Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week the member for Wentworth and I went on a broadband policy tour of my electorate of Swan to meet residents and businesses. We felt a bit like David Attenborough looking for a wild creature out in the wild west of Western Australia that we know is very scarce. It is that scarce, we could not find the NBN nor could we find the fibre in my electorate. If you look at the website—

Mr Lyons interjecting—

I hear the member for Bass. I know he is lucky enough to have found the NBN in regions of Tasmania. We did not find the NBN but we did find many constituents disillusioned by the broken Labor broadband promises in my electorate from the last election and positively enthused and receptive to Malcolm Turnbull, the member for Wentworth, and the coalition's policy of rapid rollout of fibre-to-the-node NBN that would be delivered faster and to areas that need it most first.

I am sure there are many members in this place that remember the great fanfare of the Labor broadband promises made before the last election. In my electorate of Swan, particularly, the Labor candidate trumpeted the fact that we were going to have the commencement of broadband in the second quarter of 2011. There has been no commencement as yet. There are plenty of signs on the website saying it has been commenced but it has not commenced. They were out there saying to everyone in Victoria Park, 'We want your vote. We are going to give you broadband in the second quarter of 2011.' It just did not happen. That promise was broken well over 12 months ago. Today not one piece of fibre has been laid in Victoria Park. The residents of the trial site are becoming increasingly frustrated about the lack of delivery from this government and from the NBN.

Government members interjecting—

It is great to hear the members interjecting because they have got a lot to hang their hats on about all the performances of all the schemes they have implemented since they were elected in 2007. Let us remind them about pink batts, schools, BER and all those sorts of things. We have seen the inability of the government to deliver simple schemes over the last four years—

Government members interjecting—

See this speech in context