8 April 2016
Labor leader Bill Shorten last night confirmed that Labor has backflipped on the National Broadband Network.
Bill Shorten’s credibility on Australia’s largest infrastructure project is in tatters, proving that Labor can’t be trusted to manage the transition of Australia’s economy.
For two and a half years Labor has attacked anything other than a network that built fibre to the premise, and attacked any use of the existing copper network.
Last night, Mr Shorten confirmed that Labor would adopt the Turnbull Government’s multi-technology mix.
SHORTEN: “We won’t rip up everything that Mr Turnbull has done because I think, and it goes back to the fellow’s question before, not everything that the Liberals do is bad… So we will do a hybrid of some of what he’s done but we will have in our announcement, which we will be putting out pretty soon, a greater proportion of the use of fibre and we will also look at the proportions of fibre and we think we can provide more of that to more Australians.” (Source: Sky News People’s Forum, 7 April 2016)
The position outlined by Mr Shorten, to use more fibre, is already possible under the current multi-technology mix. This also confirms that Labor will utilise the existing copper network.
The Turnbull Government’s approach is open to the use of any technology, with a mandate to build the network by 2020 and within a set budget.
Close to two million homes and businesses can today access the nbn and there are more than 900,000 active users. That compares to Labor’s appalling record of just 51,000 users connected between 2010 and 2013.
By connecting more users sooner the Coalition is keeping broadband affordable.
Australians are still in the dark on whether they’ll be asked to pay more tax for a Labor NBN or to wait longer.