Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak to the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 today because it has many implications not only for this country but also for my electorate of Canning. Delivering better broadband services to Canning is essential, so I welcome this opportunity to speak because it is very relevant to the electorate.

I might say as a precursor that the previous speakers that I have listened to, the member for Kingston, the member for Braddon and the member for Flynn, seemed to be running this line in the House today that the opposition does not want broadband, that we are not keen on having broadband as soon as possible. That could not be further from the truth. That is what the debate is about, and I will be alluding to it further in my speech. We want to see it rolled out as soon as possible, as promised by the Labor Party in opposition. We do not want to see it taking until 2013 and all the years that are going to ensue. We want to see it rolled out as soon as possible. The markers on this debate have shifted all the time in terms of delivery, and this is what we are saying is an issue with this particular program, that it is taking so much time.

My good friend, the member for Braddon, tells me that Tasmania is ready to go, and I saw a few people with hard hats on with the Prime Minister in Tasmania. Let me remind the House that it was Senator Harradine who probably delivered more in terms of telecommunications for Tasmania than any other member of this federal parliament, given his ideal position as holding the balance of power in the Senate for several years and his ability to extract a certain amount of largesse from the federal government at the time for Tasmania. That is why he continued to be popularly elected as a senator for Tasmania for so long. So let us not talk about Tasmania being in any way disadvantaged and behind the eight ball. In fact, it has had a walk-up start on these issues for many years. I need to put that on the record.

As a whole, the National Broadband Network mark 2 is a case of deja vu. Last year similar legislation to this before us today was brought before the parliament in relation to the first bungled NBN. That was 18 months ago, and $20 million later there is nothing to show for it, so we are going over old ground again. The handling of the National Broadband Network, quite frankly, has been farcical; now the government wants to create a company to deliver a $43 billion mark 2 fibre-to-the-node network. If history is anything to go by, unfortunately for all Australians I have serious doubts that this project will actually get off the ground. How many marks 2, 3, 4 or whatever is it going to take to get this program right? The fact is that this amount of money, $43 billion, is a massive amount when there were other proposals placed before the government.

As we have heard, this legislation seeks to amend sections of the Telecommunications Act to require carriers and utilities to provide information about their existing network and infrastructure to the Commonwealth to assist in the planning of the NBN and over the course of the rollout, if we ever get to that. It was aptly named by the member for Dunkley the ‘show-and-tell’ legislation. While it is hoped that all carriers will cooperate with the request to provide information, there is the power in the legislation to compel disclosure. That is what it is about.

Nine submissions were received from the major telecommunications carriers and utilities by the Senate select committee. Most highlighted major concerns about the onerous obligations contained in the legislation; timeframes and fundamental security of handling of sensitive information. Why would they want to give a competitive edge to the Rudd company, as it might be called, which might eventually build the NBN? I can understand their grievance. What we should not be surprised about is that the government has failed to consult any of the stakeholders before introducing this bill. They had to read about these new obligations in the media. Because of the nature of the information sought, the coalition believes that the application of this bill should be restricted to the implementation study period only. When there is no real plan as to how the services are going to be rolled out and no idea about how it is going to be paid for at any level, obviously there is a great deal of uncertainty for carriers and utilities, which really deserve consideration.

The government’s original $4.7 billion broadband plan never got off the ground. Now this latest $43 billion proposal, if it does go ahead, will take up to a decade to roll out. That is 10 years for it to get to the populace. In fact, by the time it is rolled out it will probably be redundant. The coalition champions universal access to fast, affordable and reliable broadband. But the country deserves a plan that will benefit all Australians at an affordable cost. I put the emphasis on ‘all Australians’, because there are going to be a heap who will miss out.

Analysts believe that if this plan is delivered, accessing it will cost anywhere between $100 and $900 a month. This is obviously dearer than existing high-speed broadband and casts doubt over its take-up rate for this massive investment. In fact, some economists believe that the NBN cost will exceed the benefits by up to $20 billion. Of course, the government does not want to do a cost-benefit analysis. We have heard this from many speakers. It is easier to be ignorant of the reality of the costs. I might point out, as other speakers have, that if it is $100 to $900 a month, how are pensioners going to stay online? At the moment you can get some very nice packages for $29 95 and so on from a whole range of people who advertise. But $100 a month? I would like to see that.

Just to give you an idea of the cost of this plan, in 2005 the West Australian Premier, as opposition leader, proposed building a 3,700 kilometre canal to bring water from the Kimberley through the Pilbara and the mid-west to the southern part of Australia to ensure Perth’s water security. It was lampooned. It was expected to cost $2 billion and was going to take 10 years to build. To put it into context, it was going to cost only $2 billion to solve Western Australia’s water woes. Here we have $43 billion to be spent on an unviable broadband network that will bypass thousands of my constituents when we could have built that canal from the Kimberley 21 times over. In other words, for the same amount of money we could have built 77,700 kilometres of canal. Forty-three billion dollars rolls off the lips pretty easily. When Colin Barnett was talking about $2 billion to bring water from the Ord River to Perth, people said what a shocking amount of money that was, yet here we have $43 billion being passed off as though it is just pocket money.

