40/07

Thursday 26 April 2007

Labor’s ongoing broadband furphy

Once again Labor has been caught out with its broadband proposal labelled a ‘furphy’ – a further salvo which has seen the Rudd proposal come under fire from the communications sector for being light on detail, uncosted, untested and essentially undeliverable, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan said today.

“Labor’s only justification for throwing $4.7 billion of taxpayer’s money into a discredited proposal is based on a figure quoted in a Government report that will be a decade old by the time their planned rollout is completed,” Senator Coonan said.

Labor’s claim that its broadband proposal would reap a $30 billion a year benefit to the economy was rightly reported today as being a “furphy”.

“Today’s revelations highlight that Labor can’t be trusted with money. Broadband is very important to Australia, as the Accenture report of 2001 showed. However, to try and use this figure to justify a rollout by 2011 is nothing short of fanciful.

“Their policy has again been exposed as being so light on detail that it borders on the ridiculous. Senator Conroy also admitted he hadn’t even bothered to check where the figure came from – this is both lazy and economically irresponsible.”

Senator Coonan said that these revelations followed comments from numerous independent analysts last week suggesting that Labor had under costed its proposal by at least a factor of two.

“The challenge for Labor at their National Conference this weekend is to come clean and actually show some sign of hard policy work, rather than desperately seeking headlines,” Senator Coonan said.

“This is an important debate, however, it is the Howard Government that is committed to delivering high speed broadband to all Australians, whereas Labor is only committed to political point-scoring.

“Australians deserve better than a hastily cobbled together piece of flawed economics which delivers nothing more than an empty promise,” Senator Coonan said.

Media Contact: Fiona Telford - 02 6277 7480