Telstra - on telecoms and climate change

Garnaut disappoints on telecommunications, climate change

In her keynote address to today's CommsDay Green Telecom congress, Chloe Munro, Telstra's Executive Director, Innovation Projects for the Digital Future spoke out about the disappointing omission of telecommunications from the final report of Garnaut Climate Change Review, released yesterday.

"Real solutions to climate change - ones that enable the shift to a low-carbon economy - require substantial investment in technology and in infrastructure. Certainly this includes ubiquitous high speed broadband - in Australia, the National Broadband Network. It’s disappointing that the Garnaut Report overlooks the
National Broadband Network entirely," Ms Munro said.

"Garnaut makes scant reference to telecommunications and does not appear to appreciate the extent to which our industry is part of the solution."

Ms Munro set out the potential for telecommunications to reduce Australia's carbon emissions by almost 5 per cent per annum, by 2015, and pointed out that the National Broadband Network was key to delivering these savings.

"Right now in Australia in particular we’re at a policy cusp. We can be mesmerised by cost or we can focus on the conditions for investment: investment that is required to enable the shift to a low-carbon economy," Ms Munro said

Following her address to the conference this morning, Ms Munro was interviewed by Sky Business News. The interview will be available to watch shortly.