It feels like we’re going deaf under the din of the Australian Labor Party’s “broken promises” rhetoric against the Coalition government. Every day there’s a new soundbite for the evening news, but doesn’t it feel like a while since we’ve seen the new Shadow Communications Minister, Jason Clare, pipe up to defend the NBN? The wait is over, as Jason Clare MP brings the NBN rage hard to the political hoop in one of the most scathing four-minute speeches you’ll see.
Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare MP hopped to his feet in the Chamber recently and decided it was time to call Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull out on the NBN.
Clare accused Turnbull and his PM, Tony Abbott, of breaking their promise for a better national broadband network “faster” and “sooner”. The pair claimed that the majority of the country would have 25Mbps broadband by the end of 2016, a promise which has now been revised. The two of them were also chastised for capping the equity that would be poured into NBN Co over the next four years, meaning that the company now has to go cap in hand to the private sector to finish the roll-out.
“The Australian public trusted an untrustworthy government,” Clare said of Abbott’s Coalition. Ouch.
He added that the flawed Paid Parental Leave scheme will cost the country more over the next decade than the NBN construction project would, and said that the NBN will add more value to the country in return, before slamming Abbott’s narrow-minded view that the NBN is just a “video entertainment system”.
Federal MP for Chifley, Ed Husic, also took the government to task, which you can watch below.
Could the Abbott government be doing a better job with the NBN? What would you do differently? Tell us in the comments.