Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to witness the rollout of a historic nation-building infrastructure project like the National Broadband Network. It is a great privilege to be part of the Labor government that has the vision and courage to embark on a major reform and a major project such as this. It is a great privilege to support a major structural reform to Australia's telecommunications industry that simply would not have been brought about had we not embarked upon this project, a reform that is going to benefit consumers for decades to come.

The NBN will enable the Australian econ­omy to grow, to transform and to adapt into the economy of the future, thereby securing our prosperity. The NBN will provide Australia with world-class broadband techn­ology. It will open up a genuine choice of services and drive competitive prices for consumers, whether they live in capital cities or in regional Australia or in rural and remote areas.

In supporting this project and speaking on this Telecommunication Legislation Amend­ment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011, which is an important part of the package of legislation to roll out the NBN, it is an absolute pleasure to stare down the nay-sayers on the other side who have had nothing but carping negativity and criticism on this project from the very get-go. I will go through some of the carping criticism that we have experienced on this project to show where the nay-sayers have been proved wrong even at this very early stage in the delivery of the project.

They know that they are wrong. The shadow minister knows it, the member for Bradfield knows it, and everyone opposite who represents regional Australia in this place knows it because they would have received the phone calls, letters, emails and questions from constituents saying: 'I have heard about this NBN. When is it coming past our suburb? When is it coming into my house?' It is disappointing that the member for Gilmore, which adjoins my electorate of Throsby in the Illawarra and has been chosen as one of the pilot sites, instead of champion­ing this as a local representative, is out there day in, day out bagging it and showing her lack of understanding and support for what it means for the local region. It is not so for all the political representatives in the Kiama and broader South Coast area. There are many political representatives who are great champions of this project. It is a good news story for our region and for the people on the South Coast and in the Illawarra. I simply cannot understand why the nay-sayers spend so much time and energy talking it down.

The NBN will be a boon to electorates in regional areas like the Illawarra and the South Coast because it will quite simply bring economic, social and community infrastructure right into people's homes, thereby connecting them to the markets and to the entertainment not only of the capital cities but also the world. As an MP for a region that adjoins one of the pilot sites, it is a privilege to join with local organisations like Regional Development Australia Illaw­arra and the Kiama Municipal Council in imagining a broadband future for the region. Only recently new funding was announced to help local councils, including the Kiama Municipal Council, take full advantage of the National Broadband Network through the development and upgrade of innovative online service delivery to homes and businesses. Under the Digital Local Govern­ment program, which the minister announced a few weeks ago, the Kiama Municipal Council will receive in excess of $370,000 to develop digital solutions that can then be adapted by other councils and rolled out across the country as the NBN rolls out. I know from my conversations with the mayor, Sandra McCarthy, and other councillors on that council that they are very pleased to be involved in such an exciting and innovative project.

It is also a great privilege to play a small part in the facilitation of this project by speaking on and voting in favour of the legislation that marks each step of the steady progress towards providing fast, efficient and affordable telecommunications services for the Australian population and in particular regions like my own where there are still suburbs where people are unable to receive broadband services because of the way that the exchanges are configured, the lack of broadband capability from the local exchanges, the geography of the region and the build-up of many of the new suburbs and the way they were wired up to telecom­munications services using mainly RIM based technology.

When it comes to matters NBN, I am pleased to speak today in support of this bill, the Telecommunications Legislation Amend­ment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011, which will ensure that no more will we see suburbs built up without having access to fast, reliable broadband services because in the process of building up those suburbs we will be digging the pits and laying the pipes and the cable which will ensure that when people move into those new houses they will have the capacity to switch on broadband services from the very get go. That is perhaps something that some of those who live in electorates where they are not building new suburbs may not understand, but I can tell you that in the electorate of Throsby where we have two new suburbs in West Dapto and Albion Park going in it will make an incredible difference to people who move into those homes to know that they will be wired up from the very beginning. So I welcome it.

The telecommunications fibre deployment bill amends the 1997 act to do a number of things that affect the provision of utility infrastructure in new real estate develop­ments. The bill requires developers that are constitutional corporations to install fibre ready passive infrastructure. It requires this passive infrastructure in the long term footprint of the NBN project to be fibre ready. Penalties will apply if a constitutional corporation sells or leases land or a building situated in a new development unless fibre ready facilities have been installed, thereby creating the requirement that these facilities are there for the new suburbs when they are built.

