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JENNY BROCKIE: Tonight, we are joined by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the Opposition spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, Independent Tony Windsor and others. And do join in via Facebook and Twitter. Welcome, everyone, good to have you all here.
I want to start, Stephen Conroy, with you, and with some basics because I think there has been quite a bit of confusion about what the NBN actually is. How is this fibre network different to the copper network that we use to telephone in broadband now?
STEPHEN CONROY, MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Well, copper has been a fabulous piece of infrastructure, lasting 60 or 70 years. We are coming to the end of the copper area, to the technological limit that copper can provide, particularly when it comes to broadband. Even now, with ADSL2 Plus, you need to live within about 1,500 metres of an exchange to get the full benefit of the ADSL2 Plus. If you live more than 4 kilometres from an exchange, you cannot get ADSL and even the next iteration, VDSL, you need to live within 900 metres of an exchange so copper is coming to the end of its technological usefulness.
JENNY BROCKIE: What will fibre do?
STEPHEN CONROY: Fibre allows you - it doesn't matter how far you live from the equivalent exchange, you get the speed that you purchase. If you buy 10meg, you get 10megs of speed, if you buy 100megs, you will get 100megs of speed. So fibre travels at the speed of light, it is what all of the international cables are made of. It is what the major backbone routes are made of. It is a future-proof technology which allows the upgrade as new technology comes along. They are the boxes - to use real scientific jargon - you have tracts of fibre and boxes at the end.
JENNY BROCKIE: And the boxes are at people's houses.
STEPHEN CONROY: Yes, and in the exchange and as technology progresses and upgrades you don't need to relay the fibre - you take the boxes off at each end and put new boxes on. It is an engineering way to explain it.
JENNY BROCKIE: So the cable will run mostly underground - the fibre network will run mostly underground?
STEPHEN CONROY: Well, now we have reached an agreement with Telstra, the heads of agreement which many people would have heard of. It will use exactly the same footprints as Telstra used to today - that is about - I think the estimates are about 66% underground. But still about two thirds of Telstra's existing copper network is above ground.
JENNY BROCKIE: And NBN Co, the national broadband network company, is the wholesaler?
STEPHEN CONROY: That is right.
JENNY BROCKIE: It is the wholesaler and it provides that service to a variety of retailers?
STEPHEN CONROY: Yes.
JENNY BROCKIE: OK. And those retailers are people like Optus and II net and so on.
STEPHEN CONROY: And Telstra now.
JENNY BROCKIE: So you want a brand new network underground, replacing all the copper wires to nearly every house in
STEPHEN CONROY: 93% of Australian home, businesses, schools and hospitals will get access to the fibre network. The remaining 7% will get a next generation wireless technology and satellite technology so everyone will get an improved broadband experience from the national broadband network.
JENNY BROCKIE: And bare with me everyone, just one more question because I think we want to try and get all this clear. If people agree to get that fibre network brought from, say, the street, you know, gets to the street to a box on their house now, in the first instance - now, with the roll-out - there will be no charge for that stage of the process?
STEPHEN CONROY: Absolutely. That is right - at the moment, it is a free piece of fibre to connect to the side of your house, if you choose to take up a service.
JENNY BROCKIE: You have to pay?
STEPHEN CONROY: No. You do a deal with your retail provider and they will come and install the box and they will provide the equipment inside your house and then you plug into the new equipment, now that will be part of an ongoing contract.
JENNY BROCKIE: Okay. You have to pay? And we will get on to that element of cost later. There are a whole lot of ranges of costs here. There is the cost of the network, the cost to the retail service and everything else. Malcolm Turnbull, I want to come to you now. You have been patient listening to all this. You have been given the task by your leader of demolishing the NBN. Do you want to do that?
