Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

Before the adjournment last night, I was making the point that the government is not off to a good start in implementing its own second-rate version of the NBN. I made the points that construction of the NBN had slowed down since the election and that the government had broken its promise to honour every existing contract, which had left about half a million homes and businesses in Australia in limbo—unsure whether they would get fibre all the way to the premises or whether they would get the slower, second-rate, second-class version that the government had promised before the election, fibre to the node. In addition to that, construction companies have not been given enough work and, despite the promises that the minister has made that he would ensure that companies would not have to lay off people, contractors have had to lay off staff. Workers have been laid off in different parts of the country, and the most recent example of that was publicised in the Illawarra Mercury only a few weeks ago, where up to 40 workers from Thiess who were previously working on the construction of the NBN have been put off.

In the last week or so I have been to the Illawarra and to the Central Coast of New South Wales and have met some of the half a million that the minister has taken off the NBN rollout map. I can tell you that they are furious. Some people cannot get ADSL at the moment; they cannot work from home; and their children cannot study, using the internet. They are desperate to get the NBN; they were supposed to get it in the next few months—some before Christmas, some next year. Now they are being told that they have been taken off the rollout map and left in limbo. They honestly do not know what is happening. The minister has claimed in this place that they were taken off the map because nothing was happening—no construction work had started, there were only designs on a map. But that is not what residents have told me. They told me that NBN trucks have been up and down their street and that NBN workers have been putting ropes and pipes into pits in their streets. So, claims that no physical construction work has occurred in many of these areas is nonsense. Dr Switkowski, the chairman and acting CEO of the NBN, had to concede as much when he appeared before the Senate committee on the NBN last week. When he was shown photos of work being done in locations like this, he said that it looked like construction to him. The trucks have gone from a lot of these areas now, and residents of the Illawarra, the Central Coast and elsewhere want them back.

Last week the government struck another problem. The media got a copy of the secret advice that NBN Co. had prepared for the incoming minister's brief, and it is, by all accounts, pretty devastating. It pulls apart the government's plan for fibre to the node and essentially says that it cannot be implemented in the time frame the government has set. According to reports in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, the coalition's NBN plan is inadequate, poorly planned and unlikely to be completed on time. The reports say that the revenue the NBN will make under the coalition's plan will drop by up to 30 per cent. They also say it will compromise the provision of telehealth, distance education, internet TV and other business applications. Of most concern, though, the reports say that the coalition's promise to provide everyone in Australia with access to 25 megabits per second by 2016 is unlikely to be able to be implemented. Ziggy Switkowski said something similar when he gave evidence to the Senate committee last week. He described keeping this promise—the promise to all Australians to get access to 25 megabits per second by 2016—as 'very, very demanding'. That is code or bureaucratic-speak for 'not going to happen'.

To give you an idea of how hard it will be for the government to keep this promise, Dr Switkowski told the committee that no other country in the world had ever rolled out fibre to the node as quickly as this, and that it would require the construction and the installation of between 60,000 and 80,000 nodes or boxes on street corners or 2,000 of these boxes or nodes a week—no small feat. It is no wonder then that the minister has refused to release his incoming minister's brief. It tells him that he probably cannot keep the promises that he made before the election. Given the broken promises that we have seen on education, on debt and on everything else, the government needs another broken promise like it needs a hole in the head.

We are now waiting for the minister to release his strategic review of the NBN. He received it yesterday and he should release it. By his own words, the minister has set a very high bar for this report. He said he wants it to be rigorous and forensic. He said two weeks ago he wants 'hand on heart, realistic and achievable options, prudently costed and scoped, on which we can make weighty decisions'. If the government is going to move from a fibre-to-the-premises model to a fibre-to-the-node model, this strategic review needs to provide realistic costs to fix the copper network and then to maintain the copper network that they are going to use. If this report does not provide that information then it will have failed. I am not talking here about estimates or assumptions or international comparisons; I am talking about hard data provided by Telstra, who currently run the copper network, that is independently tested and independently audited.

Evidence presented to the Senate committee last week claimed that up to 80 per cent of the copper network needs work. I have heard suggestions that maintenance of the current copper network alone could cost between half a billion dollars and $900 million a year. Put another way, maintaining our copper network over the next decade could cost between $5 billion and $9 billion. That is why we need this information in the strategic review. We need to know both how much it is going to cost to fix the copper network so that it is fit for purpose and how much it will cost to maintain it. As the minister has said, these are weighty decisions he has to make, and before you make weighty decisions you need this hard data, independently tested. Those are just a few of the questions that we need answers to. Here are a few more.

Does NBN Co. plan to buy or lease the copper network from Telstra? What plans do they have to utilise the existing HFC network? How are the government going to plug the existing gaps in the HFC network and will they ensure that a HFC network used as part of the NBN has access for everyone—that it is not a closed network, that it is open access? Given the government's promise to make the NBN easy to convert to a full fibre-to-the-premises network in the future, we need to know exactly how this will be done. We need answers to these sorts of questions in the strategic review.

I said at a conference on the NBN a few weeks ago that the Labor Party has won the debate about superfast broadband. We were roundly defeated at the last election, but it was not because of this. People did not vote for the government because of their broadband policy; in fact, I suspect many people voted for the government in spite of it. But the coalition, to their credit, have changed their position. Three years ago the Prime Minister—then the opposition leader—told his team, told the shadow minister, to demolish the NBN. A lot has changed. Now they are saying they are going to keep it, even if in a reduced form, even if through gritted teeth. They are doing this because the Liberal Party realises that the NBN is a bit like Medicare—it is too popular to destroy. My argument to the government is that, if you are going to do this, if you are going to build the NBN, then do it properly and do what Robert Menzies did.

When Robert Menzies was in opposition in 1949 he was one of the fiercest critics of the Snowy hydro scheme. He criticised it up hill and down dale. Two months before the 1949 election, Robert Menzies refused to attend the launch event for the Snowy hydro scheme, but when he became Prime Minister, Robert Menzies changed his mind. He supported the Snowy hydro scheme; he backed it and he built it. This Prime Minister, I fear, is no Robert Menzies. I do not think the Prime Minister understands how important the NBN is, how important this infrastructure is. In the past he has described it as 'essentially a video entertainment system'. But this Prime Minister has also described himself as the infrastructure Prime Minister. He has promised to build the infrastructure of the 21st century, promised to build the infrastructure that Australia needs. Guess what? This is what it is. This is what the NBN is. It is quintessentially the infrastructure of the 21st century, and you cannot be the infrastructure Prime Minister if you are cutting the biggest and most important infrastructure project in Australia.

The Prime Minister is no Robert Menzies, but the Minister for Communications could be. He could have the same change of heart that Robert Menzies had. He gets it, he understands it. In his heart of hearts he knows how important this project is. He knows that 25 megabits per second is not going to be enough, more than enough, for the average household. He knows that creating a digital divide between areas with fibre and those without, building new estates that will have fibre to the premises while old estates have fibre to the node, is bad policy, that we should not be creating a society of haves and have-nots. He knows enough to know better. It is not too late for the Minister for Communications to become another Menzies.

I move:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading the House notes that:

(1) in his Second Reading Speech, the Minister acknowledged:

(a) the importance of communications infrastructure to our economy; and

(b) the unforseen evolution of technology and services that could be facilitated using submarine communications cables when Australia's links were first developed in the nineteenth century;

(2) it is critical for policy makers to adopt a forward-looking view of our nation's communications and infrastructure requirements; and

(3) the assertion that broadband speeds of 25Mbps will continue to be sufficient for the needs of Australian households in future is inconsistent with items (1) and (2)."

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