Newly sworn-in Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has told ABC Television the Labor Government would proceed with the $4.7 billion plan for the national network with or without Telstra.
And the Government’s new Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, said Labor remained committed to building a national fibre-to-the-node network.
Senator Conroy said government hoped to complete the tender process to select partners to build the network by the middle of next year.
“It will be open access, promote competition and put downward pressure on consumer prices,” Senator Conroy said. “We will hold an open and transparent process to determine who will build the network with our ambition being to complete the process by the end of June next year,”
“We expect that there will be much public commentary, jockeying and lobbying from parties as they work to convince the Government that they are best placed to build the new network and seek the terms that are most favourable to them.”
Labor promised in March that it would contribute $4.7 billion in public money toward a public-private national “open access’’ network. Government will issue tenders next year seeking proposals from the private sector to build the network.
But Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo last week last week rejected the plan, saying the company would only participate in projects that “we own and control.”
Mr Tanner said the Government’s plans were not contingent on Telstra taking part.
“The policy we put forward some months ago is a position that still stands. We are going to proceed,” Mr Tanner said.
“It is Telstra’s choice as to what role they want to play or not,” he said.
Government would wait until seen private sector proposals as part of the tender process before deciding how to structure the network.
Mr Tanner said the policy had been kept as flexible as possible so that the private sector could develop new ideas for implementing a cost effective and technologically efficient network.
“We are going to proceed with the position that we put to the Australian people,” Mr Tanner told the ABC Inside Business program.
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