The bill creates a power that enables the minister to specify new developments in which fixed lines which are installed need to be optical fibre. Finally, this bill enables the Australian Communications and Media Authority to make standards for customer equipment and cabling for use with the NBN and other superfast networks. The outcome of the legislation will be that residents of new developments will have early and less costly access to the NBN network when it is rolled out into these developments.

Those on the other side have identified the issue of cost in relation to this legislation. Nothing could be more costly when building a new suburb than overlooking the opport­unity when the trenches are being dug, the footpaths are being laid and all the other utilities are going into those houses in a new estate and saying, 'We will put electricity, gas and sewerage in there but what we will not do is connect you to the National Broadband Network. We will not be laying fibre optic cable into those suburbs because we have a blind spot when it comes to the National Broadband Network. We will leave it to the market or some other solution to lay cable in those areas.' Nothing could be more wasteful. Nothing could be more costly than saying, 'We will leave it until some other time or not at all.'

You can imagine the outrage of local residents having moved into their beautiful new suburb with new footpaths, new gardens and new grass laid down when all of a sudden it is decided to lay fibre optic cable into the suburb and in comes the trenching gear digging up concrete that has just been laid for footpaths or digging up grass that has just been laid or perhaps laying a new layer of overhead cable through these areas. They will all be scratching their heads and asking, 'Why on earth wasn't this done when the street was laid and the power was put in?' If we left it to the wisdom of those opposite, that is exactly what would be occurring. The propositions within this bill are nothing more than militant common sense. Unfortunately it is militant common sense that is not shared by those on the other side of the chamber.

I will take the opportunity to talk for a moment about the agreement between NBN Co. and Telstra and Optus, because it is good news for telecommunications customers. Definitive agreements have been executed that, together with Telstra's structural separ­ation undertaking, create a framework for Telstra's participation in the NBN. The NBN Co.-Telstra definitive agreements, including an interim access agreement, provide for the re-use of suitable Telstra infrastructure by NBN Co. and for Telstra to progressively structurally separate by decommissioning its copper network and broadband HFC network capability during the NBN fibre rollout and using the NBN to provide fixed line services to customers within the fibre footprint. The definitive agreements translate the financial heads of agreement signed on 20 June 2010 into detailed, legally-binding agreements. The NBN Co. has also negotiated a deal with Optus to migrate its HFC customers to the NBN. So what we have here really puts a huge hole in the argument that was being run by the member for Wentworth and many of those who have rallied to his call. I have to say that the member for Wentworth takes to this argument as a man with not too much enthusiasm. What those opposite have been saying for most of the last nine months is that this NBN is somehow going to be a great big white elephant, that it is going to be a communications service with no customers and that it is something we are overinvesting in because nobody is going to use it. The agreement that has been reached with Telstra and the agreement that is being reached with Optus show what an outrageous untruth that was and how they simply do not understand how this project is going to roll out.

As a result of these agreements we are going to see the migration of all of the fixed-line customers of Telstra and Optus onto the National Broadband Network. The National Broadband Network will be the backbone. The fibre-optic cable of the National Broadband Network and all those intercon­necting networks will be the telecom­munications network which is delivering fixed-line telecommunications services to those millions of existing Telstra and Optus customers. Far from being a vacant white elephant, from the very get-go as that migration occurs, those fixed-line customers who are currently having their telecom­munications service delivered through the ageing copper network are going to be migrated onto the optical fibre network, the modern NBN, and those services will be delivered. They will be enhanced services. Presumably Optus and Telstra will retain the retail relationship with their customers, but it will be the NBN which is delivering the telecommunications service.

This is good news. It is good news for the customers of Telstra and Optus but it is also good news for the country because it shows that there is a way forward, after in excess of 12 years, when literally nothing was happen­ing in terms of reforming the telecomm­unications regulatory system in this country, reforming the telecommunications market and investing in a fast, reliable, high-speed broadband network. Nothing was happening, particularly in electorates like mine. This legislation, together with the other reforms that have already been introduced, is seeing real reforms being rolled out to real people in real houses in real suburbs. The caravan is moving on and the dogs are barking. We know that there is a need and a hunger for it.

According to the OECD statistics regard­ing average broadband subscription prices, out of 33 countries Australia is the third most expensive country for very low-speed connections, the 14th most expensive for high-speed connections and the 12th most expensive for very high-speed connections. As a result of this legislation, together with the other package of reforms and the investment that is going on today in laying that cable and connecting those houses, we are reforming not only the technology but the telecommunications market. There will be more players in the market and the net result of this is going to be faster, more reliable, more ubiquitous broadband services for the people of Australia and for my electorate of Throsby, and that has to be a good thing. I commend the bill to the House.

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