MALCOLM TURNBULL, SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Well I think Tony was talking about demolishing the Governments’ argument for the NBN and I'm really simply interested in getting the facts on the table. Everyone is committed. Everyone certainly in political world is committed to having broadband, fast broadband across
Now, my argument with Stephen is not about the merits of broadband - we all agree to that, heaven knows. We are all committed to that. My argument is that he has decided to go down this route of building a massive $43 billion Government-owned monopoly, to build this network, without doing a cost benefit analysis, without looking at different options. I mean, how do we know that this is the best way of achieving it? How do we know we would not be better off, as I believe we would be, in incrementally filling in the black spots in the city where broadband speeds are not adequate, investing in rural and regional Australia to provide broadband services there and in terms of the bush, the policies of the two sides of politics are pretty much the same. They are both committed to that. The real question is how much taxpayers' money do we spend? Do we need to spend it? How do we do it in a way that protects the taxpayer and delivers us the broadband that we need.
JENNY BROCKIE: You are moving a private members' bill and you want a detailed 10 year business plan on this and you also want the Productivity Commission to do a cost benefit analysis you have said that if the Productivity Commission gave the NBN the ticket, it would be incredibly persuasive – are the words you used. Is it conceivable - do you think - that the Coalition could support an NBN if there was such a report and the results came out?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think if the Productivity Commission gave us a very big tick, it would be incredibly persuasive and I think most people would expect everybody to support it then - that would be incredibly persuasive.
JENNY BROCKIE: Do you know the Coalition would support it if that happened?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I'm reasonably well informed - Barnaby Joyce said that if the Productivity Commission gave it a tick he would grow wings and fly around the room and support it so there is a very big commitment from Barnaby. But the real question is this. This is the biggest infrastructure investment in our nation's history. Now, Stephen's Government has said again and again that major infrastructure projects should be subject to rigorous cost benefit analysis. He set up his - his Government set up Infrastructure
JENNY BROCKIE: OK. Tony Windsor, you are a big supporter of the NBN, it was a big important decision on which way to go in the election. Which way are you going to go on Malcolm Turnbull's private members bill, do you think we have done enough work to work out if this is fact a viable and is there cost benefit in it? Would you vote for his bill, his private members' bill?
TONY WINDSOR, INDEPENDENT MP,
JENNY BROCKIE: So does that mean you have doubts – you are sounding like you have doubts – so what does that mean in terms of your position on the NBN at the moment?
TONY WINDSOR: I have doubts about the Productivity Commission. I am a supporter of the national broadband network. I think it is the one piece of infrastructure that I've seen from a country perspective that actually can negate distance as being a disadvantage of living in the country. We talk about paradigms in this particular parliament, the changing paradigms. I think this is the one thing that can do that in terms of doing business, health, education and a whole range of things.
JENNY BROCKIE: Do you think enough work has been done on working out whether it is worth the $43 billion and whether it is worth doing it the way it has been proposed?
TONY WINDSOR: I'm not the Government. I've look at the McKinsey report, I know there will be other documentation coming out. I think - I know Malcolm has genuine concerns about this. But Tony Abbott's agenda, in my view, is to stop it, not just to check it - to stop it and I think there's enough information out there now for me to support it.
PAUL BUDDE, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BUDDECOMM: There have been a hundred and two studies around the world in the OECD, from
JENNY BROCKIE: Okay Malcolm?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah. The problem is there has been no work done here. And the real issue is this - this Government has said that cost benefit analysis is really important. What a cost benefit analysis is that you first identify what the problem is that you are trying to solve. Let's say that we want to get fast broadband in the bush. We want to make sure it is available in the cities. We want to make sure that it is affordable. Let's say that that is our objective. We agree with that. What a cost benefit analysis does is say let's look at the different options for achieving that. Let's see what can be rolled out most quickly, most cost effectively and most prudently. That is what sensible people do in the private sector. But I'm afraid to say it is a shock, I know, that sometimes politicians, when they are dealing with taxpayers' money are not so responsible and I they should be.
JENNY BROCKIE: Response, Stephen Conroy? Why not do that sort of study?
STEPHEN CONROY: As Paul Budde just said, there are studies all around the world that demonstrate the positive benefits of broadband to productivity,
KEVIN MORGAN, TELECOMMUNICATIONS ANALYST: But we have broadband Stephen, there are no studies that demonstrate moving from broadband to very high-speed broadband - and that is what this debate is about.
