Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Greenway and the member for Wentworth for their contributions and their questions. Indeed, I do agree with the comments of the member for Greenway. My only regret is that she did not take the member for Wentworth to her meeting in north-west Sydney so that he could actually see on the ground what has happened in terms of a poverty of infrastructure being provided in terms of telecommunications.

It is no accident in terms of the equity component that the NBN will bring that we are beginning the rollout in Sydney in Riverstone and Schofields. These suburbs will be transformed as communities because the NBN will not only transform what people can do in their own home with fibre to the home but also transform employment opportunities for high-tech, high-paid jobs. It is no accident either with regard to the equity component that was raised by the member for Wentworth—I say with some convenience—that the rollout began in Tasmania in areas that had been deprived of high-level technology in the past. Already six Tasmanian retailers are offering more competitive prices and services than many on the mainland can get. This is what Stephen Love of Galloway's pharmacy in Scottsdale had to say:

I've taken a 100mbit speed offer, that's actually very close to the cost of my previous ADSL2+ connection. The NBN will provide huge potential, for lots of new applications, especially in health which is of interest to me being a pharmacist.

So you can see what the response is on the ground. Certainly wherever I have gone, the NBN has had enormous support and indeed is one of the reasons why I am here as a minister and not as a shadow minister, because a range of the representatives on the cross benches regarded this as a critical issue moving forward.

With regard to the question about access raised by the member for Wentworth, under our system almost everyone gets access to fibre to the home. That is the basis of the system in terms of getting fibre to the home under the National Broadband Network. The NBN will not set retail prices. It is an open access, wholesale-only provider. So you will have a level playing field there. It will encourage competition which will lead to lower retail prices and better services—to give the analogy again, back to the way that freight rail system has been developed in this country. If you have a secure foundation then you are able to build competition on top of that that will allow the market to operate. I know that the member for Wentworth supports markets, unlike some of his colleagues who seem to have walked away from support for markets. I certainly support markets as well. I believe markets can be an extremely democratic way of allocating resources and providing significant benefit to more people on the ground.

The NBN Co. approach to developing its pricing model is this: the product and pricing approach developed by NBN Co. as part of its corporate plan has a number of core concepts, including a strong focus on gathering retail service providers, end-user requirements being simple and easy to understand and harnessing observable trends in end-user demand and utilisation. NBN Co. has consulted with more than 25 ISPs in developing its pricing approach. Given that the bells are ringing—

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