Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her questions and observations. She is absolutely right that the internet is becoming a very important entertainment platform. I think a good way to look at the internet—of course, enabled by the NBN but not exclusively by the NBN—is that it is, in many respects, an uber-platform, a sort of a super platform, which is trumping every other one. I think that we will see a continuing move of so many other services. Whether it is services that were traditionally broadcast over the air, like television and radio, or services like newspapers, of course, which are printed on paper, everything is moving onto the internet. With the arrival of Netflix—and, again, Netflix is not the first videostreaming entertainment business in Australia by any means—we have seen the impact of this form of video distribution. In the United States, Netflix alone—one company—consumes one-third of prime time internet bandwidth.

Turning to the electorate of Solomon, the people of Darwin in the honourable member's electorate are really seeing the benefit of having a strong Liberal MP fighting for her electorate and working to solve the problems we inherited from Labor. I do not need to tell the honourable member this, but others may be interested to know that the NBN rollout in Darwin at the time of the election was a complete mess. We had inherited huge problems with service class 0 premises—that is, premises that the NBN had said were passed because the fibre went down the street but that could not actually get a service for a variety of reasons, not least because there was no lead-in. The NBN could not give an estimate as to how long it would take to get a service. There were precincts or FSAMs declared ready for service by the NBN Co under the Labor government where 90 per cent or more of the premises were service class 0. That, as we explained in the press release yesterday, has all changed. Now at least 40 per cent have to be service class 2—that is to say, there is a lead-in—and at least another 40 per cent are service class 1—that is to say, they can be connected within a month; for service class 2 it is generally about two weeks.

The rollout in the Northern Territory had ground to a halt, essentially. It was in a state of collapse, as it was in South Australia and Western Australia. But, through the honourable member's help and advocacy and her passion for her community, we have turned things around. At the time of the last election, Labor was claiming to have 2,672 premises passed with fibre in her electorate of Solomon, but, extraordinarily, only 118 of these were actually serviceable. Today we have 18,581 premises serviceable, and 7,208 of them have actually ordered a service and are paying for one. We are not stopping there. There are another 23,000 premises in Solomon where building of the network is underway, and it is fair to say that Solomon has one of the more extensive rollouts of any electorate. The honourable member's passion and advocacy is something that the government and the NBN Co especially welcome because, frankly, we need the revenue. I say to all honourable members: encourage your constituents to sign up to the NBN, because it is a very expensive project, and the more revenue we can get the better.

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