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Labor’s Plan
Labor will invest in growing a smart Tasmania by supporting the development of infrastructure for the 21st century. Labor is committed to giving every Tasmanian access to superfast broadband and WiFi, so that everyone can harness cutting-edge technology for health, learning and business. In contrast, the Liberals will create a digital divide, with many Tasmanians missing out on vital digital infrastructure.
NBN Incentive – Connect Tasmania Faster
A re-elected Labor Government will connect Tasmanians faster by allowing NBNCo free access to Aurora’s public infrastructure, worth $25 million over 20 years. This will allow the NBN to be rolled out more quickly so that Tasmanian businesses and communities can get swifter access to the superfast broadband of the future.
Futureproofing Tasmania: Optic Fibre in Second Basslink Cable
A re-elected Labor Government will include optic fibre in its plans for a second Basslink cable. Labor’s commitment of $1.5 million for a full feasibility analysis into building a second Bass Strait electricity interconnector will include optic fibre for greater capacity, market contestability and lower prices.
50 Free Public WiFi Hotspots
Labor will provide $500,000 to give Tasmanians and tourists free access to the internet in the centres of regional communities, and in Tasmania’s most iconic and remote tourism destinations, by creating 50 new public WiFi hotspots.
Virtual Cellar Doors – Creating Online Tourism Trails
A re-elected Labor Government will commit $100,000 to develop a new app that showcases virtual Tasmanian ‘trails’ for art and culture, history and heritage, whisky, wine, and boutique beers and ciders.
Government Open Data
A re-elected Labor Government will commit to driving change in the government sector to maximise open data platforms and services.
The Choice
The Liberals can’t be trusted on the NBN. They say they support Labor’s plan to use Aurora
infrastructure to deliver the NBN to Tasmanians. But only a few months ago, they publicly criticised the plan. The Liberals broke their promise on the NBN. Before the Federal election they promised to roll out the NBN to all Tasmanians . Now, they will create a state of NBN haves and have-nots, with some streets literally divided down the middle. Under the Liberals, Tasmania will never become a technology hub – and we’ll lose our first-mover advantage forever.
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Labor’s Vision for the Future
Labor will create a Tasmania that can harness the international economy through
transformative digital products and services for health, learning and business. Tasmania will keep pace with the speed of international technological changes.
Tasmania’s modern economy will have information communications and technology (ICT) as an integral framework. Traditional and emerging industries will be further enabled by ICT, while software development, media
services, data centres and telecommunications will expand on the back of our world-leading digital infrastructure. Superfast broadband in Tasmanian homes and free WiFi hotspots stretching into the remotest corners of
Tasmania will enable everyone to participate fully in a fast-changing economy.
NBN Incentive – Connect Tasmania Faster
Superfast broadband is a critical part of Tasmania’s economic future. It will allow us to engage fully with national and international markets, enable critical research and drive increased investment. Labor has always
supported the provision of superfast broadband to Tasmania via the NBN. Countries like South Korea have already rolled out
fibre-to-the-premise. They understand the importance of fibre infrastructure for jobs, education and future prosperity. Labor knows the value of this investment for Tasmania's future generations. Since the election of a Liberal Government in Canberra, Tasmania’s NBN rollout has been threatened. On 13 February NBNCo confirmed the fears of many Tasmanians with a
dramatically scaled-back plan for the fibre optic NBN rollout in Tasmania – a plan that leaves 150,000 premises stranded, with ageing copper wires providing their connection to the NBN in Tasmania.
Labor will stand up to the Liberals and their short-sighted cost-cutting to keep the NBN alive in Tasmania. We have developed a plan for a faster and cheaper roll out of fibre to the home using Aurora’s power poles.
4 Rolling out broadband over power lines is
around six times cheaper than building
underground. Labor’s proposal, which has now been submitted to NBNCo, will provide free access to Aurora’s power pole infrastructure. This commitment is worth about $25 million over twenty years depending on the extent of aerial deployment. Labor will provide this sum to Aurora (soon to be TasNetworks) as a Community Service Obligation payment to cover foregone revenue to the value of $1.25 million every year.
Futureproofing Tasmania:
Optic Fibre in Second Basslink Cable
Optic fibre interconnection is critical to
Tasmania’s technology future. At the moment, bandwidth provision across Bass Strait is limited to only two providers. An additional optic fibre cable across Bass Strait would deliver faster broadband services and increased opportunities for contestability, with the expectation of lower costs for consumers. It would also provide increased reliability for Tasmanian services. This will encourage an increase in investment for the ICT sector in Tasmania.
Secret Lab - Before and After the NBN
Secret Lab is a Hobart based softw are developer. Their blog illustrates the huge difference made to their business by NBN connection.
Before the NBN …
“What did we do? We sent hard drives, or USB flash drives, through the postal service, or w e left uploads running overnight in the faint hope that they'd successfully complete w hile w e slept; w orse still, and most deleterious to a small business – we resorted to … 4G LTE … our upload went up relatively quickly but cost a fortune in doing so. This w as not sustainable. We can't run a game development studio for very long like that.”
After the NBN …
“The NBN … gives us a speedy 100 Mbit/s down, and an absolutely vital 40 Mbit/s up, and it gives it to us at a price equivalent to w hat w e'd pay for a copper-based and all-but-useless for uploading ADSL2 connection. We can upload amounts of data that w ould have previously taken overnight, if w e could do it at all, or required us to spend ridiculous amounts of money … We can move faster than we could before … We don't have to raise our prices, since our broadband connection is both usable and cost friendly to a small business, and w e no longer have to pay for extras such as hard drives to post, or Telstra 4G. “Best of all, we no longer have to even consider leaving Tasmania – a beautiful place to live and work – solely because we couldn't get the connectivity we would have needed to make our business more effective, sustainable, and better equipped to make new games and software.”