STEPHEN CONROY: There are plenty of studies all around the world that demonstrate this - Access Economics, Not a Telstra study, as Malcolm incorrectly claimed in parliament today, commissioned by
JENNY BROCKIE: But that was looking at fibre to the node, not fibre to the home.
STEPHEN CONROY: It is a substantial benefit to the economy - We are going to the next generation upgrade, beyond fibre to the node. The benefits will be greater from moving to giving the country greater capacity. So what we are seeing here is looking at the growth that there has been in demand for broadband speeds in the last ten years. It has doubled roughly every 18 months. If you say they are using 5mg speed downloads at the moment, then if you make the same assumption that it continues to grow as it has grown over the last ten years - not an unreasonable assumption - you end up with a demand in 2018 of 100 mg speeds. Unless Kevin and unless Malcolm know something about the Australian population nobody else knows - which is that we will stop demanding increases in the speed because of the new applications - unless you know that, then you are saying, "We should stop and not go any further."
JENNY BROCKIE: Okay Kevin, what did you want to say?
KEVIN MORGAN: Well, the base case in those studies is no broadband to broadband. Now, we are talking about - there is one study, and I'm happy to send it to Stephen’s office, from New Zealand, saying there is massive gain from going no broadband to broadband, but when you go from reasonable speed broadband to high- speed broadband, there is little discernable gain for the amount of money being spent. Can I just correct Stephen on a couple of things - he had better get on the phone to Bonn tonight because he can stop Deutsche telecom – one of the eighth biggest telephone companies in the world, wasting billions of euros on upgrading its copper. The copper still has good life in it. You can get on the phone to AT & T and tell them not to upgrade their copper because they are making the dreadful mistake.
JENNY BROCKIE: One at a time! One at a time!
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Jenny, can I make this point. The big question here that both Stephen's glossing over and Kevin is trying to point out and Paul - with great respect to them is this - there is a big difference in terms of cost between having broadband available at, say, the best speeds available in the cities today, say on average around 10, 12, 15 megabits per second. That is regarded as fast broadband everywhere around the world - in America, the FCC, which is Federation Communications Commission published a huge report on broadband this year, they say that the target minimum should be 4 megabits a second across America. They are spending, in terms of Federal money – on broadband, taxpayer’s money - 1% on a per capita basis as we are. Now, the real... OK, OK... Jenny, if I can just... You see, there is no question that as - there is a big uplift in productivity to go from no broadband to, say, 12 megabits per second. But where the jury is out, and it is thoroughly unproven, is whether there is any great productivity benefit of the household level to go from, say, 12 megabits to 100 megabits. That is what Stephen is spending $43 billion of taxes...
STEPHEN CONROY: There are stroke victims who will be able to be treated in their home in their rehabilitation, Malcolm. They will be able to do it anywhere in
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I have it here Stephen and we can go through it if you like.
STEPHEN CONROY: ….those studies show the positive benefit and as Paul has quoted - studies from around the world.
JENNY BROCKIE: I want to move on. Paul, I want to ask you. A lot of Australians already have access to relatively high broadband speeds. Do we really need to spend all the money replacing the copper system with a fibre one? Do we really need to spend that much?
STEPHEN CONROY: I challenge you on behalf of the millions of Australians on dial-up in metropolitan cities – in
JENNY BROCKIE: Well, quite a few people have relatively good broadband speeds.
PAUL BUDDE: 20 to 25% of the population are what we now call high-speed broadband - 20 to 25%. But if you are going to deliver e-health services, education services, if we are going to deliver all the services are we only going to say, "We will only give to the 25% who can afford it."? If we want to solve the healthcare cost in the future, we have to start looking at monitoring people from home. People cannot go to retirement villages – we already have a 15,000 shortage of nurses. How do we solve that? We need to bring broadband to people's home so that you can start monitoring people and for that reason, everybody needs a connection.
