PM:Premier of Tasmania David Bartlett, the Minister for Broadband Stephen Conroy, Duncan Kerr, Julie Collins, Sid Sidebottom, Jodie Campbell, Dick Adams, our local members, and can I say all those here today enthusiastic about this project for the state and for the nation. This is a good day. It is about what we are going to do for Australia, what we are going to do for Tasmania and what we are going to do together.
It is a pleasure to be here today to announce critical milestones for the delivery of the National Broadband Network. On the 8th of April, the Premier and I announced that Tasmania would be the launch state for the National Broadband Network and today I announce that we are starting in rural and regional Tasmania, connecting the 5000 homes and businesses with fibre to the premises in the towns of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point.
These communities will be the first to be able to receive broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second and over 50 times faster than that used by most people. To support this rollout we will build backbone fibre optic cables in five locations. Why are we starting in Tasmania? Because Tasmania has a longstanding disadvantage in accessing high speed broadband and is the logical test bed for this nation building project for the future.
The state has the lowest proportion of households with broadband of any state and territory, 39 per cent compared with the Australian average of 52 per cent.
I also have great pleasure today of announcing Mr Mike Quigley as Executive Chair and CEO of the NBN Co. Mike is an Australian who has a distinguished career in the telecommunications industry and was most recently President and Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel. During the course of his career, he has lead the development and integration of large scale, fibre to the premise implementations for some of the largest US carriers.
So, can I just say to you Mike, welcome on board and we look forward to working with you in laying out this important project for the nation.
On the 16th of July, the Premier and Senator Conroy announced that the Tasmanian NBN Co., a subsidiary of NBN Co. would be established to roll out the National Broadband Network in this state and can I also say that I am pleased today that Doug Campbell will shortly commence as chair of the TNBN Co. Doug is also a fellow Australian who also has a wealth of telecommunications experience both in Australia and internationally, including being the primary force behind the creation of the very successful Telstra country wide.
So Doug, welcome aboard, and we look forward to being partners with you in Tasmania, partners in this great national project for our future together.
As Prime Minister I look forward to working with Doug and Mike to achieve our objectives of delivering super fast broadband in this state and nationally, and finally, it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to open the Aurora Energy and National Broadband Network Data Centre. The Data Centre opened today, will house the critical operating and business support systems that will operate the National Broadband Network in Tasmania.
Today's announcement demonstrates that the Australian and Tasmanian Governments are getting on with the job of delivering super fast broadband to our communities.
It marks the start of 25,000 new local jobs that will be supported by the roll out of the National Broadband Network. At a time of global economic recession, this is important nation building work for Australia, it is important job creation work for local communities, it is important for productivity for the future of our national economy.
When we look to the future it is important to look to the milestones that we hope to achieve. We will start feeding the first fibre optic cable into the trench in August. We will start digging new trenches come October. We will be starting connecting the first home come the end of the year and our plan is to turn services on come July of next year.
These are important milestones for the future. It is therefore with great pleasure today that I am at this official launch. Today we are laying the first piece of optical fibre in our National Broadband Network, the first step towards pulling Australia out of the broadband dark ages and in to the digital economy of the future.
I said to the Premier before I felt a bit like our forebears did 100 and more years ago, driving in spikes for the beginning of a new railway network. It is like that today, railways served us in the 19th Century when they were laid out, electricity grids in the 20th Century as they were laid out and in the 21st century we are laying out this new infrastructure of the future, this new National Broadband Network.
This is a great day for the nation, a great day for Tasmania and I congratulate all those who have shown great leadership in bringing this project to fruition. I thank you.
[Short break]
PM:Now we are here to take some questions from our friends, the ladies and gentlemen of the press. The order of battle will be this, I will take all the easy questions, Stephen Conroy will take questions of medium difficultly and anything really tough goes to the Premier of Tasmania.
JOURNALIST:Prime Minister, why these three towns, why are they the first ones chosen?
PM:Well these have been based on the advice that we have received as a Government and we are also keen as a (inaudible). We have taken advice in terms of where the roll out should begin. But we are also as a Government keen to demonstrate that people in regional centres in Tasmania, across the state, get the earliest possible access to these services. As I was just saying to one of the representatives of Aurora, what we want to see, for example, are small businesses in Scottsdale, in Smithton and Midway Point, being able to connect, as rapidly as possible to new business opportunities on the other side of the world, that is what it is all about.
It is making sure that we open up the possibilities of new inputs to your business which might be cheaper, new customers which you had never dreamt of before or new ways of doing your business which you hadn't thought of before. And that is as real and as relevant for small business in regional centres here in Tasmania as it is for the largest companies located in Sydney and Melbourne.
