Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has been extraordinary this morning to be here listening to coalition member after coalition member talk about the NBN and clothe themselves in the mantle of the NBN, because let us not forget that the NBN is a great Labor initiative. It was an initiative that was steadfastly opposed by our Prime Minister. Indeed, it was only through the intercession of the next Prime Minister, one Malcolm Turnbull, that we got 'NBN lite'—the second-rate product that is currently being outlined.

I agree with the first three propositions that the member for Forrest has put forward, but I must strenuously disagree with the fourth. I see absolutely no evidence that there is any prioritising of delivery for the areas of greatest need. I will use my own electorate of Perth as a classic case in point. The suburbs of Ashfield, Bassendean, Beechboro, Eden Hill, Kiara, Lockridge and Morley were previously on the NBN rollout plan for 2013-14. Almost $2 million had been spent on the Bassendean Telstra exchange in order to get it ready for the NBN. But when the coalition came into government, these suburbs were binned from the rollout schedule.

In Minister Turnbull's broadband quality and availability review, which allegedly was going to guide where he was going to insert the NBN, those suburbs came out as having the very lowest speeds and reliability in Australia. Indeed, the surveys that we have taken suggest that the estimated speeds in those suburbs are overestimating the real speeds that are being delivered in these suburbs. It is very hard to reconcile that we are now prioritising those areas where the need is greatest when we have chopped all of those areas of Perth out of contention. When I ask the minister about it, in letters and in questions, he just says: 'Well, you'll get it by 2020.' My suspicion is that the problem is the copper wire in these suburbs is of such a poor quality that they know that their seriously bad fibre-to-the-node plan just simply is not going to work in this area.

Let us have a look at the rest of Western Australia. The member for Forrest was setting out the benefits of the long-term satellite plan. This was a scheme that was developed and scheduled by Labor—a scheme that Minister Turnbull when in opposition sneered at as being a Rolls Royce initiative. Labor then introduced an interim service which was very quickly oversubscribed.

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