The Australian federal election campaign has just crossed the halfway mark but one topic both major parties seem eager to avoid is the national broadband network.

The Coalition made a statement on Friday that reiterated a number of points it has made in the past about the NBN. Labor has not had much to say on how it plans to proceed with the rollout if elected, apart from hinting that it will provide more fibre to the home than its political rival.

Last night, the extent to which the regions desperately need fast broadband was made clear by participants in the ABC's Q and A program. Business owners, the sick and those who were concerned about their childrens' education spoke up and as the discussion went on, it became clear that the NBN would provide answers to many of the problems raised.

And on the weekend, the stark difference between fibre to the premises and fibre to the node was also illustrated by a businessman in Brunswick who has a fibre connection to his office. However, his home is served by fibre to the basement of the building.

At his office, a music studio, this man gets something like 95 megabits per second. At home, he is lucky to get nine megabits per second. For him, the option of working at home does not exist as he needs to download really big files.

But this man, at least, can walk to his office, which is 30 minutes away, and proceed with his work. What happens to the patient in rural Australia who needs to have files containing scan images uploaded to a laboratory in a city for diagnosis? The option is to travel 500 kilometres and do it in person.

What happens to the business that needs something more than what FTTN or satellite offers in order to trade? What about the child who depends on a high-speed connection to follow an online education course that, once again, is available only in the cities?

Rural Australia rarely gets its voice heard in the mainstream media, simply because the cutbacks dictated by the parlous financial state of media companies mean there are no journalists to report on issues which concern the bush.

And the situation is getting worse. Yesterday, News Corporation announced it would be closing seven of its community newspapers. Fairfax has already given up on local news, preferring to depend on features in its local papers.

Neither Bill Shorten nor Malcolm Turnbull have ventured to say anything substantial on the NBN in four weeks of campaigning. Mitch Fifield and Jason Clare, the Liberal and Labor members respectively responsible for communications, haven't been forthcoming either.

The only time that the NBN figured in the campaigning was when the Australian Federal Police raided the offices of some Labor functionaries in a bid to find out who leaked supposedly confidential documents about NBN Co to a number of media outlets.

How long will we have to wait to see what the two contestants offer?