JENNY BROCKIE: I want to go to Patrick first. Patrick, you the headmaster of the first school in Australia to connect to the NBN in the first rollout area in Tasmania, at Smithton - you already have internet access at your school, is that right?
PATRICK BAKES,
JENNY BROCKIE: Tell me what difference it makes? How is it different now that you have this fibre network?
PATRICK BAKES: We were on ADSL2. What we found that certainly we can upload a whole lot more. We have gone from 1 to 8 in terms of an upload.
JENNY BROCKIE: What does that mean, practically?
PATRICK BAKES: Eight times as much. So we could, for example, previously - one video conference, which wasn't very good quality - it took our entire band width in terms of up. We could now do eight. So that is significantly faster. We also can download a whole lot more, which means that more and more of our students can be on the internet at the one time.
JENNY BROCKIE: OK. How else do you think you could use it?
PATRICK BAKES: Yeah, the potential for us, being a small school, we want to be able to link with other schools in terms of setting up classrooms. We might only have, for example, two students who want to do, say, physics or something. If we can get to other schools using video conferencing - linking, we could run a much bigger class and make it more viable.
JENNY BROCKIE: What is it costing you?
PATRICK BAKES: It is actually costing us less. At the moment, we're averaging $250 a month for increased speed.
JENNY BROCKIE: And is that because you are getting a special introductory deal? Is that why?
PATRICK BAKES: I don't believe so.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No wholesale prices. NBN is not charging tat moment.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Jenny, I would make this point. More than half of Australian schools have fibre access already. And, certainly, all Australian schools should have access to fibre. This is not an argument about whether hospitals, or schools or universities which are on very fast broadband now. This is the problem with Stephen's case, he picks out one issue after another but what it doesn't do is make the case for extending fibre to the home at a cost of $43 billion to every home. I will make this point about e-health. Again, we may conclude that Stephen Conroy knows about this and the Americans are idiots, but this is the FCC of the
JENNY BROCKIE: I want to give Stephen Conroy a quick response.
STEPHEN CONROY: Malcolm wants to try and confuse the debate by talking about download speeds. There is high-definition video conferencing that Malcolm is describing there in e-health, you need to have upload capacity. The ADSL - A stands for asymmetric which mean on copper, down speeds are fantastic but on up speeds they are not so good. Just like the HFC cable that Malcolm keeps talking about, the HFC cable in this country is configured deliberately to...
JENNY BROCKIE: For the people at home the HFC cable is?
STEPHEN CONROY: The paid television cable that they put broadband on. The HFC cable is configured deliberately to be 100 download and 2meg up. You cannot do most of the e-health applications that Malcolm keeps trying to quote there from
MALCOLM TURNBULL: That’s not true.
STEPHEN CONROY: It is true. You cannot do high-definition video conference with 2meg speed.
PAUL BUDDE: Ten years' time, we want 100 meg.
JENNY BROCKIE: Tonight, we are talking about the National Broadband Network. Dr Michael Williams, you run children's services at
E-HEALTH STORY:
REPORTER: Mawunyo Gbogbo
This is a way many patients in Mackay see a specialist.
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS, PAEDIATRICIAN: Unfortunately, in Mackay, although we're a good size, we don't have an
WOMAN: You will be able to see your ear up there.
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS: This is the way of providing that service to our patients without them having to travel in the first instance.
For the Prentice family, it is the only way of finding out what is wrong with their child quickly.
DANNY PRENTICE: The way we are going financially at the moment, struggling. I know that this will help a lot, just knowing what is wrong with your kids and not have to fork out money to go down to Brisbane.
Dr Michael Williams is director of Child and Adolescent Services at
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS: Really, as the patients, say in our district, if they were in
Even though the specialist is seeing his sister Chanelle today, 9-year-old Keelin Prentice has been through this too. If it wasn't for telemedicine, his heart problem may not have been detected as early as it was, when he was just one week old.
