The National Broadband Network is truly the Nationals’ Broadband Network as it has been lifted straight from the 2005 Page Research Centre’s position paper into telecommunications chaired by then Senator-elect Fiona Nash, Senator Barnaby Joyce, the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, said today.

“How could we disagree with something that is quite evidently our idea,” he said. “The problem, in the near future is because of the mountainous debt that has been acquired to pay for ceiling insulation, boom gates, school halls and sundry $900 cheques, we will be compromising our capacity to raise the money to fulfil this infrastructure goal.

“It is a program like this that goes to show how blatantly ridiculous alternate policies such as the so-called stimulus packages really were. This delivers a strategic infrastructure outcome. The other packages delivered nothing more than a path to a debt-laden financial oblivion.

“It is vitally important that the National Broadband Network gets to the corners of our country where the market has failed, at a price that is both affordable and a service that is comparable.”

Senator Nash said that the Nationals’ plan recommended that the government retain a stake in the telecommunications infrastructure by making a capital investment in a broadband network.

 “A business consortium in 2004 approached the Page Research Centre with a preliminary costing of $7 billion to roll out the infrastructure with a view to it being completed in five years.

“The plan then was to roll out fibre optic cable which the government would lease to service providers including Telstra. With the government controlling this part of the infrastructure, it would remove some of anticompetitive practices and create a transparent pricing regime. 

“As I said in 2005, rolling out fibre optic infrastructure across Australia would be like a Glass Snowy, Mr Rudd has used the same analogy today.”