Opposition Leader Tony Abbott last night declared he was “no Bill Gates” in a lengthy interview on the ABC’s 7:30 Report in which he appeared to display a lack of understanding of the Coalition’s new broadband policy unveiled yesterday morning and repeatedly explained he was “no tech-head”.

The full interview is available online through the ABC’s web site or iView streaming TV service.

The Coalition yesterday unveiled its $6 billion rival broadband policy to Labor’s National Broadband Network project, with the central planks being a competitive backhaul network, regional and metropolitan wireless networks and an ADSL enrichment program that will target telephone exchanges without ADSL2+ broadband.

The policy immediately attracted fire from the telecommunications industry, as well as Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who described it as “a blast from the past” and Greens Communications Spokesperson Scott Ludlam, who said it ran the risk of resulting in “a real patchwork of service delivery”.

Questioned repeatedly about the details of the policy last night on the 7:30 Report, Abbott would only repeat the Coalition’s top line messages about it.

“We don’t think re-creating a government monopoly is the way to go,” he said, referring to NBN Co. “We want to see competition in these backbones, and then competition to these homes … we are going to have broadband running past the same 97 percent of households, and yes, we’re not guaranteeing 100Mbps – but we are guaranteeing up to 100Mbps.”

But when presenter Kerry O’Brien asked for details, Abbott claimed ignorance.

“I’m no Bill Gates here, and I don’t claim to be any kind of tech-head in all of this … I do not have the same level of technical competence in this area … if you want to drag me into a technical discussion here, I am not going to be very successful at it.”

O’Brien ridiculed Abbott in response.

“Don’t you have to apply technical competence to budgets and the economy?” he asked. Then referring to guaranteed peak speeds promised by the Coalition’s policy, he said: “Can you really offer that guarantee when you don’t seem to know what peak speed is? It’s quite an easy concept to understand.”

The news comes as Conroy yesterday opened fire on Abbott personally, labelling him a “luddite” for not having appearing to have anything to do with his party’s technology policies, on a day in which the Canberra press gallery also criticised the Opposition Leader on the issue.

“The man is a luddite,” he said.

Abbott did not mention his party’s broadband policy or Australia’s technology sector in general during the Coalition’s wide-ranging election campaign launch on Sunday, and yesterday’s Coalition broadband policy launch was conducted by Shadow Communications Minister Tony Smith and Finance Spokesperson Andrew Robb.

In addition, Abbott has seldom commented on the Coalition’s attitude towards Labor’s controversial filter policy, leaving it to Smith, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey and Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull to detail the Coalition’s decision last week to vote against the project.

Image credit: Screenshot of Tony Abbott on the 7:30 Report last night, believed to be OK to use under fair use

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1. Tezz
   Posted 11/08/2010 at 11:31 am | Permalink | Reply

   So Abbott doesn’t have a clue about technology, who cares, he’s got ministers to detail the information. It should probably be pointed out that Kerry said peak rate was the maximum service the speed could obtain but only really in the middle of the night and normally much lower. That isn’t what the coalition has proposed, they are guaranteeing a minimum speed, so that you will always receive at least 12Mbps at all times, or PIR of 100Mbs vs SIR of 12Mbs for the ATM people. So even though he sat there smiling about it Kerry himself got his facts wrong.

   But anyways, the National Press Club ICT debate from yesterday was a much better source of information as it involved the relevant ministers.

2. Warren Seen
   Posted 11/08/2010 at 12:34 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Tezz, did you listen to the ministers who announced this (Smith and Robb) yesterday? They had as poor a grasp on this policy as Abbott did! And yes, that included the phrase “minimum *peak* speed” – unless you’re somehow suggesting that with $750m they can build a FTTN network that will ensure every current ADSL2+ user is no further than 1200m or so from a node?

   • Tezz
     Posted 11/08/2010 at 2:12 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Seriously Warren, I was just pointing out how the interviewer was attempting to ridicule Abbott and in the process made a mistake himself, I wasn’t commenting on the viability of either proposal.

3. Chris Knight
   Posted 11/08/2010 at 1:03 pm | Permalink | Reply

   @Tezz – the coalition are not guaranteeing a minimum speed, they’re guaranteeing a minimum *peak* speed, which is what Kerry was talking about although he was actually describing contention ratios.

   It’s also very difficult to guarantee a minimum speed when talking about a shared media delivered wirelessly.

4. SLDR
   Posted 11/08/2010 at 1:56 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Warren
   Being close to the node is not enough. I live about 500m from the Telstra exchange and have attenuation and S/N ratio that suggests that the copper was laid when Rev. Joseph Docker subdivided Richmond in 1860.

   Really the copper network needs to be torn up and soon. Sell it on Ebay and give the proceedes to NBN.

5. Paul..
   Posted 11/08/2010 at 7:51 pm | Permalink | Reply

   In the right light, and if you squint a bit, there’s definitely a family resemblance though .. http://twitpic.com/2dnh99 :-)