Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise tonight to speak on the third report of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network, entitled Review of the rollout of the National Broadband Network. This report covers the period from 1 July to 31 March 2012. Throughout this period of reporting there has been a number of landmark achievements reached to support the NBN rollout. The achievements in the rollout include NBN Co reaching an agreement and signing contracts for fibre rollout with: Syntheo in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory; Visionstream in Tasmania; Silcar in Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT; and Transfield in my home state of Victoria. NBN has released a three-year national fibre rollout plan which details a list for some 3.5 million homes and businesses where work is underway already or due to begin up to mid-2015. It has also released a 12-month rollout schedule. NBN Co. has commenced its short-term satellite service, which will be of enormous benefit to Australians—particularly those in provincial and remote Australia—in its improvement of high-speed broadband services. This will be coupled with the announcement by NBN Co. that it has entered into an agreement with Space Systems/Loral which will deliver two new satellites to support the long-term satellite service. We have seen housing developments turned on to the NBN in western Sydney, and the member for Chifley was talking about before. We have also seen the final version of the wholesale broadband agreement. This means that we have seen some 40 retail service providers sign the WBA, and this includes Australia's largest ISP providers: Telstra, Optus and iiNet.

Over the same period we have seen a number of regulatory milestones, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's consideration and approval of the structural separation of Telstra and the accompanying draft customer migration plan. These are very important steps in delivering a national broadband network to all Australians, no matter where they live. The ACCC's approval of the definitive agreements will also see the NBN able to use existing Telstra pit-and-pipe infrastructure. That is going to allow for cheaper, faster and easier rollout with less overhead cabling and destruction to communities. The ACCC also approved an agreement with Optus for the decommissioning of Optus's HFC network. It should be noted that the NBN Co. special access undertaking which deals with the NBN access terms and conditions, is constantly being improved. It is an evolutionary process that has continued to grow, and it has developed out of feedback from businesses and industry. The ACCC and the committee will monitor this during the next review that we have. The report also notes that the committee is aware that the NBN Co. is still in the early stage of the rollout and that due to delays with the Telstra agreement, a change to the number of points of interconnect and changes to the government's greenfields policy there has been a delay. That happens when you are undertaking a nationally significant piece of infrastructure such as the NBN.

The committee feels that because these targets are not able to be compared between performance reports, it notes that NBN Co. considers it perfectly legitimate to measure its performance against the targets contained in the 12-month and 3-year rollout plans. The committee has recommended that the shareholder minister's report include key performance indicator information for targets in the business plan for homes passed, homes connected and services in operation.

During the time of this reporting we have been out and we have had a look at sites that are already up and running; places like Willunga in South Australia, where we went out and visited and saw cable being put into the ground. We went and saw the nodes being put there and we spoke to the many small businesses who were going to benefit from having a high-speed broadband network, something they have never had in the past. A lot of those businesses were really excited about it. There have been examples— and there are some in the report—that talk about how they had spoken to their providers and got nowhere for a long period of time—got nowhere in being able to access high-speed broadband.

With the NBN coming through it should be noted that the work of member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth, has been very strong. Amanda took us to a lot of businesses and the local council and the library. The library is now running programs for seniors that are getting them in there and teaching them about the internet and computers and high-speed broadband. They are saying that it is just flat out; they cannot keep up with the amount of people who want to know and want to get onto this 21st century thinking. It was important that we go and see these things happening on the ground.

In my own electorate of McEwen, South Morang started putting the cable into the ground, and one of the fantastic things about this is that we are getting students from Peter Lalor College—kids who were on the cusp of going bad or good—and giving them an opportunity to learn and be part of the fitting of fibre and the laying of fibre out in the streets and to homes. There are some fantastic young kids, all good young blokes, that are out there and learning this sort of stuff—they are learning to splice. It is giving them an opportunity to take a career that they may not have had previously and it may have been pretty tough for them. But these are just some of the small benefits that happen through the NBN as a side thing while we are delivering this fantastic piece of infrastructure.

I want to compare this to what we have heard from those opposite. We have heard again tonight this false figure of $50 billion. They make this figure up and not one person has ever been able to come and back that figure up.

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