David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak on this motion. When I was given the honour of representing the Lyne electorate two years ago, I was advised as the local new member at the time that some areas in my electorate, including the metropolis of Port Macquarie, were not on the books anywhere in NBN's plans for over 10 years. Can you believe it? The old Labor Party back-of-the-coaster model did not have the biggest economic centre in the electorate on the radar for any of their Rolls-Royce pie-in-the-sky NBN for more than 10 years. I was flabbergasted.

Fast forward just two years after this botched rollout, this pie-in-the-sky plan that was built on the back of a coaster and—thanks to the efforts of coalition management and getting more business- and telco-minded people running the NBN, and minister Malcolm Turnbull directing them—we now have a much more sensible plan. A multitechnology mix is being employed so that there will be better horses for courses. There is all the new technology that is happening in the vector DSL space, with the fixed wireless space and the open wireless space. The coalition management plan is bringing the NBN much sooner to many more areas, rather than the old open-cheque-book approach. We have also got runs on the board in terms of revenue. There was so much being spent under the previous administration but hardly any revenue. Finally we have over half a million paying customers on the NBN.

But let's talk more about the Lyne electorate. As I mentioned when I was given the honour of representing the people of Lyne, there were only a couple of thousand people—despite six years of talk—that had potential access to the NBN. As we speak today, there are over 15,000 premises—probably 30,000 or 40,000 people—who can ring up and ask for a connection to the NBN. And, in the 2015-16 works program, there are another 21,000 premises that are included in the rollout—again, across the northern part of the Manning into the Hastings and the Gloucester valleys. As well as that, we have two satellites that will be coming online for a lot of the people in my electorate of Lyne that are not eligible to get a fixed radio wave from the wireless towers or fibre to the premises in the Manning. They will be able to get a much more capable satellite network. We all know about the fiasco of the previous satellite network. They underestimated the number of people it needed by over 150,000 people. The capacity was way under what was needed. I look forward to them coming online as well.

New areas that will be covered in the forward rollout plan are Black Head, Diamond Beach, Failford, Hallidays Point, Nabiac, Red Head, Tallwoods Village—and inside the fixed wireless footprint of Gloucester the actual township—as well as Harrington, Old Bar, Wallabi Point. And, thank goodness, along Hastings River Drive and on the north shore of Port Macquarie, the rollout of the multitechnology mix will be coming.

We already have a couple of greenfield sites with fibre to the premises. But, now that this rollout has been announced in the Hastings-Port Macquarie local government area, they will be there and delivering much sooner than the 'pie-in-the-sky 10 years away with hardly a mention' of the previous government. So people on the north shore—on Riverside, Thrumster, Lakewood, Laurieton, North Haven, West Haven—and in Wauchope, Camden Head and Dunbogan, can look forward to a realistic time frame for delivery of the NBN.

Also in the Manning where there is fibre to the premises, we now have over 7,500 premises that can get access as we speak. The middle of the Manning, the Taree central business district, was a hole in the network. It was not even covered. Due to negotiations with the NBN and the minister we have the hole in the CBD now available for NBN. Thank you.

Debate adjourned.

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