Media Statement - 22nd October 2007
Federal Communications Minister, Senator Helen Coonan, has again misled the public on Australia’s broadband speeds.
“Put simply, the minister is misleading the community. We have broadband speeds at laughable levels. When the rest of the world is using high speed, we are still using carrier pigeons when it comes to broadband.”
Just 24 hours ago (Saturday October 20), Senator Coonan launched a full frontal attack on an international report from Washington showing Australia lagged behind many nations, stating that there is a more recent report that ranks Australia 5th on speed and price.
Minister Coonan has attacked the earlier report claiming it is out of date. Unfortunately, the Minister failed to notice that the data in the report released on October 9 relates only to price, not speed, and is identical to the pricing data contained in the earlier report.
Data in the earlier report confirmed that Australia’s broadband is 35 times slower than most other western countries, ranking 26th behind countries including Korea, Finland and Slovak Republic. In addition, Australians spend nine times more for broadband than the Japanese.
After 11 years of Howard Government and 18 different broadband plans, Australia has “third world” broadband levels and is in the IT “dark ages”.
A Rudd Labor Government will drag Australia out of the digital dark ages by building a National Broadband Network in partnership with the private sector, achieved through regulatory reforms and a Commonwealth investment of up to $4.7 billion.
Federal Labor’s broadband plan is complemented by Federal Labor’s 50 per cent Education Tax Refund to help working families meet the growing costs of educating their children.
Families with school age children would be thousands of dollars better off under Kevin Rudd than under Mr Howard.
Parents of primary and secondary school children can expect to pay:
- $58-$129 on primary school books and $148-$619 for secondary school books alone every year; and
- $1,300-$1,600 for computer and Internet costs on average.
The fact is that one in seven households with children under 15 does not have a computer. Many more will have out dated computers than need replacing.
One in four households with children under 15 does not have internet access. Federal Labor’s plan will help bridge this digital divide.