Broadband Key Component of Australian Election

WASHINGTON, September 9, 2010 – The national broadband network was a key issue in the recent Australian election, with the Parliament evenly split. The Labor and Liberal parties each had 72 seats with two independents.

WASHINGTON, September 9, 2010 – The national broadband network was a key issue in the recent Australian election, with the Parliament evenly split. The Labor and Liberal parties each had 72 seats with two independents.

The independents choose to side with the Labor party mainly due to their all-fiber approach to the national broadband network.

Tony Windsor, one of the independents, said: “The issues that I thought were critical to this, and possibly the most critical, was broadband. There’s an enormous opportunity for regional Australians to engage with the infrastructure of this century and to pass up that opportunity and miss the opportunity for millions of country Australians, I thought, was too good an opportunity to miss.”

The Labor proposal was to create a gigabit backbone network on which internet service providers can provide service. The Liberal party in contrast intended to setup a wireless network.