MELISSA PRENTICE: As soon as I had him they did an x-ray straight away, it is just good to get the result without worrying about going to
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS: Detractors might say, "You cannot examine the patient, you can’t lay a hand on to feel what the abdomen is like." But you are making your assessment knowing that, but you would generally try to have the GP at the other end, or, in our case, it would be us, and we're telling the person what we can feel on our examination.
The Prentice family won't avoid travelling the 1100 kilometres to
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS: You will have to come to
JENNY BROCKIE:
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS: Well I think that may be able to extend things further out, and particularly beyond the Queensland Health Network into the private medical centres, into the home. We could do follow-up with some patients in the home. And I think it will provide a better quality of the video conferencing in the home at those sites. Indeed, when I'm on call, I might be able to get good quality provision through to looking at an emergency call from one of our outlying hospitals and assess the patient.
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, so more people would have access to quality picture and quality of service?
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS: Yes.
JENNY BROCKIE: Melissa and Danny, I wondered what one of the kids - one of the kids is asleep! Look at her. I wanted to ask you both, what it is like to actually have a diagnosis done that way?
DANNY PRENTICE: Just helps out a lot, trying to find out what is wrong with your kids straight away, without having to go down to Brisbane and provide finance and that.
JENNY BROCKIE: Because a heart problem on a baby. That was all done by video conferencing?
DANNY PRENTICE: It was scary, but when Dr Williams find out and organise that interlink. It is a lot easier on us, less stress.
JENNY BROCKIE: Patricia, I know that you live in Smithton in
PATRICIA
JENNY BROCKIE: What do you think of the NBN. Why have you not hooked up?
PATRICIA
JENNY BROCKIE: So you are worried about the cost. Malcolm Turnbull, though, I want to ask you about what Michael says. I mean, if the NBN can deliver more services like that to more people, and savings, because it saves money, saves money for people having to travel when they don't have the money. It saves money for the system. Isn't that a compelling case for extending that coverage comprehensively across the country?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think the first point is, Michael has that connection at his hospital. There are about 1,300 hospitals in
JENNY BROCKIE: But is the American system a good model for us?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, given that they... No, Jenny. No, Jenny, I would just say this - the Americans developed the internet. All of the major technology companies... The fact is, as I said, the – we’ve got a situation where we are undertaking 100 times more per capita Government investment in this than the United States. There is no country in the world that is doing what Stephen is doing, spending the money he is doing, and nobody is doing it with so little analysis and consideration.
JENNY BROCKIE: Okay Stephen a response to that - no country in the world doing this.
STEPHEN CONROY: Larry Smart, an American, one of the founders and fathers of the internet, he comes to Australia regularly to say that what Australia is doing the best in the world. He says if people say, they can’t imagine what you can do with 100 megs - that is a failure of their imagination not 100 megs.
JENNY BROCKIE: Tony, what do you think, listening to this going on? I'm just interested in what you think about the models that have been cited and the fact that we are spending this money. Are you worried about that?
TONY WINDSOR: There is a political argument going on here and it’s about trying to delay the system. Let's look at the issues that we are trying to deal with in this country. We have a big land, we have people are scattered across it. We have health issues, we have doctor issues, we have educational issues, we have a population debate going on in our major centres, we have business issues.. The one thing that can get that right in terms of all of those issues, delivering services that are going to scarce, aged care, keeping people in the home, we're going to have a bubble of aged-care people coming through the system. What could this sort of technology do in real-time to assist those people. Now Malcolm says it can happen now - it can happen now, but we don't know of all the technology that will be available in five years' time. Three years ago, we begged for towers. We could not get any more towers. Telstra are saying they would build another 5. The demand for some of these projects, and the internet products and some of the internal home products is almost exponential.
JENNY BROCKIE: Okay Michael, what do you want to say?
DR MICHAEL WILLIAMS: We are doing good telehealth now, and I think telehealth is great for delivering the equity of access. The big need now, before we start thinking too much beyond - about more technology, is to get the doctors supported in the right way, with more support, with incentives to go to telehealth and directives to deliver those telehealth services with the current technology. We can do a lot more.
JENNY BROCKIE: That is whole other debate about the doctors. Kevin, what did you want to say?