JOURNALIST:(inaudible) marginal seats.
PM:Can I just say where we have got small business and local communities who deserve to have the same level of connectivity as people in the middle of Sydney and the middle of Melbourne, I am about making a difference for them. I am about making a difference for them. I grew up in regional Queensland, a little town of 162 people. Those people in that little town of Eumundi deserve as much connectivity as anyone else across the country that we can possibly physically deliver. And that is why those communities are important in our plan.
This is about a digital revolution for the Australian economy for the 21st Century and the whole point is to lift our productivity growth as a nation, and that means lifting the productivity of businesses, small and large, in regional centres, in rural centres and in metropolitan centres.
That is how we make a difference, lifting Australia's global economic competitiveness as a result, that is the Government strategy for the future.
JOURNALIST:When do you say these three centres will be able to log on, and start accessing services?
PM:As I indicated before, the intention that we have is as follows, and I will go back carefully to what I said before, we will start feeding the first fibre optic cable into trenches in August. We will start digging new trenches come October, we will start connecting the first homes come the end of the year and our objective is to turn on these new services come July next year.
IN rolling out a National Broadband Network through NBN Co, can I say, these are important building blocks for Tasmania, important building blocks for the nation.
JOURNALIST:(inaudible)
PM:You know something, what I would really like is to make sure that the businesses across Tasmania are connected to new opportunities for the future. Tasmania like many centres across the country has got real challenges because of the global economic recession. How can we make a difference? One, the physicality of the jobs that are going to be generated directly and indirectly for the roll out of that cable across this great state of Tasmania, number one.
Number two, as the business opportunities are turned on for local businesses, the take up in terms of the new employees which will be added to firms in the three centres I have just referred to. We are on about making those differences for people right across the state and that is what we intend to do.
JOURNALIST:What consolation will there be for people who live on the wrong side of the street or that bit further out of town (inaudible)
PM:You know something, we are on about the business of making a difference for all Australians and we are going to do everything possible to ensure we do have maximum band speed and band width across Australia and we have outlined that clearly in the ambitions we have established for this project nationwide.
And can I say, Australia will be fundamentally changed in the way in which we do business as a result. I think we should instead focus on the positive, we should focus on what this will do to turbo-charge business across Australia, on the way through and as a result of this new technology.
And on top of that, think also of the new connectivity which local communities have. Part of the story here is revolutionising the way in which businesses, sorry, in which the business of government is done as well: delivering education services; delivering health services; delivering other services from government.
This is a transformational technology and I believe that as we look ahead, the next building blocks for Australia's economic growth for the future, rest on productivity growth and a large part of productivity growth hinges on this new productivity enhancing technology.
JOURNALIST:How many jobs could be created through this initial roll out?
PM:A lot.
BARTLETT:I am happy to come in there and say, we expect hundreds of jobs, in this very short start up time, probably in the order of 40 or 50 but hundreds across the course of the roll out. But what is important here is not just the hundreds of jobs that will be created in the laying of cable and construction of this network, it is the thousands of jobs that will be created in Tasmania through new generation industries, a new generation set of jobs, in new industries that arrive here, but also in the traditional industries that as the Prime Minister says, will be turbo charged, will have new opportunities, new ways of being innovative to build jobs as well.
So hundreds of jobs in the roll out, thousands of jobs in the opportunity.
PM:Let me just draw an analogy for example with the building education revolution. As you know the Australian Government is investing massively in the largest school modernisation program Australia has ever seen.
And we have very large investment here in Tasmanian schools as well. One, direct jobs which are created through the construction, and they are large, trades people, 20, 30, 40, different trades on site for every school modernisation project.
Secondly, the indirect jobs. I just was in Mackay in North Queensland yesterday. It was warmer than this, but I am a Queenslander, I would say that wouldn't I? It is freezing, and we are going to take two more questions (inaudible) for reasons of hypothermia.
But talking to the people on the building site and Mackay Central Primary school, school built in 1933, we were adding I think about $1 million worth of investments for that school, about 190 students having their first ever state of the art library and resource centre which will also be, you know, wired for the future.
When I was talking to the workers on the site, they actually made a very simple point to me, all of them, employed there in a time of difficulty in the global economy, then go off, buy their lunch locally, they buy extra bits and pieces in terms of what they need for their tools and equipment locally - the indirect job creation as a result of what we are doing through these projects is also huge.
Then there is the third level of job creation, that the Premier just pointed to, which is what we have yet not fully seen conceptualised by the business involved, which is how they themselves will transform themselves, new markets, new opportunities.
