David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When Labor was elected to government and kicked off 'spend-a-thon 07' which then ran on for another six years, they provided a huge number of examples of how not to manage public money, from the border security blow-out to the school hall program and of course, the pink batts program and many more. But none of them were more grave or more of an example of what not to do than their administration—or lack thereof—of the NBN.

I believe that this will go down in Australian history as one of the single most appalling pieces of public administration that the nation has seen. To understand the contrast between what the previous government did and what the current government is doing it is necessary to go back to the beginning, when this project was hastily conceived in midair on two plane flights, one from Melbourne to Sydney and another from Sydney to Brisbane. That was sufficient for the former government to sign-off on a massive commitment of public expenditure.

It was a commitment which, at the stroke of a couple of pens and a couple of press releases, the previous government said would cost $43 billion and that the private sector was going to invest 49 per cent of that money. But that did not happen. In fact, no serious proposal for private sector investment was ever put forward because it was such an appalling proposal.

So of course there was a huge blow-out in costs, and we have seen in the recent strategic review that the costs were in fact on track to being not $43 billion but $72 billion or $73 billion. This is an extraordinary amount of money and, remarkably, this was done in an environment where the previous government did not even ask the question: where is broadband need the greatest?

This is a pretty fundamental point. If you are going to build a massive broadband network it might make sense actually to think about where the broadband need is greatest. And that did not happen; in fact, it was only very recently that that work was conducted for the first time by the current government. So there was a massive blow-out in cost and what we got was three per cent of Australian households connected by the last election for a cost of $6.5 billion—$6.5 billion and three per cent of households connected. And, of course, Labor had the gall at one point prior to the last election to say that under Labor the NBN is free. There are about 9 million households in Australia so at $72 billion that is a cost per household of about $8,000 in taxation. And, of course, we know that under Labor the NBN was likely to cost more than $130 per month per household. So how one can describe that as 'free' is certainly beyond me.

It really goes to the fact that you need serious people running projects of this kind. There are a lot of technology enthusiasts on the other side, and that is great. They are prolific tweeters and people who like to use the internet; that is terrific. But a project of this size and complexity requires experience and a steady hand at the wheel, and that certainly was not the case under the previous government.

There are areas in my electorate, like the shopping district in Padstow, which still do not have good broadband, and that is in the middle of Sydney. And there are suburbs like Lugarno which also struggle to get decent reception. So there are huge issues which the government will address, but by taking a technology-agnostic approach rather than just throwing fibre around the country in a very loose and unstructured fashion. By taking a technology-agnostic, measured approach and by using different assets where those make sense, including HFC in some places, we will deliver the project much more quickly and for $30 billion less. We will solve the broadband problems that still exist in this country.

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