KEVIN MORGAN: There is an equity issue here at the moment. You have 40% of the households in the lowest percentile - 800,000 to a million households who cannot afford dial-up – they can’t afford $10 a month internet access. Now, unless Stephen can tell us right now the pricing on the NBN, and it is going to come in at below $10, those households are out. They are out of his wonderful new world of services
JENNY BROCKIE: What can you tell us about the pricing Stephen Conroy because people want to know that and they want to know if you can guarantee that the services that they get are going to cost no more than the services they have now, in terms of broadband, for example?
STEPHEN CONROY: Kevin this morning in the newspapers described the NBN as a poncey scheme. So Kevin's critique continues to suffers from the fact that he was the man who put the recommendation to Kim Beasley to bring together Telstra.. Kevin the only person in the world left in this room, Malcolm Turnbull, Paul Paul Budde... Nobody is doing it. Telstra are breaking apart Telstra.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Play the ball, not the man.
KEVIN MORGAN: No-one in the world has done this. No-one wants to touch it. You the only politician who wants to touch it.
STEPHEN CONROY: In terms of the costings, the business plan for the NBN will be out in a few weeks. What it will demonstrate is the cost that it will be to build the network, the prices, the wholesale prices that will be on offer.
JENNY BROCKIE: That’s wholesale prices. What can you guarantee about the retail prices? How do people know it is not going to end up a lot more expensive?
STEPHEN CONROY: Unless somebody is suggesting that we should fix and regulate retail prices - I'm not sure that Malcolm would argue that - but unless we're in a position that you want the Government to regulate retail prices, we'll provide a wholesale package of products and prices, and when people see that, I think they will be very relaxed.
PAUL BUDDE: Totally free. Don't have to say anything. If this lady at the service station needs a retirement service, the
KEVIN MORGAN: If Stephen's understanding of the Telstra network is such, that a third of it is above the ground at the moment, he had better go out and have a look. One of the achievements of Telecom and Telstra was to put the copper underground. I used to work for the union that represented the technicians that maintained that copper network. I keep in touch with those people. Go and talk to them, Stephen. They will tell you - you will be lucky if you can use 25% of those ducts to put fibre down. So you are going to have to string this up aerially and as this lady said behind me, about stringing it up in Smithton to, a few months ago, I was down in Tasmania, it is going to look beautiful.
JENNY BROCKIE: Can we move on? I want to ask about the amendments that you are moving to the Telstra split legislation Malcolm Turnbull and you have put forward amendments today, or the Coalition has agreed to amendments today, around the legislation that splits Telstra's wholesale and retail arms. Can you explain to us why you are doing that? Is that an attempt to scuttle the NBN or demolish the NBN?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have no interest in scuttling, demolishing or delaying anything. What I'm concerned about is that taxpayers' monies are scarce resources. There are a lot of great things that we can spend money on. We can spend money on a better hospital, so that you will have the specialist in your city so you will not have to commute to
JENNY BROCKIE: What are you aiming to do? What are you aiming to do with these amendments, though?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well there are a number of them. I will deal with the most important one. What the Government is doing is making a deal between the NBNco and Telstra. So that Telstra will shut down its copper network and transition its customers on to the NBN, and, in addition, will not use its paid television network, the hybrid fibre COAGS networks, which passes nearly a third of Australian homes, will not compete with the NBNco. Now the only reason for that is to protect the economics of the NBNco and it is going back to the bad old days of the government owned monopolies, using Government power to prevent people competing with it. What the legislation is trying to do is to remove that very anti-competitive deal from the ACCC, from the provisions of the trade practices act, so it is - so it cannot be considered or vetted for competition reasons.
JENNY BROCKIE: Tony Windsor, would you support those amendments?
TONY WINDSOR: Well, I will listen to the debate. But I have - the flavour I get in relation to - whether it is a structural separation, and it should have occurred years ago. Malcolm, you are dead right there.
JENNY BROCKIE: Just quickly, Tony, and then I will... Stop for a moment. Continue, Tony. Finished! Keep going, Tony.
