Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Chifley; if nothing else, he is always entertaining. I am glad he did not show us his rocket! I will bring a Western Australian perspective to this debate. That the NBN in Western Australia was in an absolute shambles at the time of the election is often forgotten. You talked about going backwards, Member for Chifley. So let me take you back to September 2013—he is leaving; he does not want to hear this!—to the situation that the incoming Minister for Communications, now the Prime Minister, was faced with in Western Australia when the coalition was elected to government. At the time of the election, there was only a handful of premises connected. The work had basically stopped, with only 34 premises connected across the whole of Western Australia. It took six years for 34 premises. Well done! What an achievement!

The lead contractor, Syntheo, had announced it would be pulling out of the state and no longer continuing with the project in WA due to the difficulties it had in delivering anything. They also left a lot of subcontractors unpaid. That was all under Labor management. There were three separate investigations in WA into claims asbestos was mishandled in the rollout during the six years of Labor management, including in East Perth, Canning Vale and Victoria Park, which is in my electorate of Swan. There was also an investigation in the seat of Canning when the issue was raised by the former member, Don Randall.

The member moving this motion talked about mismanagement of the NBN. What was happening with the NBN in WA in 2013 was perhaps the worst type of mismanagement I have ever seen in my years in business and in government. The task facing the incoming minister was a massive one. As the then Minister for Communications said on 5 June 2014:

… it is much harder to get a project that has failed or that has been mismanaged back on track than it is to get a new project, from a greenfields start, on track.

But the minister has managed to turn the NBN around since the election, particularly in my electorate. It has become the electorate with the most advanced rollout of the NBN in Western Australia. You can see, by looking at the rollout map, that each of the four local government areas in my electorate now contain at least some areas where the NBN has been completed, is under construction or is in the build preparation phase, whereas in September 2013, under Labor, I think there were about 14 premises connected in my electorate.

But the legacy of Labor's mismanagement unfortunately continues in my electorate. In the time I have left I want to focus on the part of my electorate that has not yet been listed for connection to the NBN—the Ascot exchange which serves the majority of the City of Belmont. Within this exchange there are many areas where broadband speeds are poor—and there are a number of areas where it is impossible to connect to broadband or any internet at all. These blackspots are typically in the suburbs of Cloverdale and Kewdale. One of the frustrations of my constituents in these areas is that they are often told by Telstra, when they ring up, that they will be able to connect. The official coverage maps also show that there are connections available. However the reality on the Ascot exchange, as my constituents tell me in the many letters I receive, is very different. Typically, after going through a long process the people in these areas become resigned to the fact that they cannot connect.

Labor have let the people who live in the Ascot exchange area down in many ways. Back on 17 September 2007, exactly eight years ago today, the then member for Swan—Labor—wrote to a constituent in my electorate and said the following:

Labor's National Broadband Network will solve Ascot's broadband problems.'

He also wrote, in reference to how much broadband was going to cost:

Labor will invest up to $4.7 billion to establish the National Broadband Network in partnership with the private sector.

Where the hell did he get that figure of $4.7 billion from? Talk about an understatement by the Labor member for Swan, Kim Wilkie!

We then had six years of Labor government after Mr Wilkie had promised in that letter that Labor would fix the Ascot exchange. Early on in that time, in 2008, the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council commissioned a detailed broadband blackspot survey of the Ascot exchange area, and this survey definitively documented all the problems in the area. This survey went on to become the basis of a submission to the federal Labor government for the Ascot exchange to be prioritised in the NBN. This submission was rated extremely high by the minister's own department. Yet, when the time for the rollout announcement came, Belmont and the Ascot exchange were left out by the Labor government. They let the people of Belmont down for political reasons—and with their mismanagement.

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