Mr WILKIE (9:53 AM) —I take this opportunity to raise once again the paucity of Telstra’s broadband services in my electorate of Swan. A week ago Mr Kel Watkins, the owner of Freightshop, wrote to me to explain the appalling behaviour of Telstra in relation to a request from his business to install a broadband service. In his letter Mr Watkins explains the situation:

As Mr Watkins said, it is a deplorable situation that in mid-2005 a business within 400 metres of an international airport is denied access to broadband. Unfortunately, this is far from the only complaint I have had in my electorate from businesses and households who cannot access basic broadband services from Telstra. Often the situation is just as farcical as that related by Mr Watkins. I have had many complaints from people in Swan about Telstra’s often-used tactic of promising residents access to broadband on a trial basis, delivering that service for the period of the trial and then informing customers—lo and behold—that, despite being able to provide broadband, the service is not available on a permanent basis. In many cases, residents have actually changed internet providers to take advantage of the Telstra trial, only to find that the service is not available in the long term.

I can understand why there is much concern in the context of the sale of Telstra about services in rural and regional Australia. Having been a farmer myself for some six years in Western Australia, I sympathise with the need to ensure that services in rural Australia are up to scratch, but I think that the political preoccupation of the Howard government with services in the bush has overshadowed the needs of those who live in the cities, as was pointed out yesterday by the member for Lindsay. Telstra’s failure to deliver adequate broadband to my electorate is an indictment of its infrastructure investment program.

You would expect that, at present, when Telstra is under the spotlight given its proposed sale, the company would be moving heaven and earth to improve its services throughout Australia. You would expect Telstra to be currently demonstrating its corporate ‘best behaviour’. If this is best behaviour, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that it is far from good enough. It is vital that the government undertake to deliver broadband to all Australians. That should be the overriding objective of the government in the debate about telecommunications. At the end of the day, if the only way to ensure that this objective is met is to require a minimum broadband service under the universal service obligation, then so be it. (Time expired)