TONY WINDSOR: Well, as I said, I think the separations should have taken place a long time ago. It didn't. And I congratulate the Government for having the courage to do this. It is not an easy thing to do, the structural separation. I'm in favour of it - have been for years.
JENNY BROCKIE: So you will not support that kind of amendment. Have you support for your amendments from any of the other independents?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, we are talking to all of the Independents, Jenny, you don't find out until they call on the vote!
JENNY BROCKIE: I just wondered whether you had any inkling at this stage. If you don't the amendments up, will you support the split bill? It is quite critical to the NBN.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: All of these things in the legislative process, but I just - can I just say this. If the object of the exercise is to end the vertical integration of Telstra, then the answer is some form of structural separation. It does not require you to trash the existing copper network and build a new one.
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, response, Stephen Conroy?
STEPHEN CONROY: Firstly, Malcolm keeps talking about this new big ugly government monopoly. Well Telstra was a government monopoly for many, many years, and it has a fixed line monopoly in the vast majority of
MALCOLM TURNBULL: We could enjoy the stellar economic growth
JENNY BROCKIE: We were about to have someone join us via skype! But the line dropped out!
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Which is another issue we can talk about!
JENNY BROCKIE: Somebody from Townsville who also has a place…. at a place called Billyana which is 180ks further north of Townsville. He was going to tell us about the problems that he had trying to get a connection at all! I have to say the man with an iPad, an iPhone, an iMac, and Apple TV and PlayStation 3. Oh, we have him here!
JENNY BROCKIE: Tell us what your connection is like up there?
JENNY BROCKIE: So the NBN is coming to Townsville. Will you be signing up?
JENNY BROCKIE: We are glad you could be included in this, even though we lost you there in a moment, thanks
JENNY BROCKIE: Annabelle, you had your hand up all through the last section and I want to involve you because you are Deputy Vice Chancellor in Armidale, one of the next roll-out sites for the NBN. More than 80% of students at UNE use distance learning, is that right?
PROFESSOR ANNABELLE DUNCAN, DEPUTY VICE CHANCELLOR, UNE: About 70% of them use distance learning, yes.
JENNY BROCKIE: What will it mean for them?
PROFESSOR ANNABELLE DUNCAN: It will make a huge difference to them. At the moment, much of the interaction between the students, both domestic students and the university, is really passive. There's some active interaction - that is, we can send the material through chat rooms for example, we can get material back that way. But all of those students who study off-site miss the real experience that comes from tutorials, for example, at the university. The interaction between different students, the interactions between the student and real-time with their lecturer and the discussions that go around that - that is all a very important part of the learning experience of the people on the university campus. They miss that if they are not on the campus.
With broadband we can have a virtually classroom, we can have a tutor, maybe in Armidale, maybe somewhere else in the world - anywhere. We can also have students joining that particular tutorial from anywhere again around
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, I just wander - the rest of you have been listening to this debate, a lot of it has been political. There has been a lot about the actual services and everything as well. What do you think listening now, that we are coming to the end of it, how you feel about the NBN having listened, Patricia?
PATRICIA
JENNY BROCKIE: How much would it cost you?
PATRICIA
STEPHEN CONROY: The first release sites in
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, now the take-up rate has been described as low in
STEPHEN CONROY: Not low at all.
JENNY BROCKIE: 11%?
STEPHEN CONROY: The McKinsey study said that if we get between 6% and 12%, in 12 months we will have a financially available company. We have 11% in three months. We are ahead of schedule. If you look at Armidale, we are up in the high 70s. If you look at Wullunga, 8% of residents in a small country town in
JENNY BROCKIE: Annabelle, what do you want to say?
PROFESSOR ANNABELLE DUNCAN: In Armidale, you have to voluntarily sign up for it.
