Stuart Corner
Friday, 12 October 2007 14:34
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Communications minister Helen Coonan has claimed that a news story in the Financial Review this week which reported her as saying that the Government might be prepared to fund a fibre to the home rollout, rather than fibre to the node, should the Expert Task Force recommends such, took her remarks out of context. Her claim is not very convincing.
Given the furore that the FR's report created, she has taken a long time to set the record straight, and then in a very low key way. So was this just a ministerial gaffe or is there really another agenda? Telstra, which got very upset about the FR's story, made a good point.
The FR was quite unambiguous on the significance of Coonan's comments. "....Coonan said the Federal Government would consider using taxpayers' money to fund high speed broadband rollout if it received a more comprehensive plan than those furnished by Telstra and the Optus-led consortium. Senator Coonan told the [FR] that the Federal Government had not ruled out the prospect of using public funds to partially bankroll such a project if it could deliver faster Internet directly into people's homes and not just to a neighbourhood portal. 'If that [a recommendation for government funding] comes from the expert taskforce process, we would consider the recommendation very carefully,' senator Coonan said."
That story headed up page 3 in the paper. So if it was wrong one might have expected it to produce an immediate response from the minister. It certainly galvanised Telstra which wrote the minister the same day and
posted its letter on its Nowwearetalking web site.
Telstra, not unreasonably, feared a repetition of the Opel saga where $600 million of Government funding became almost $1 billion without Telstra, or any other bidder, being given a fair go at saying how it would spend that extra $350 million to bring broadband to rural Australians. Telstra wanted clarity and certainty on any future project.
