“It’s very easy, when talking about the percentage of people covered, to ignore the percentage of area covered. It is quite convenient to deliver services to a high percentage of people; all you have to do is deliver services to the major capitals. This is assisted by the fact services already exist there so you are really providing nothing and the capital cities are in an area where the market will provide the services if required.

“The true test for both Minister Conroy and Prime Minister Rudd is when they say they will give a computer to every school child, as the toolbox of the 21st Century; do they mean every child, everywhere in an on-line form they can use or just the ones living on the coast?

“If your computer is to be effective, you must be able to access the internet at comparable speeds to those delivered elsewhere. Is Minister Conroy going to give a guarantee he will deliver new corridors of fibre to such places as Birdsville as a real delivery of service rather than just a rhetorical delivery of a speech that recognises no more than the current position?

“At this point in time, the only thing the Minister has delivered is the removal of a service, a promise on the never-never, an enshrined monopoly position for the incumbent Telco and a ridicule of their own statement to provide a computer to every child at school."

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