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, Malcolm Turnbull? I mean, the Opposition has been having a go about the low take-up rate.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: There are two issues here. The first one is - it is a good thing to have widely available broadband? We are all in favour of this. I mean, you know, trying to turn this into a debate about is broadband good or bad, it is like having a debate about are good roads good or bad, we are all in favour of good roads but we none the less do our homework and make sure the big road we are going to build is in the right place, the right design and the right cost. That is what this debate is about.
PAUL BUDDE: Yeah, I have been involved since 2005, Malcolm. Helen Coonan, one of the previous ministers, we worked perfectly with her. For the last three years, where have you been? We have had debates, I've invited you personally, the Opposition, year after year after year, please participate in the discussion. I had to - there were 400 people, all working together. We invited you. You never were home. All of these people together, all the specialists together, communications alliance, Telstra, Optus, all of them together. We came to the conclusion that this is the best technology. Why are you questioning that now?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: There are a number of options, a number of ways we can achieve the policy objective that we all agree on. But there has never been...
JENNY BROCKIE: What about the question of consultation. Are you meeting with people? Paul is suggesting that you are not.
PAUL BUDDE: Now, yes. But the last three years?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I want to say this to you. I don't claim to be an expert. I've been involved in the telecommunications industry not just as a co-founder of Ozemail, I have been a director of a big subsea cable joint venture between Hong Kong Tel, PCCW and Telstra. And I've advised Telstra and Optus, been involved in the telecommunications sector one way or another for 20 years. I don't claim to be an expert, but for Paul to suggest that I've only just come to the field tonight is absurd and he knows it is absurd.
JENNY BROCKIE: Can I ask what you are offering as an alternative, what is the Opposition offering?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: What we think should happen is that firstly, we should rectify immediately the areas that are not being adequately served. In the regions, to deliver a combination of technology, satellite in the very remote areas, fixed wireless and others, upgrading, the fixed-line network and others. We have to make sure that wherever you live in
In the cities, for example, the gentleman who was on the 4 megabit per second connection from Townsville can't get ADSL2, can't get a faster service. That is because of where network architecture problems from the past, can't get the faster speeds, they can be rectified. All of that can be done for a fraction of $43 billion, yet nobody here from the Government is prepared to put their contention that the NBN is the best answer to the test of the Productivity Commission or infrastructure
STEPHEN CONROY: There are 1.2 million Australians handicapped by some systems. The only way to get around that, Hugh Bradlow, the chief technology officer for Telstra has said publicly many times that fibre to the home is the endgame, future-proof. It is building capacity so that new applications - E-education and E-health, entertainment - you can take them up. We need to make a major leap to get
JENNY BROCKIE: We have to wrap up quickly, Kevin?
KEVIN MORGAN: Look, Stephen wants us to be up there with
STEPHEN CONROY: It’s investigating it right now.
KEVIN MORGAN: People have been investigating those things for years. When push comes to shove, they say it is a silly idea. The costs outweigh the benefits...
PAUL BUDDE: The European Union has now dictated that the...?
KEVIN MORGAN:
JENNY BROCKIE: Tony Windsor you are sitting there looking like this! What is your response to that debate? That discussion and to Malcolm’s proposal?
TONY WINDSOR: I can't listen to two people at once! I'm a man! In terms of cost benefit analysis, he recognises they are only as good as the assumptions you put in. Malcolm, your Government supported the
MALCOLM TURNBULL: So you want to build another dud, an even bigger dud?
TONY WINDSOR: Don't suggest that your economic credentials are perfect in relation to this. All members of the Parliament at the moment, including yourself, are supporting the inland rail concept. Is that true? Well, it has wide support. Well, the optimisation study that was done suggests that it is not a financial proposal. Obviously, it will be once it is built and I think that's the point we have to really look at here. If we provide the backbone, particularly given some of the health and educational services, the aged-care services that are going to be required into the future, a lot of the technology will go to that backbone. I think this is something that particularly from regional
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, OK. We have to go. I'm afraid that we have to go. We have to stop. We have run out of time. We will keep talking online. I'm sure, Malcolm, you will do that. Various other people will be around to do that. Keep talking to Paul Budde and Kevin Morgan. Jump on our website and click on our Live Chat.
