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

The motion is very timely because two weeks ago the government released the NBN Corporate plan2016 and it reveals a massive blow-out in the cost of the National Broadband Network, a $26½ billion blow-out. The cost of the Abbott government's second-rate version of the NBN has now gone from $29½ billion to up to $56 billion—in other words, it has almost doubled.

As we know, today is the second anniversary of the election of the Abbott government. They have now been in power for two years and they have no-one else to blame for this mess than themselves, because this has happened because they got their assumptions wrong in opposition and because they seriously underestimated how difficult it would be to switch from building a world-class NBN using fibre to one using copper or HFC. Let me give you some examples.

The negotiations with Telstra to buy back the old copper network were supposed to be finalised by June last year. Instead, they were only finalised in June this year. It took a year longer than expected. As a result, the fibre-to-the-node network is now at least a year behind schedule. The Minister for Communications promised it would be rolling out at scale a year ago and it still is not. The HFC network is also way behind schedule. We were promised that 2.61 million homes would be connected to the NBN via HFC by the end of next year. The Corporate plan, released two weeks ago, now reveals that they will hit less than one-third of this target. These mistakes are based on these documents here, the coalition's election policy and the much-vaunted strategic review. What the corporate plan reveals is that both of these documents were hopelessly wrong.

In the first document, the 2013 election policy, the opposition said that they would be able to build the NBN, a second-rate version of the NBN, for $29½ billion. When the policy was released, the now minister said that the assumptions that he had made were 'conservative'. Well, he was wrong. The second document, the strategic review, said that this cost had blown out by $15 billion—from $29½ billion up to $41 billion. I remember when this report was released, the minister again said that the costings were 'conservative and achievable'. Again, he was wrong. The cost of their second-rate NBN is not going to be $29½ billion, not $41 billion, but now up to $56 billion—so much for the Liberal Party's great economic management. They have doubled the deficit and now they have almost doubled the cost of their second-rate NBN. It is not just the cost that has blown out; it is also the time that they promised they would build it.

As I mentioned, this is the second anniversary of the election of the Abbott government. On that night two years ago when the Abbott government was elected, the Prime Minister issued a public letter to the people of Australia, where he said:

I want our NBN to be delivered within three years and Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to make this happen.

Well, that is not going to happen either. It will not be finished by the end of next year. According to the Corporate plan, it will not be finished until the end of 2020. That itself will require a massive increase in the speed of the rollout. Instead of three years, it will take seven, or more than double what the Prime Minister said two years ago today.

When in opposition, this government was very critical of the former Labor government on the NBN. Now, in government, they are responsible and they should be held accountable for their promises that they have broken as well as for the mistakes that they have made. Not only are they building a second-rate version of the NBN; it is going to cost almost double what they promised the people of Australia it would cost and it will take more than twice as long as they promised. No wonder the people of Australia are now calling the NBN the 'national blow-out network'. No wonder the people of Australia are so disappointed with this hopeless, hapless, divided, backward-looking government.

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