Page 4330 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010

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However, it appears that the outcome will be that fibre will provide the bulk and the backbone and there will be some additional wireless capacity in certain areas. Members may have noted that I was using my wireless mobile phone today to provide my connection to my laptop.

The Greens, of course, support good access to the internet being available to everybody. We know that Gungahlin has missed out on this. This is very ironic because back in 1995 when Gungahlin was originally being settled—it started with Palmerston—there was a promise by Telstra to spend $20 million to connect all Palmerston school buildings with fibre optic using a hub and router system into the university’s file server, other schools and then also into the worldwide web and internet. Remember that we are talking 15 years ago. This was revolutionary.

Unfortunately, it was never followed through. Since then, as Gungahlin has grown it has problems with even the most basic internet connections. This is presumably one of the reasons why large businesses and federal government departments have not moved into Gungahlin. While we support the government’s plan for the national broadband network, it is only planning to cover 3,000 houses in Gungahlin. Given that there are over 12,000 houses in Gungahlin at present, this rollout is unfortunately not going to fix the problem. It is going to leave around two-thirds of the houses uncabled.

I now wish to speak to my amendment. Therefore, I move the amendment that was previously circulated in my name:

Add:

“(4) requires all new subdivisions to have cabled high-speed broadband;

(5) notes that the following groups:

(a) Electronic Frontiers Australia;

(b) Google;

(d) the Australian Greens; and

(e) the Federal Coalition

oppose the introduction of a mandatory internet filter as part of the Commonwealth’s broadband and communications strategy, noting that it will slow the speed of broadband delivery; and

(6) calls upon the Federal Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, to abandon the unworkable mandatory internet filtering policy in favour of more effective measures in consultation with industry.”.

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mrs Dunne): The question now is that Ms Le Couteur’s amendment be agreed to.

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