Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The 'fraud band tour de farce' has rolled back into town. Last week regional members were kicking it along and this week we have the member for Banks at the wheel. I would have said they had 'rolled it out' but they have not been able to demonstrate as a government their capacity to roll anything out and so it seems quite wrong to use that phrase in relation to anything they do. What they are rolling out is the same old untruths and falsehoods. The government rest on three claims: that they would do things differently; they would do it in less time; and they would do it at less cost. On all three claims, they are wrong.

The reason I say that their claim to be doing things differently is wrong is that they are not doing anything differently to what they have done previously—that is, relying on copper. Every time they have relied on copper they have failed. They failed 20 times before and we are getting ready for failure 21. They went to the election with their claim about taking less time. They said there would be two versions—our version would be delivered by 2021, theirs by 2019 or two years' difference. When it came to targets, we said 93 per cent of premises would be connected by fibre to the premises; they said 30 per cent of that 93 per cent would be connected by HFC. Anyone who has used HFC knows that the best thing about it is the day when they do not use it. Those opposite also said that 44 per cent will get it via the node and 26 per cent will get it fibre to the premises.

Copper is their crutch. They are already found wanting. Ziggy Switkowski, the chairperson, is saying that they will have to upgrade copper, but what we are hearing from those opposite is slower speeds delivered a year quicker, $1 billion cheaper and with less bang for the buck. They claim that it would cost $73 billion, but all they have done is inflate the cost number by changing the assumptions—a tactic that they always use. For example, they say that it is going to cost residents and households more, and the member for Ryan just carried on with that canard. The current NBN retail prices are comparable to other forms of broadband and NBN Co. has locked in the prices to mirror inflation. What was not mentioned by those opposite is that the people in the regional areas under their model will pay way more than the urban area because of the changes the coalition has made.

The other claim is that residents do not want one gigabit per second and that there is no other network. This is what the minister has claimed: no other network in the world has been made at that speed. That is actually wrong. The shadow minister and I visited a network that is being developed for one gigabit per second. It is being developed by Google in various parts of the United States, where people are seeing transformations in regional areas because of the fact that they have a strong broadband network.

I took a tour through the member for Bank's electorate to get a sense of broadband quality in his area via www.mybroadband.communications.gov.au. When it rates the accessibility and quality of broadband in his area, I do not think there is a lot to be proud of. If he were fair dinkum, he would be championing his people's interests, not trying to get brownie points from an out-of-touch PM in the way that he has. If you look at 12 suburbs in his electorate, while some of them may have great ADSL access, a lot of them, apart from two places, have terrible speeds. In fact, some of the worst places, like Padstow Heights, get three megabits per second, and yet all he is championing today is slowing down the ability to help those suburbs.

One Padstow person quizzed Malcolm Campbell on Twitter and abused him. In fact, he said, 'Is it fair that the city gets higher speeds than the bush?' It is interesting because the response from Padstow residents was that FTTP is not just about speed; it is also about reliability. Every time it rains, you lose both phone and internet in Padstow. This is what the member for Banks is championing. When people were giving him chip back, the Minister for Communications chipped them via Twitter by saying, 'You don't care what it costs, do you? You want it and you want everyone else to pay for it. It seems pretty selfish to me.' I wonder if he is using that argument about PPL in the cabinet room. At any rate, people in the area of the member for Banks, like, for example, real estate agents in Oatley, are talking about whether the access is good enough in prospective homes. People in the area of the member for Banks indicate they want a better NBN, not a nastier, slower, dud of an NBN; they want broadband; they do not want 'fraud-band'.

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