If you are running for example, a bed and breakfast in Smithton or somewhere like that, then how do you actually access a new global set of customers to come, who will want a quick yes, no, from all parts of the world about whether you have got a vacancy on this night or that night and what else you can do in and around that region for tomorrow.
It is stuff like that, and we haven't really begun to tap that yet. Australia, Tasmania, we have suffered from one thing historically it is called the tyranny of distance.
This revolutionary technology has within its capacity to overcome the tyranny of distance, contracting time and space in business transactions around the world and reducing costs. That is what it is about. That is why Government is in the business of taking the lead to make sure that this technology is as broadly available as possible.
JOURNALIST:Premier (inaudible) would that be the fastest available internet in Australia?
BARTLETT:Well I believe it will be at that stage. And of course with this sort of technology we are future proofing for decades to come because essentially with the fibre laid, the glass (inaudible) there are opportunities as new technologies come along to hang off the end of that fibre to create even faster speeds in the decades ahead.
PM:So we are not just on about a static technology here, the way in which we have conceived of this is, the way in which it will be laid out will be to add speed and capacity as new technological additions are entering the marketplace.
JOURNALIST:Prime Minister you have had an essay published in Fairfax media today, you have previously said that Australia is weathering the global financial crisis better than the rest of the advanced economies, why (inaudible)
PM:Well the reason I have written this essay is to say upfront and direct that the road to recovery will be tough, but that in addition to that, it is time to lay out the building blocks for Australia's sustainable economic growth. One of those building blocks is what we are doing here today. Because our strategy for sustainable economic growth for the nation, for the future, hangs off productivity growth, to enhance Australia's global economic competitiveness, and one of the gaps in that competitiveness equation today is the absence of technologies like high speed broadband.
The road to recovery will be long, tough, hard, bumpy, but now is the time to lay in place the building blocks for sustainable growth for the future.
JOURNALIST:Why do you expect fuel and food and other cost of living things to increase so much -
PM:As I said the road to recovery will be tough, it will be hard, it will be bumpy and I would much rather be upfront with the Australian people about that, but equally upfront about how we lay the building blocks for the next generation of economic growth.
That is what today is about, that is what the Government's microeconomic reform agenda is about and that is why we intend to get on with the business of building for the recovery.
The Government has been engaged legitimately in managing the worst global economic crisis, the worst global economic recession three quarters of a century. But we must also equally manage the process of economic recovery. That is what the Government has committed to.
JOURNALIST:Mr Turnbull makes a specific criticism this morning of that essay on (inaudible) he says there is not one word in that essay mention small business, is that a problem?
PM:Can I just say, if I was Mr Turnbull I would probably sit down and read these essays before responding. Small business is referred to on a number of occasions, and you know why? Our Nation Building for Recovery plan, as I have said over and over again for the nation is this: supporting jobs, small business and apprenticeships today by investing in the infrastructure we need for tomorrow.
That is what this project is about. The number of small business which will be supported on the way through as we build this new, revolutionary technology and lay it out across the state of Tasmania will be huge. So small business lies at the centre of what this Government has done through its Nation Building for Recovery Plan.
Secondly, can I also say this, right now we have in place a special investment allowance for small business, 50 per cent on top of what currently exists in terms of the normal taxation treatment of this through to the end of the year for small business and medium enterprises investing in the plant and equipment they need for the future.
So I think as with all things, I think it is necessary to apply sober judgement, before rushing to conclusions, sober judgement about what an essay says, sober judgement about the content of Government policy, sober judgement about what the Government is actually doing for small business and sober judgement is something I have seen a deficit of with Mr Turnbull in recent times.
JOURNALIST:What is you sober judgement of emissions trading, is the time for negotiation over or is a double dissolution on the cards?
PM:Can I say that on the question of climate change, I also see that Mr Turnbull has now, with 19 days to go before the Senate votes on climate change, put out a shopping list. This legislation was first put out in March. We are now in August and with 19 days to go before the vote, we now have a shopping list put out, a shopping list which I think has more to do with trying to patch up some of the internal divisions within the Liberal Party and the National Party than it has about much else.
Can I say this: the challenge for Mr Turnbull is to present the Government with an agreed set of amendments, an agreed set of amendments with his party which we could then consider. Unfortunately up until now we have just seen a Coalition, under Mr Turnbull's leadership split right down the middle on climate change. The nation needs decisive leadership on climate change and it is time for the Liberals to get out of the road, so the nation to make its contribution to this great challenge of our generation and us to make our contribution through Copenhagen.
And folks by reasons of advanced hypothermia, I have got to zip.
Ends.