5 A re-elected Labor Government will include
optic fibre in its plans for a second Basslink cable. Labor has committed $1.5 million for a full feasibility analysis of a second electricity interconnector across Bass Strait. We will also investigate laying superfast optic fibre cable alongside the interconnecter to futureproof Tasmania’s technology infrastructure and maximise Tasmania’s opportunities in the rapidly expanding technology sector.
50 Free Public WiFi Hotspots
As people seek internet and smartphone connectivity on a constant basis, public WiFi hotspots are increasingly important. People who are travelling, touring or simply visiting remote or isolated places need WiFi to
maintain their connectivity. This can be difficult due to the remoteness of many of Tasmania’s most iconic tourist locations.
It’s also important for Tasmanians living in rural and regional communities to have equality of access to free public WiFi. Most city-dwellers have a local WiFi hotspot close by - smaller communities shouldn’t have to miss out. In today’s world, everyone should be able to access free public WiFi in their own communities.
To address these issues, a re-elected Labor Government will establish at least 50 new free public WiFi hotspots in Tasmania. Some of these will cover popular but remote tourism destinations. Others will be established in regional and rural communities for the benefit of residents and visitors alike.
Labor will invest $100,000 to build hotspots on the back of existing government infrastructure at:
Cradle Mountain
Mt William National Park Maria Island
Strahan
Walls of Jerusalem National Park South Bruny Island
Stanley Lake St Clair King Island Hastings Cave
Further remote-location hotspots may be added depending on cost.
Labor will commit up to $150,000 to build standalone hotspots in two destinations that do not have any existing digital infrastructure. These hotspots will be at the Port Arthur Historic Site and the summit of Mount Wellington.
Labor will also create a new $250,000 Local Government WiFi Hotspot Fund to encourage local councils to create free public WiFi
hotspots in their communities. Tasmanian councils will be able to apply to this Fund on a competitive basis to gain dollar-for-dollar support to establish one or more hotspots in their council area. Councils would be expected to provide unlimited free access with
6 appropriate safeguards and guaranteed levels
of service.
Virtual Cellar Doors:
An Online Tourism Trail
Tasmania has an international reputation for premium produce, including wine, cheeses, berries, oysters, cider and whisky. Our cultural and creative industries are increasingly
significant as a drawcard for tourists, while magnificent historic properties like Port Arthur and Woolmers Estate have long attracted international visitors. Many tourists who visit Tasmania are keen to tour to a mixture of food, wine, cultural and historic destinations, based upon their particular interests.
A re-elected Labor Government will commit $100,000 to develop a ‘virtual trail’
encompassing the cellar doors of Tasmania’s boutique food producers, wineries, cideries and micro-breweries, combined with historic sites, art galleries, museums and other places of interest. The trail will take the form of a smartphone app in which users can choose their own trail. For example, whisky lovers will be able to create an instant ‘distillery trail’ while gourmet food lovers could opt to create a ‘seafood and fine wine’ trail.
Government Open Data
Labor understands that communities benefit when people can access government
information easily. While Tasmanian
Government agencies have made significant moves towards transparency, there is more work to be done.
A re-elected Labor Government will drive change through the public sector to maximise open data platforms and services. Labor will direct each government agency to identify additional data sets with potential to be of value to the public and ask them to develop
strategies to increase transparency.
Technology to Drive Tasmania’s Future:
New Funding
Initiative 2013-14 ($m ) 2014-15 ($m ) 2015-16 ($m ) 2016-17 ($m ) NBN Incentive: Connect Tasmania Faster* - 1.25 1.25 1.25 Futureproofing Tasmania: Optic Fibre Basslink 2* - - - - 50 Free Public WiFi Hotspots - 0.25 0.25 - Virtual Cellar Doors - 0.1 - - Total - 1.6 1.5 1.25*NBN Incentive is budgeted at $1.25m per annum for 20 years – total $25m. Funding for Futureproofing Tasmania: Optic Fibre in Basslink is included in Infrastructure Policy costings and therefore has no additional funding implications.
What we are doing now
Since 1998, the Labor Government has systematically built Tasmania’s technology infrastructure from the ground up.
The nation-leading TasCOLT project led to the selection of Tasmania as a first test site for the fibre optic NBN.
7 Under Labor, Tasmania was the first state to
embrace the potential of the National Broadband Network. By taking ‘first mover advantage’ on the NBN, Tasmania has already established a niche as an ICT industry hotspot, where businesses and consumers can benefit from access to world-class telecommunications infrastructure.
In the current term of government, Labor has provided $40,000 to support the roll out of multiple Wireless Hotspots on the East Coast of Tasmania through the NBN Industry
Assistance Fund. Labor also supported
Tasmanian businesses to skill up for the digital economy through the highly successful Digital Ready Program.
Where we’ve come from
Labor has a proud history of building
Tasmania’s economic infrastructure. Labor led the development of our renewable energy assets, building the Hydro and laying the foundation for Tasmania’s industrial development.
But while Labor builds Tasmania’s
infrastructure, the Liberal Party’s only interest in infrastructure is to sell it off. Under the last Liberal Government in the1990s, Tasmania was a telecommunications backwater. There was no fibre-optic cable and no vision for information technology and innovation.
