Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What I would like to do in this debate on the National Broadband Network Companies Bill 2010 and the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (National Broadband Network Measures—Access Arrangements) Bill 2010 is to remind those opposite of exactly why the NBN is being introduced, why it is being rolled out and why it is accepted by the Australian people. The Australian people are looking forward to seeing it rolled out throughout the nation. We are and were 17th out of 31 developed countries on broadband penetration, the fifth most expensive amongst 30 developed countries on broadband prices, 50th in terms of broadband speeds, equal last on deployment of optic fibre broadband and 29th out of 50 countries on an average connection speed at 2.6 megabits per second.

It is very sobering to restate those facts no-one on the other side can deny. They had 13 years to do something about it and 19 or 20 plans to do something about it as well. One cannot say they did not put up some plans. The trouble is that they could not put up anything else with them. I reckon the great testimony to that is that the second last or third last—I cannot remember now there were that many—spokesperson to put forward their plan in the last election, only last year, is now languishing somewhere on the back bench, having been thanked for the effort he put into putting forward a broadband plan for the opposition, and every now and again we hear him gnashing his teeth and screaming his head off about Bill Shorten and other people. No doubt they will drag him out for another plan, plan 25, later on.

We now have the current spokesperson on ‘Let’s not produce another plan for broadband’—the member for Wentworth. What are his riding instructions? Destroy the NBN. I am not surprised at all because everything you hear from the other side is no, negative, not now, never. Anything else associated with negativism is from that side. The member for Wentworth, the member for no, has been sent out to try and destroy broadband.

I can tell you the Australian people want the NBN. It has fantastic prospects. Did you know that a recent Akamai internet report showed that no Australian city was in the top 100 cities for average internet connection speed? How’s that for a legacy? Fantastic! Australia was last in the OECD for fibre penetration for broadband—not second last, not third last but last, zero, zilch, bottom of the class. Australia was ranked 50th in the world for internet speeds, on a par with Russia, and lagging almost every single advanced industrial economy, including our friends across the Tasman. Australia ranks 31 out of 50 countries on the percentage of connections of more than two megabits per second. Only 45 per cent get two megabits per second in Australia. But it is rising ever so slowly for those persons who are on the NBN. Some of those people are in my electorate; so that is absolutely fantastic. The NBN is actually rolling out and this mob on the other side wants to stop it. They will use any excuse, any old negativity, to stop it.

To finish off the unfortunate statistics that are the legacy of the last coalition government before we came into power, Australia ranks 29th out of 50 countries on average connection speed. That is not a good record and we are trying to do something about it, at least on this side. I remind those opposite, because it is very relevant to this legislation, that a week prior to the 2010 federal election the opposition released a plan—I think it was No. 19 or 20—which was a $6.25 billion alternative policy. We eagerly waited for what it meant. It was relying on a combination of public and private funding to build a primarily wireless network delivering a peak speed of 12 megabits per second to 97 per cent of the Australian population, it said. The plan included $3.5 billion to be spent developing an open access, optical fibre backhaul network. It did not take long for the general telecommunications industry to assess it, and it was described as ‘harking back to an earlier era’, ‘lacked vision’—that is strange, is it not?—and ‘muddy and unclear’.

Indeed, I think Rupert Murdoch himself best sums up the need for NBN. In assessing the state of broadband in Australia prior to NBN, he actually said it was an absolute disgrace. That is the legacy we inherited, and now with some vision, some boldness and with some certainty we wish to continue to roll out the NBN. All those on the other side want to do is either delay or destroy it. I have got news for you: the Australian people have made up their minds about the NBN. They want it and the quicker we get on with it the better. That is what this legislation is designed to do. The two bills, the National Broadband Network Companies Bill and the NBN access bill, deliver on our commitment to establish a wholesale-only NBN offering access on open and equivalent terms.

Mr Deputy Speaker, for your interest in this topic, what are some of the more specific aspects of the companies bill? That is at the heart of what we are discussing here. I would like to range through a few aspects to reinforce our case for this legislation. Importantly, it defines NBN Co. to include—heavens above!—NBN Tasmania and any company the NBN Co. controls. I mentioned earlier that the NBN began in Tassie. It began its history, began its journey and began its story in Tassie.

See this speech in context