During a visit to Dubbo on Monday with Labor’s Parkes candidate Kate Stewart, Mr Jones said it was unacceptable that half of the city had been provided with a fibre to the premises (FTTP) connection, while the other half was left with the slower fibre to the node (FTTN) technology.

“We will commission Infrastructure Australia to deal with the mess of fibre to the node. It matters to places like Dubbo that are split into two,” he said.

You have about 9000 premises connected to fibre to the home (FTTP) and about 7500 roughly connected to fibre to the node.”

“Fibre to the node delivers great speeds to the node, then it slows down or fails when it hits the customer access points.”

Labor would connect an additional two million premises to FTTP across Australia if it wins the election on Saturday, Mr Jones said, and would also find a way to improve access for those serviced by the inferior connection.

However Labor would be forced to honour any contracts already signed by the government commissioning the building of FTTN, the shadow minister said, because it would be too costly to break them.

It would mean that more areas would also be connected by FTTN under a Labor government and then reviewed to see how they could be improved.

“We will not issue any new contracts, we will have to honour existing ones. If we don’t, under our constitution it is very difficult for the Commonwealth government to break a contract,” Mr Jones said.

“We would end up paying the contractors the same to do no work and nobody would thank us for that.”

Mr Jones said providing fast broadband in regional areas was an important part of closing the gap between capital cities and regional areas.

“The levers that you would use to address inequalities would be healthcare, education public transport, rail and road, sewers and that sort of thing,” he said.

“That still remains important but in the 21st century, access to broadband services is a massive lever.”