I take this opportunity to discuss the broadband situation as it relates to Canning. Canning is a diverse electorate with outer metropolitan suburbs as well as rural and regional areas making up what is called the Peel region. Because of this geography, metro-equivalent broadband access is one of the most prominent issues for my constituents Those who have internet access are often forced to rely on expensive wireless and satellite options—and even this is nearly impossible for those living along the ranges. Thank goodness the previous government gave the broadband guarantee because at least people can afford satellite in some of these areas where cable could not be rolled out—the land does not allow certain types of wireless. There has been a public outcry in Canning at the government being citycentric with its NBN mark 2 not being extended to towns with fewer than a thousand residents. This is a real issue. There are many towns in my electorate with fewer than a thousand residents and we have already been told that they will not receive the rollout. For example, Serpentine, Jarrandale, Mundijong, Dwellingup and North Dandalup will miss out on the rollout of high-speed broadband. That is 3,000 Canning residents alone who will get a raw deal. The then Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Daryl Williams, along with Geoff Booth from Telstra, was able to get dedicated broadband into Dwellingup. So the people of Dwellingup have been well served, unlike people in some of the other towns. Unfortunately, these towns will miss out on the high-speed initiative. They will have the basic broadband but not this high-speed initiative that the government is talking about.

Families in the towns I have just mentioned who use the internet to keep in touch with loved ones and local businesspeople who use the internet to contact their customers and suppliers and to find new markets for their products simply cannot access a reliable service. Under this $43 billion plan, they will still not be able to. For example, there is a poultry breeder in my electorate who provides many hens to the market and he tries to stay in touch with market innovations in the United States. He tells me he has a terrible time trying to get decent broadband, and he is probably only three-quarters of an hour, particularly with this new highway that is being built, from the Perth CBD. These residents were promised true metro-equivalent internet services, but under NBN mark 2, while city dwellers will get a much faster 100-megabit connection, many of my constituents will continue to rely on this inferior service where they get only half a megabit, if that. As Glenn Milne wrote in the Australian on 27 April this year:

Labor’s election plan treated 98 per cent of Australia equally and two per cent unequally. The revised version, while delivering faster cyber speeds to a reduced  90 per cent of the population, increases to 10 per cent the number of Australians who effectively will be treated as second class citizens.

Those second-class technology citizens represent 113 Western Australian towns. I recently led a petition calling on the Prime Minister to explain why Canning towns are in his ‘too-hard’ basket and calling for an explanation of how he plans to ensure they have access to metro-equivalent services, as they were promised before the last election. My petition reads:

Mr Rudd promised a fibre to the node network for 98 per cent of Australia. Excluding Dwellingup, Mundijong, North Dandalup, Serpentine and Jarrandale from the high speed roll out is not good enough. I support delivering better broadband to my area.

Not surprisingly, hundreds of frustrated local residents have joined the fight and signed my petition because the NBN misses the mark. It is a classic example of this government’s focus group, the Hawker Britton focus group—election centred policy on the run. Rural and regional centres are not important to the Prime Minister. The Labor Party hate the bush, and that is why they are leaving them out. My office continues to be inundated with petitions and comments from locals who feel shafted. For example, Mrs Pettett from Serpentine wrote this to me:

We are amazed that the basics of broadband are still not reaching various parts of this beautiful country … What adds salt to the wounds is we have relatives living in Great Britain in the Welsh mountains who have had high speed broadband for a number of years and they just thought we were in the dark ages when we talked of the speeds and costs involved here in Serpentine.

Yvonne from Serpentine says:

Would the Rudd government like to drop the taxes for the people put out by their lack of lateral thinking? At times it feels like people living in areas like here are being punished … I pay dearly for living in my little patch of heaven but why can I not enjoy facilities that other residents have? The monies collected by the government from me are hard earned and should I be late paying anything they soon let me know. Can I have some back because the government has let me down?

The coalition had a real plan to deliver these services, and Canning residents would have been amongst the first to reap the rewards. We recognised that broadband should be targeted to those areas where there was a lack of access to and options for broadband. The coalition’s broadband plan would have reached 99 per cent of households and, unlike Labor’s broadband mess, would have cost only $1 billion to roll out Australia-wide. It would have been complete already. It would have been in now. It would have included the rollout of 15,000 kilometres of new open-access fibre optic backhaul in rural and regional centres.

Under OPEL, the previous initiative, Forrestdale, Dawesville, Mandurah South, Forrestfield and South Yunderup were to have services upgraded from basic ADSL to extremely fast ADSL2+. The Peel region would have benefited from fibre-to-the-node technology, so much so that it would have been sinking in fibre optic cables and new wireless sites which were to be established in Armadale, Mandurah, Pinjarra and Waroona. All this in electorates across the country for less than $1 billion of taxpayer’s money, and that $1 billion was from government savings not borrowings.

The point has to be made clearly—our plan was funded from government surpluses not from the borrowings that this government is continually procuring. Now the government want to spend $43 billion, which they will have to borrow, and sink this country even further into debt. This $43 billion is part of the one-third of a trillion dollars that this government intends to borrow. So we have gone from surplus to having a debt of one-third of a trillion dollars.

Michael Costa and Scott Homes of the Daily Telegraph hit the nail on the head when they said:

The Government has decided to gold plate an economically unviable strategy. This thinking equates to building an eight-lane freeway to every house in Australia, when what is needed is funding to upgrade local roads.

Industry experts have verified that satellite and mobile wireless solutions are underutilised and underestimated as a cost-effective solution for rural and remote access.

The Government could invest a lot less than $43 billion to subsidise these approaches.

The coalition does not support the unnecessary duplication of telecommunications infrastructure, but it does support its immediate rollout in areas of under service. I encourage the Rudd Labor government to get on with this program—instead of, as we have seen today, putting together a working group that is going to spend $25 million looking at how to roll this out. This will go on forever—as I said, taking 10 years to connect people around Australia. Tasmania might be lucky because it is first cab off the rank; but people in my electorate feel aggrieved because they are going to miss out, some for 10 years and some forever.

See this speech in context